SPEAKERS

Dylan McCabe, Armando Jacox

 

Dylan McCabe  00:00

Roofing mastery podcast episode number 19 Welcome to the roofing mastery podcast. My name is Dylan McCabe. And in every episode we give you a seat at the table as we interview owners and CEOs and key executives of roofing and general contracting companies so that you can gain key insights to take your own position or company to the next level. And in this episode, I interviewed the owner of foothills, roofing and exteriors. His name’s Armando jaycox. And we’re going to get into some of the things they do to differentiate themselves in a very crowded marketplace in Denver, Colorado, we’re going to talk about their website right away, when you get to their website, you get kind of impressed by what they say. They definitely differentiate themselves in their core values, we’re going to get into that. And those are shown in very clear in a clear way on their website to the premium products they use and how they use that to win bids over other contractors. And then their warranty. They have a warranty unlike any I’ve heard of today. I’m sure there’s other guys out there doing it. But these guys really set themselves apart in a competitive market and they are doing very well. You’re gonna get a lot out of this. Before that I want to give a shameless plug to our roofing CEO groups and ask you one powerful question. Do you have a grip on your business? Do you really feel like you’re working on your business, or just mired down working in your business daily? Do you have a vision? Do you have a five year plan and a three year plan? That’s concrete? Do you have the right people in the right seats? Do you have traction? Do you have processes in place that are followed, illustrated and followed by everybody on your team? And are you keeping score? Do you know how to analyze the data, how to keep score and really have an organization that’s successful in growth but also sustainable as well. If you want to learn more about that, you can take our short quiz, just go to roofing mastery.com you can answer 20 questions and rate yourself from one to five on each one. And then if you want to learn how our roofing CEO members are taking their companies to the next level, we can schedule a discovery call from there. That’s our passion. We are all about bringing owners and leaders together to maximize and sustain their growth. Alright guys, now to our podcast with interview with Armando jacox. Alright, as I mentioned, we have a special guest on the show today Armando jacox. He is the president of foothills roofing and exteriors. Armando, thank you for joining the show.

 

Armando Jacox  02:23

My pleasure, Dylan, thank you for having me.

 

Dylan McCabe  02:25

Yeah. And some people may not know they might know. But you also have a podcast.

 

Armando Jacox  02:31

Yes, sir. I should do in podcasting. 2018. And I love it. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Sometimes I get I get crap from our, from our team is like, he’s in the podcast room. Again. It’s in the pockets. Cuz like, Yeah, I just love podcasting. It’s so much fun.

 

Dylan McCabe  02:48

Yeah, and I like yours too, because your logo actually has a picture of you holding a bundle of singles up on a roof. And there’s a background and everything just looks really cool. So thanks anyway, I think Yeah, I’m looking forward to our conversation, because you are the owner of a company, a roofing company. You’ve been in this space for long enough to know some of the challenges and also some of the opportunities, but you’ve really kind of focused on branding and online marketing and all that stuff. So I’m looking forward to getting that but before all that kind of give you a quick background to our listeners, so they get to know you a little bit better.

 

Armando Jacox  03:24

Okay, yeah. Um, so, my background is I was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, living in the same house for 21 years, had a single mom had, you know, two older sisters, one younger sister and, you know, kind of grew up was kind of tough, you know, it’s kind of tough with a single mom in that situation and stuff and, and so I was able to kind of make it through high school had problems in high school is kind of a problem kid and, and then I ended up making it to college though, and kind of getting my life together and, and graduated from the University of Arizona. And although that wasn’t so smooth, I ended up developing a very, very severe problem with alcohol, actually, and I became a very, almost died from drinking too much, really, and so I had to get help, I had to go and get, you know, treatment and had to go and get help go to, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous and had to, you know, they really helped me a lot. And now I’ve been sober for a little over 18 years. So it’s kind of a huge part of my background in my life, and something I’m very proud of.

 

Dylan McCabe  04:31

That’s awesome, man. And I love that you share part of your story, because you’re right, like, you know, that part of that story and those challenges and things that you deal with in a broken home. I mean, that’s part of who you are today.

 

Armando Jacox  04:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes I kind of feel bad for my kids, because they don’t they I mean, I think that’s it, they just haven’t made I feel like you know, I’m sure they’re gonna have their own share of challenges. But, you know, adversity really does add to your, you know, to your talents and adversity really helps. You know, grow as a as an individual, and I feel like people don’t have adversity. It’s, that’s its own challenge in and of itself, you know?

 

Dylan McCabe  05:07

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I know. So I grew up in a broken home as well, I was raised by my mother have three sisters as well. Oh, wow. And you know, it’s interesting because all that’s done for me is I have three daughters now. And all that’s done for me is given me a huge passion to just be an awesome dad and an awesome husband, because I grew up without a male father figure around, you know, so there’s just all these opportunities to have fun to teach the girls cool things to teach them how to think. And, you know, in high school, I, you know, I was not a example of who to be either. And I went pretty wild and didn’t even make it to college until later. I spent a few years after high school just being a loser, basically. But that’s really Oh, yeah, no, yeah, I can relate to that. Well, but knowing all that, it’s like, when you have kids, now, I’ve got a five year old, a three year old, a newborn. I mean, I remember those days very well. So I’m gonna prep them for, you know, the dark side of life and the light side of life. And so anyways,

 

Armando Jacox  06:09

yeah, that’s really cool. That’s really cool. Well,

 

Dylan McCabe  06:11

so tell us about foothills, you, you. You’ve been in the roofing space? How did you start foothills? And tell me about kind of where you guys are? What’s your focus and what you’re doing with that?

 

Armando Jacox  06:22

Yeah, so I got into the roofing business in 2011. And I just needed a job. And I randomly bumped into a guy at a yoga studio owner roofing company, and he basically recruited me, you know, and, and he got me with his sales manager. And he told me that, you know, told me that, you know, it’s a great business and, and told me that, you know, I could do well and stuff, I can start that week, and I was hired for a job, I needed one, I need to make money quick. And so I went ahead and got started. And it was literally snowing that week, and I went knock doors in the snow. And I generated leads, you know, and I didn’t have business cards, nothing. And so sometimes I hear guys, you know, come in with me, like, hey, I need business cards. I can’t, you know, I can’t work out business cards, I’m like, and I worked in the snow. I worked for like a yellow pad. I knocked on doors, I wrote my name on the yellow pad. I tore off the page and gave it to them said, we’ll be back next week to inspect your roof when the snow melts. And so that’s kind of how I got my start, you know, and I did that I grinded hard for like, two years doing that. And, and so, you know, the big thing that was that whole first year, I really questioned this business a lot. I mean, I was grinding, you know, knocking on doors, it was just awful. I wasn’t making the money I was hoping to make. But then I got up, I got in with it with a different company. The second company I was with really supported me a lot. And they gave me a bigger cut, basically. And so part of that was because I was bilingual, English and Spanish. And they really thought that’d be useful as a project manager. So he’s willing to pay me more money. And I just went out and sold a bunch of jobs right away. And by December, I had enough money to take three months off January, February, March. And I went and had my dream Hawaiian adventure vacation. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty. That was after my first year roofing. So yeah,

 

Dylan McCabe  08:21

felt like you won the lottery. Hmm. I

 

Armando Jacox  08:23

kind of did. Yeah, I kind of did. I mean, when I came back, though, I was like, you know, basically broke and like, just selling roofs with a fury man. I mean, I was like, this business just got me to Hawaii for three months. I’m like, I just went out and knocked on doors with a fury like I’ve never seen and ended up doing well, again, the second year, and that was when I met my wife and we, you know, kind of started get more serious because I wanted to have a family and and this business is enough for that you can have more than enough for that you can, if you work really hard, you can do well enough to to have a family and make that kind of income. And that’s what I did. You know, I worked hard. And I ended up moving up from, from project manager to sales manager, to General Manager, and eventually I became a partner in that second company that I was with.

 

Dylan McCabe  09:12

Now, what was the timeframe there? How many years were you there?

 

Armando Jacox  09:16

I was there for seven years,

 

Dylan McCabe  09:17

seven years. So yeah, that’s but that’s an awesome story. Because for some of the guys listening to this, they’re thinking, Well, I’d love to own my own roofing company one day, too. And and you’re in Colorado, right? Yes. Yeah. So Colorado and Texas. I mean, we’re lucky, we’re lucky. We’re more, you know, storm catchers than we are storm chasers. And so some people would say, Well, I’d love to be the owner of a roofing company in a competitive market like that. But you know, I’m selling and I’m trying and you know, you’re I think the key takeaway from what I just heard you say is, hey, it’s a process. I mean, seven years is that’s a few years there and you worked your way up, and I’m sure, I’m sure there are times where you thought man, I’d love to be like, that dude that just walked in. He looks pretty happy. Looks like he’s making really good Money. He’s an executive at this company. And then fast forward seven years later, you’re a partner at the company.

 

Armando Jacox  10:06

Yeah, I think that was a very important, I think you’re hitting the nail on the head. As far as you know, I do see guys, even guys here, you know, I talked to guys right now. And, you know, a month ago or so I had a conversation with a sales guy. He’s been doing it like six months, and, you know, he sees, you know, the success that I’ve had, and I’m like, dude, I’ve been grinding for nine years, bro. Come on, like, You got it, you’ve been in eight months, like, come on. But, you know, he. But yeah, I think it’s important because during those seven years, I was able to, you know, learn a lot about running an effective job, I was able to learn a lot about working as a team player, I was able to follow instructions from my, my authority figures, I was able to, you know, work with all kinds of different customers, you know, learn it all with stars customer service goes, I was also able to learn the ins and outs of a roofing business, you know, and, and really, really kind of get get in the weeds with with it before I actually, you know, launched my own and, and so, so yeah, I think, I think one of the key things that I did there, though, that I’d really encourage you to do is like, building sales teams. So you know, I’ve probably built and, and disassembled, like three sales teams over the years, you know, I would build up guys, so that, you know, three, four guys sales team, and then like, then they would all like leave, and then they do it again, and then leave, and they do it again. So I’ve done that, like probably three or four cycles of that. And, and that has taught me an enormous amount about, you know, retention, sales, persons retention, and how to, you know, how to keep guys and how to let them go to because I have had to let go of a fair share. And, you know, and it’s always hard to do that. But yeah, I think that probably is a key takeaway, because if you have a sales force, you could really, that’s, that’s necessary. You can’t do this without one, you know, if you’re going to be the Salesforce, cool, you know, but I would encourage guys to get out of being your Salesforce as quickly as possible if scaling your business is important to you.

 

Dylan McCabe  12:18

Yeah, that’s so good. And I like what you you know, you what you highlighted, there was issues with people, one of the things we talk about in our roofing CEO groups is having the right people in the right seat. And who are the right people, they’re people who align with your core values, they’re people that you don’t have, you don’t have a conflict when it comes to what you hold is most important to you as the owner of the company. But then do you have the right so question one? Do you have the right people in question two? Are they in the right seat? Do they get it? Do they? Do they want it the role they’ve been given? And do they have the capacity to do it? Yeah. And I mean, there’s so much that goes that goes along with sustaining, but what will what would you say is a key takeaway from what you learned after running sales teams? How do you keep people long term? Well, it’s

 

Armando Jacox  13:02

extremely challenging to start therapy. As not, it’s not easy. I know, one of the reasons I didn’t launch my business for seven years is because I knew how hard it was gonna be, you know, I knew it. And like, I wasn’t really too excited about walking into that, sort of, like, jungle, you know, and, and so I, I really took my time, and I think I’ve learned over the years, how important having the right people in the right seats is, and I mess it up all the time. You know, I right now, I kind of have it right. But I think you definitely, I think you just have to learn by trial and error. And I think I’m very stubborn. I’m very hard headed, unfortunately. And so I will put someone in the wrong seat, and then like, have to get sort of burned by that. And then I’ll learn not to do that again, you know, but I do think there’s a little part of me, that’s always kind of like, you know, how the guy recently had a let go, and he was in the wrong seat, clearly, he was in the wrong seat, and I let it go for too long, you know, I just kind of like looked at it more like the needs of the business, we really needed him there, you know, and I was just hoping to make a temporary and then like, a month turn into two months or three months to the point to where it’s like, this guy’s clearly in the wrong seat, got mistakes left and right. Like we need to, you know, get him out of that seat. And so, you know, it turned out he had more deeper issues and we even knew he had sort of a, you know, a drinking problem and that kind of thing. So, we ended up having to let him go, unfortunately, but after giving them chance, after chance, but unfortunately, that’s what you got to go through sometimes in this business before we want to learn and man I bet you there’s so many listeners out there who like know what I’m talking about. It’s heartbreaking sometimes and you have somebody in the wrong seat or you haven’t given the right tools or, you know, you’ve kind of things just aren’t working out and you have to let them go. It really sucks.

 

Dylan McCabe  14:52

Yeah, no, it’s it’s so true. And we one of the things we take people through is everybody in the company has a score. And so you grade basically your staff based on who they are. You grade them on their score of how they align with your core values or not. We also you grade them on the score of, of what you’ve given them to do their role and at the tasks that they accomplish. And we have a three strike rule. Hmm. ask you to do something, you don’t do it. We have our meeting, weekly meeting. Next month’s meet or next week’s meeting, you say, Oh, I didn’t get around to her. Oh, these things happen. Okay, we have a little discussion, let’s make sure we’re clear on what we want you to do. Next week, we talked about he didn’t get it again. Okay. This is to our three strikes, we’re just to be clear, we want to talk to you about it again. Do you have all the resources you need? Are you clear expectations should all be crystal clear? Three strikes and you’re out? Yeah. And that’s good. Some people just need that. I mean, but I bet after you let that person go, I bet that almost relieved some of their stress. Because if they’re not in the right seat, and then they don’t have the capacity to do something really well, well, that’s stressful on that person, too. But it’s also stressful and people they work with, because the people they work with are waiting on them to get stuff done or do things well. So it’s stressful for everybody when you have somebody in the wrong seat. So as hard as hard as it is, it’s healthier for the culture.

 

Armando Jacox  16:12

You’re absolutely right. I think having people aligned with the core values is extremely important, you know, and that that kind of happens, I think, in the interview process, you can sort of learn that. And I’ve definitely hired people where I kind of like had a feeling that they were not aligned, and but I needed someone for that position so much that I just kind of like how to ignore it and, and then it ends up not working out, you know, and I’ve done that made that mistake, you know, over and over, unfortunately. And so, I think, you know, I’m growing and maturing as a leader. And I think, you know, it’s important for business owners and leaders to give give themselves a break, you know, you’re doing the best you can I know I’m doing the best I can. And you know, and you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to screw things up and like give yourself a little room to you know, give yourself a break.

 

Dylan McCabe  16:58

Oh, man. So true. I had a mentor. years ago that said one time Look, man, you’re doing better than you think you are. Just try to bet 300. Okay, just try to bet 300 that’s what major league ballplayers do, and they get paid really well. Just try to bet 300. And I thought, you know what, that is so good.

 

Armando Jacox  17:17

Yeah, that’s really good. I just reading an article about Michael Jordan. Now he missed yesterday, actually, how he missed like 30,000 shots or something crazy like that, you know, and he’s still like, made it in the Hall of Fame. And he’s still Michael Jordan. But, you know, he lost like, 26 games, because he missed the final shot or something like that. And you know, but he’s the final the end is like, do you know why I have succeeded is because I have failed so much. You know, it’s Yeah, I

 

Dylan McCabe  17:46

love that. Man, we could do a whole podcast episode on that how to fail forward. Well, let’s, let’s, let’s switch gears here and kind of talk about something you guys have done to differentiate yourself because you are in a very competitive market. One of the things that I learned from you is, you have a kind of a unique approach to company branding, and setting yourselves apart. So let’s talk about that a little bit. What have you done to set yourself your company to set it apart? As far as company culture and branding goes?

 

Armando Jacox  18:12

Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s what I approach is a bit controversial in the roofing industry, I think because we do offer everyone a lifetime workmanship warranty. That’s part of our brand, you know, if you go with us, you will never have to worry about your roof again. And I like to kid around with people with our customers and stuff and even our reps kind of kid around and they say, if the owner still alive, we’re gonna fix it if the roof leaks, you know, and, and so that’s kind of the basic idea of that workmanship warranty is that you know, we’ll fix it if it leaks, you know, and it leaks it’s probably our fault anyways, and I had this realization that like, I’ve I’ve never charged anyone because a roof leak and we had to go fix it that we had done. And I’m not gonna start you know, so like, just because I’m in a new company, so I was like, you know, why don’t just do a lifetime workmanship warranty. We just like peg it to the workmanship to the the manufacturer’s warranty the length of time because people always ask what does that mean lifetime and that’s when they say, Well, if the owner is alive, you’ll have a one but um, but yeah, I think that’s one of them. And then the other thing is we we partnered with malarkey roofing products, so Okay, only exclusively install malarkey roofing products. So that’s, that’s something that helps our brand I think quite a bit because in a competitive market like ours, malarkey actually has a reputation among insurance companies and insurance agents insurance adjusters to be the top rated Rufino so like if we’re ever in a in a competitive situation and the customer understands the quality that malarkey brings to the table and the other competitors like nada malarkey company then we can usually when that when that job there, so So I think that’s a huge thing is to partner up with a company that you believe in that you trust. So our company is like exclusively installs impact resistant like nothing else like that we have no nothing but it so it’s either malarkey class VISTA class three or malarkey class four. So that’s just kind of how we are. And we’re the only company in the Colorado, potentially the whole country that installs exclusively impact resistant. You know, in Colorado, it matters because we get so much hail, you know, but in Texas that matters, I’m sure because you get so much hail, a lot of places doesn’t matter at all, you know, California, who cares about that, you know, but um, but, you know, here definitely matters and it helps distinct differentiate us, you know, quite a bit. I think, though, like, honestly, man, those are, those are really important. But I think what really kind of gets us as people, we do have core values established, and they’re like, we talk about them on a regular basis, they’re on our walls, and we go into talk to like an insurance agent or a customer, we talk about the core values, and we and when they ask us, why are you different, we say, Well, you know, one thing is like, our, in our core values, you know, one of them is the word love, like the word love is in our core values. And like, no other roofing company has the word love in their core values. You know, it’s a little corny, but, but it, it’s important, because love is that we respect each other, and we treat each other like family. You know, that’s the idea of that core values. So. So, you know, we think that’s those are a few things that really kind of make us different. Man,

 

Dylan McCabe  21:33

I love that. I mean, I love the idea of the lifetime workmanship warranty, too, because I mean, how many, somebody may say, Oh, you should be charging 500 bucks to go up there, whatever. It’s like, how many more jobs do you get by going out there doing a repair for free? And then the guy goes to his neighbor, or the lady goes to her neighbor, and says, Hey, I gotta tell you, you know, we didn’t really see the total value in it. But we went with this company, they said, lifetime workmanship warranty, they just repaired a few shingles and charged us nothing, you need to give them a call. I mean, that’s like, incredible. I kind of want to take that and go to my business partner and say we need to do that it rain tie general contracting. I love that idea.

 

Armando Jacox  22:13

Yeah, thanks, man. I mean, I I’d love it too. And it, it really, it does make a difference. Because when we’re competing, and someone says, well, what’s your warranty? You know, let me say, Hey, you know what? Great question. I’m glad you asked that. Because warranties are extremely important. That’s just let them talk. You know, the rule. Yeah, I know, they’re very important. But they’re all just a scam, this and that. And we’re like, good point, good point, let them go on about it. And then we kind of hone in and look, we just kind of decided a long time ago that if this roof ever leaks, and it’s our fault, you’re fixing it ever. And if the owner still alive, he’s gonna fix it himself. And then like, they just kind of laugh, and they’re like, that’s really cool. You know, and then we just kind of, you know, tell him a little bit more about it’s a lifetime workmanship warranty, and it’s pegged to the manufacturer’s length of time. So the manufacturer as long as they have a warranty there, which they will for the rest of their life, then we will, we will go ahead and honor that.

 

Dylan McCabe  23:07

That’s good stuff, man.

 

Armando Jacox  23:09

And once you talk about stuff to man, like, Well, I mean, like if there’s someone missing a couple shingles, and that’s just an easy marketing thing for me. I mean, if we see, we’ll just go up and tell them, Hey, we’re missing a couple of shingles, we can go look to see if there’s hail. If there’s not, we’ll fix them for you. Don’t worry about it. And I can’t tell you, we’ve gotten referrals that way. We’ve gotten reviews that way we’ve gotten people just like telling us how happy they are with us that way. And it’s not a big deal for us to replace a few shingles, you know, whatever.

 

Dylan McCabe  23:35

That’s good stuff. Well, so you guys are clearly differentiating yourself. And like you said, your core values, including the word love and stuff. I mean, that’s just, that’s just so good. What are you doing as far as marketing, because it sounds like what you’re doing is you’re giving a great customer experience, once you have the customer. And they’re definitely going to you’re giving a remarkable experience that they’re going to remark about, they’re going to tell their friends about what are you doing to get the customers? What are you doing that unique with online marketing and branding? I know you mentioned paying a company to do it versus bringing it in house.

 

Armando Jacox  24:09

Yeah, yeah, we talked about that. And so, um, you know, I think I think, you know, I have to give Randy brothers he’s a friend of mine and a colleague and a mentor, really, in many ways. And he’s kind of like, a long time ago, said on one of his, like shows, hire a business development manager, like as soon as possible, as soon as you have the payroll for it. And so, I was my business development manager for many years and I went out and developed business just to insurance agents, just straight up I walked right into their office cold and say, Hey, you know, we’d like to help you through Roofing Services and, and they would always kind of say, well, we have got people for that already say, Hey, no problem that just here’s our Here’s my card, if we can ever you know, help you we’re happy to do it. And then by you know, just no hard sell or anything like that. And then and then with what end up happening, there’s one particular man that like one The roofers he was working with just totally dropped the ball big time. I mean, big time, dude. Like, the roof was clearly leaking. It wasn’t necessarily his fault. It was a bad swamp cooler, you know. So he, the customer was upset. And then like, you know, the guy I end up just stopped, caught returning phone calls and didn’t care anymore. And the insurance agent reached out to me, and I was like, This is my chance. And I just went over to that house, we did a full on repair, like new chimney swamp cooler, like flashing kit, new legs, New Roofing new wood, like the whole nine yards, ice and water. You know, we went all out on this thing probably cost us like 1500 bucks, you know, to do that. And, and I was like, hey, problem solved. And they’re like, What do you mean? What do you know? And we fixed it for free. didn’t charge them a dime for that, you know? And I got some, I got some slack from the owners that my company too. They’re like, what are you gonna charge? And I’m just like, No, no, this isn’t gonna work on this guy for like, a year or two. And they find it. So after that, that was he got it. We got a hailstorm. Literally in that dude’s neighborhood in his like insurance agents office neighborhood. And my phone went out of control, dude, like, I mean, I just could not believe how impactful that was, you know. And that agent is a good friend of mine to this day, I’ve done his whole family, I’ve done everything, you know, yeah, he’s like, we’re like friends, you know, at this point. And we talk about dog training and everything, and we go to lunch, and I talk to him on a regular basis. He has an issue, he just like calls me, you know, we’re like, really tight. So. So you know that that’s I do that with multiple people. So that’s what’s kept the lights on, you know, this year, because we haven’t had much hail in Denver. But man, digital marketing is a whole nother beast. And I’m all about that, too. Google has also been really good to us. We’ve kept kept the lights on this year with no hail because of Google. And we, we are a Google local services like company. And then we also do Google pay Pay Per Click ads. And we run ads on a regular basis, very targeted, highly targeted ads. And so between the Google ads and the Google local services, we have our SEO game is pretty weak, but we’re kind of developing that. between those two things, man, without any hail, we’ve been able to not really succeed as much as we wanted to, but we’re keeping the lights on we’re eating, we’re making money, we’re having a good time still doing this job. But it’s just, you know, it’s it’s a, it’s just so important to have that digital game. I think one thing you were talking about was, like bringing it in house or working external. And I’ve worked with external freelancers and external agencies over the years, and I haven’t had great experiences, unfortunately. So like, part of what we did with COVID was we we brought it all in house. And we hired in house videographer we hired in house web designer who also does our Google ad campaigns. And, and that has made that has made a huge difference, man, but but that’s that’s because we basically used all the money we made last year and invested into this, this new internal marketing program. So I mean, I think sometimes it’s hard to do that for people and including for me back, you know, before this, and I think it’s important to still have your digital people that you can work with and trust, you know, it’s very important.

 

Dylan McCabe  28:22

No, it you know, it’s it is and I, in my former life, I was VP of operations for a large digital marketing company. And one of the things I realized is we, we had a lot of advantages. We had over 300 customers on recurring, you know, online marketing campaigns like Google Pay Per Click campaigns and stuff. So we are constantly training new account managers. And one of the things I realized was we had a training process, and a lot of the content just came from Google. Google has an endless amount of training videos. Yeah. And so what I realized was, anybody can learn how to do this, you just need to find somebody to that’s that wants to do it there. They get excited about it. And then the training between Google what Google offers and what’s on YouTube, anybody can learn how to do this. And man, if you get the right AD AD, combined with the right landing page, and you have what they call message match. You can knock it out of the park with some Pay Per Click ads.

 

Armando Jacox  29:21

Yeah, you’re absolutely right, man. And one thing I have learned, though, by taking everything internal, is how vast digital marketing really is. You know, that’s one thing I think you’re right 100% people can learn it and especially pay per click. However, you know, like digital, building out your your Google Analytics and then building out and using it in combination with like, your, you know, an effective landing page campaign, and then building in in making it compatible with your SEO campaign. And then just building out your SEO altogether. SEO is vast, you know, and then also So doing that with all your social media platforms, and like, you know, building all of that out, and then on top of that is building out your email campaign, because I believe in email campaigns enormously, that’s how we’ve also been able to keep the lights on is by like having good email campaigns. Actually not even good bad ones, I pretty much have bad ones right now. But they’re working. So like, even with a bad email campaign, you can actually still make pretty good money. So I’m just excited about like, dialing our email campaign in the next, like, 90 days, pretty much. And so. So yeah, I think I think you can learn it, but I think it’s also important to just like, you know, Have some patience. And if and if you’re not ready for that, then at least work with someone that like you can trust and who’s actually doing it, you know, because I’ve worked with, with, and I just had bad luck, I feel like I just kept working with guys who just, were not getting it done, you know, just, you know, managing my PPC campaigns and just, like, absolutely no results, and I’d give them a month, you know, and they were just telling me, it’s my website is the problem, you know, and they want to redo my website now and hit me up for more money, you know, or just telling me that my SEO is too often I’m gonna need to do SEO for six months with no results, you know, and that’s kind of hard. And it’s going to be 1500 a month for that, you know, and it’s just kind of like, I just kind of was hearing that same tune over and over. And once the COVID hit, and people were out of work, I was able to hire people at a reduced rate pretty much, you know, and at least give someone a job who who got let go from? Because of COVID. You know,

 

Dylan McCabe  31:31

yeah, there you go. I mean, and I can tell you it is it’s a ton of information. And, you know, we the company I was with we franchised our business model out. So if you want to own your own little local digital marketing company, you could buy like the Denver market, for example. And then you got all your training your materials, your whole, the whole team that would carry out the work and you basically act play the role of a sales rep. And I got SEO certified there, there is no official SEO certification. But there is there’s a few SEO training schools. So we found the best one we could find. And I got SEO certified. And then I got Google certified. And then just looking over the processes, but what I found is that SEO is critical because Google scans webpages, just like a speed reader would scan a book. So it’s critical to know what Google is looking for. But the other thing I found is digital marketing is really like the Wild West.

 

Armando Jacox  32:25

Yes, I understand

 

Dylan McCabe  32:26

you don’t know the business and you don’t know what you’re getting. Man, it’s really easy to just buy snake oil, and it’s so frustrating to me. So, yeah, if you ever want to talk about that offline, we can but uh,

 

Armando Jacox  32:38

but but it’s it’s unfortunate, my feeling right now, Dylan is that in order to run not only a successful roofing business, but almost any business post COVID, you have to be a good digital marketer. I don’t think there’s any way around it at this point. So like, I think it’s important because for your listeners to understand that because you know, you’re a business owner, you got all this stuff going on, you know, that’s how I am, I’ve got, you know, employees and jobs and subs and all this cash flow and all this crazy stuff to deal with. Now, I’m going to be a digital marketer on top of that, like, No, I want to just like write a check, and you do it, you know, and it’s not, it’s, that’s a bad idea. You know, so like, and I’ve already experienced that, because that’s kind of my approach is just, I hate just I’ll write a check, you do the SEO. But it got to the point where people are asking me for 1500 a month to produce a result for six months with no results. And I’m like, okay, that just doesn’t make sense. So, so then that’s when I kind of started had to really get educated and start really, you know, you know, watching YouTube videos about SEO, watching YouTube videos about digital marketing, reading as much as I could about it, asking a lot of questions to the freelancers to the agencies. And now I asked employees, and now with you may bring it in house, man, I’ll walk right in, I’ll sit right next to our web designer, working while she’s working on some ads, and she’ll explain to me exactly what’s going on. And I can, and I can, you know, in a way that I understand. And now it’s like, now I can actually offer some say, hey, what if we did this? What if we did that? I mean, I am a subject matter expert, as far as like, you know, roofing goes, but I’m not I don’t know anything about digital marketing. But if I can tell her about like, hey, these keywords could be good, this keyword could be good, or let’s try this. Let’s try that. And she’s like, that’s a good idea. Let’s, you know, let’s do that. And then we’ll just start, you know, working our way and delivering these ads. And and I think that that is been very helpful to us. And it’s been effective. It’s actually working. Thank God.

 

Dylan McCabe  34:32

Well, you have control because I can tell you, I don’t care what digital marketing agency you’re working with. Let me just dispel the myth right now. You are not their number one priority. You know what their number one priority is? Getting more customers. Okay. So you’ve got some account manager, and they may have been in training for six weeks or six months, or they may have been there a year, who knows? And you get about an hour to two hours a month of their time, and they’re going to go into your Google AdWords Count, they’re going to look at your quality score of your ads are going to look at your click through rate, your cost per click, they want to make sure a few of these key metrics are going the way they should go. And that’s it, man the campaigns on autopilot. So in your situation, you can actually go in and say, okay, and she’s gonna say, Okay, well, let me look in the keyword planner and see what the search volume is for that phrase. Armando, you said Leak Repair, that’s actually mentioned 2000 times a month, or whatever it is, you should be able to come back and say, You know what, that’s actually only searching Google about 20 times a month. But if you’re not, if you don’t have that in house, and you don’t have that urgency, as an owner to make sure it’s working really well, you’re not going to be asking those kinds of questions. And so I

 

Armando Jacox  35:40

think, I think there are freelancers who will answer and even agencies who will take the time, if they’re like customer centric, you know, I think as an owner, you can ask questions, and you can get more involved with it. I think they are out there. I have faith. Sure. I just didn’t find them. And I don’t have time to mess around, you know, so that they’re out there.

 

Dylan McCabe  35:58

It’s just, it’s hard once they get big, like we had hundreds of customers. And so that was on me as a local owner. But I owned a franchise, I bought the Dallas market. Oh, wow. It was on me to communicate that stuff to the customer. But I put the pressure on the guys back at the mother, you know, that were the mothership was that our managing account saying, Hey, man, like, how’s this account going? It’s we’ve been in here for two weeks, they’re not getting enough. What’s going on? And I put a lot of pressure on those guys. Yeah. And I go back and communicate because I’m like, I don’t want to lose this customer. This is my customer.

 

Armando Jacox  36:30

Yeah, well, I think another piece to that too man’s, like the whole conversion, conversion. Because it’s one thing to get the leads, but then the other piece is conversion, you know, and that’s something I really kind of learned, I really, you know, more in depth as we brought it in house was how important that is, you know, like, once we generate a lead, awesome, but now we’ve got to like focus on keeping that way. So then we have to bring in the automated email through our CRM. So like we capture the lead now let’s send them an email, hey, we’re gonna go visit See you soon. You know, thank you so much for calling. You know, and then we have to also, you know, we develop these videos for for our sales reps, who once we, they can email that client and say, Hey, we’re, you know, this is, you know, I’m Egan and this is my, if you want to get to know me watch this one minute video. And it kind of gives them a nice video about Egon story, you know, and so that’s a cool version. Yeah, yeah, man, it’s really cool. And it helps conversion quite a bit. And then like, we have our, you know, I just think, you know, the people gotta think about, like, you know, even when you get that phone call, you got the lead awesome. But like, is it being answered by a live person? Or is it being answered by your voicemail? Because they’re being answered by your voicemail that leads in the garbage say, by, you know, so, you know, it’s, I think it’s important when when guys are kind of like thinking about digital marketing is like, definitely generating the lead piece, but then the conversion piece is a whole nother animal, you know?

 

Dylan McCabe  37:52

It’s it, definitely, it sure is, man. Well, we could, we could keep talking about that as well to how to improve conversion rates and all that. But it sounds like what you’ve learned is to bring it in house to have people that are passionate about it to do it. You You’re also educating yourself as a business owner. Well, look, we all know a lot of guys that are running these roofing general contracting construction companies that go into this saying I want to be be educated about marketing. So what are some resources? Or what’s a way that you’ve been able to get equipped as an owner to bring your marketing in house?

 

Armando Jacox  38:26

Yeah, I think it’s important to learn as an owner to learn when you have to learn something, figure out the fastest way to learn it, you know, and so for me, I just YouTube man, I mean, I mean, I kind of had a huge epiphany because I hired a videographer earlier this year, and he was like, he went to film school, and I was like, you know, talking to him one day, we traveled and stuff and he was retiring film school. He’s like, man, to be honest, Armando, I feel like I could, I’d wasted a lot of money at film school, and I could have learned it all on YouTube, literally, just on YouTube. I was like, really? He’s like, yeah, like, do you are you serious about that? He’s like, I’m dead serious, man. Like, whenever I need to learn something, I just go to YouTube. And I was like, wow. And so I started doing that more often this year. And, and like, I mean, I’m talking I’d probably watch too much YouTube. You know, I’ve in the morning, I get up to when I go to sleep, I’m pretty much watching YouTube, learning stuff, you know, just random stuff. I don’t watch garbage though. Like I’m learning about digital marketing and learning about conversion rates and learning about SEO and learning about sales strategies and learning about business ownership. I’m learning I’m watching interviews from like, you know, leaders in industries and what they’re doing, you know, listening to podcasts, you know, that kind of thing. I pretty much always like consuming that educational content as much as I can when I’m when I’m, you know, not grinding at the, you know, at the office with my team and stuff. So, I honestly think that’s the best way to go. But I don’t know there’s other ways to like, I’m definitely working with consultants. Yeah. So like, we talked About like peer groups, man, like, that’s super important because, like, with the whole thing with learning from Randy brothers show, you know, or his that one that one show I listen to he was just like, hey, first thing you got to do is hire business development guy. I never forgot that that was like two years ago, you know. So we finally hired him, you know, like four months ago, and now he’s a business development guy on salary. And I was just with him today at his insurance agents office. And, you know, he can pick up the slack where I was not able to get to the insurance agents as much as I wanted to. And he was able to do that for me, you know. So that’s been, you know, I think, I think one of the fastest way to learn something is definitely get into a peer group and just start asking a lot of questions like, if you have to be the annoying one, cool, be the annoying one. Just who cares? Like get the answers that you need, and get them as quickly as possible? So you can keep your your ship sailing forward. You know what I mean?

 

Dylan McCabe  40:51

Yeah, that’s so good. Be a learner, leave your ego at the door. I mean, we are all here to learn. We all have a lot to learn no matter what. And that’s something we even talked about, actually, in the first meeting of every one of our CEO groups, when we kind of kind of cast the vision for the group. And those people in that group, some of them are doing 5 million a year in revenue, and some of them are doing over 40 million a year in revenue. Wow, that I still but while I still say though, you know, it really doesn’t matter what your top line revenue is, or if you’ve been in this business, 30 years, there are gaps in your character, your leadership, your strategy, your culture, there are gaps, there are weak points. Okay. And so we’re all going to learn from one another. And when I was taking jujitsu, I took Jiu Jitsu for a while at one of the best schools in Dallas run by Carlos Machado is in ninth degree black belt was a cousin of hoist Gracie. A lot of people know the Gracie name. A lot of people don’t realize the Machado. Machado is in the gracies are the ones that made Brazilian jujitsu really popular in the US. So anyway, every day when you walked in the door every evening, rather few nights a week. There’s a big banner hanging over the entryway that said leave your ego at the door. And the reason they said that is because it wouldn’t matter if you were a brown belt or a purple belt or something. You can have some new guy that was just like a little extra skilled, for some reason, go in there. And they’ve only been doing it for six months. And they’re submitting you and choking you out on the map. And you look at I mean, you look, you’ve been doing this for years, what’s the deal, this new dude just like totally choked you out in front of everybody. And that’s the whole deal. It’s like we all have stuff to learn from one another. And, you know, I know that’s something that Ryan Groff was sales transformation group talks about a lot, too. He works with people who are learners and growth minded. And I just loved that as long as we’re all learners, and we’re growth minded. We’re going to we’re going to do well, we have a lot to learn from one another.

 

Armando Jacox  42:42

Yeah, no, I am in his group as well with Ryan Ross group. So like, you know, yeah, I’m always seeking knowledge man, and definitely putting my ego checking my ego at the door. It’s tough sometimes, though, because, you know, even now, like, I’ve hired a, you know, a 23 year old web designer, and she’s like, teaching me stuff. You know, it’s definitely humbling, you know, because I’m 42, you know, and I’m learning from this 23 year old, you know, and it’s just, I’m trying to get used to that, because I don’t think I got it. Like, that’s, that’s the stage of life I’m in I’m going to be learning from younger people at this point. So I do have a lot to offer, I do have a lot to offer someone coming up for sure, especially a salesperson, but, but when it comes to subject matter that I’m not necessarily, you know, expert in, then I want I need to be able to be humble enough to just listen to somebody you know, and learn and absorb it all. So

 

Dylan McCabe  43:38

let me ask you this, you’ve been in this business for a minute. And you you’ve got your own company. And so what’s the key takeaway from this stuff, all the stuff you’ve talked about, as far as differentiating yourself and bringing your marketing in house, what’s one key takeaway that you would want our listeners to distill from all that and if they forget everything you said, You wanted to get this one thing?

 

Armando Jacox  43:58

You know, yeah, I’m glad you asked that, you know, right now, what’s been on my mind lately is just it’s been very challenging with COVID it’s been very challenging with not having a hailstorm in the Denver area. You know, I have this like, team here. And, you know, it’s, it gets challenging with just like cash flow management, man, like, I gotta pay these people regularly, you know, and I’ve had to, like, cut some hours here and there. And I’ve had to, you know, we kind of hired this web designer and like, she’s still learning and stuff and that’s been challenging and the video guy, everyone’s some people here are fairly new, some are not so new. And you know, sometimes I just feel like I’m kind of burned out, you know, I just feel like, man, I don’t even want to go to work today. You know, and so, you know, that even happened this week. I was just like, how are you feeling going going to work is just so hard, you know, and, but I think what and what I did, I just kind of gave myself a break that morning. I didn’t like you know, I usually am up by you know, six 630 or so and I you know, I’m kind of like ready to go, you know, to work by you know, 8am after I have coffee breakfast, talk to my family and stuff. I just gave myself a break that morning, dude, you know, just give yourself a dang break. It’s so hard right now. And I think I gave myself a break that morning had a little longer time i was i was i was about ready to cancel everything, and I’d go to work. And I was like, No, cuz like my, I was supposed to work with our business development guy that day. And I was like, I know, he’s gonna want he’s, he’s waiting for me, and he wants to work with me. And I just, you know, I gave myself a little bit extra morning, a little more time, kind of relax, a couple cups of coffee, just watch some YouTube fun stuff, stupid stuff, you know. And then I went, I was like, Okay, once I’m done, I’m going to, once I jump in the shower, I’m back on, you know, and just giving myself even like, an extra hour that morning, and when I was feeling kind of burned out, and then like, jump in the shower, and like getting cleaned up, getting ready. And then once I was in my car, I was like, boom, back on, and like just grinding hard, you know, feeling really good. And, you know, I think it’s important for when you’re right now, especially when things are so hard with COVID and whatnot to just like, give yourself a little break, you know, take that away, and then start to kind of, you know, focus in on what’s super important, which is our family and our loved ones, man, you know, and, and then like, you know, and then and then take a step forward, and keep working really hard, keep grinding it, you know,

 

Dylan McCabe  46:11

that’s good. I mean, you’ve got to pace yourself, you’ve got to pace yourself, we’ve all got to pace ourselves. That’s hard, though. When you’re running a company, it’s hard to pace yourself, it’s hard to take some downtime, you know, next thing, you know, you’re just running off adrenaline. But

 

Armando Jacox  46:25

then that’s gonna happen. That’s, I love that

 

Dylan McCabe  46:27

you said that. And the thing that the thing I like about you is strength that I see in you is you are authentic, and you’re open. And a lot of leaders are not, you know, they’re hard to get to know. But that’s such an asset for you and your own leadership, your own personal journey. But it’s also such an asset for the people who work with you. Because they don’t have to wonder where you’re coming from, or wonder what it’s going to be like to continue to work with you. And that’s just such an asset that I see, I know, you mentioned, like stubbornness or whatever. But you’re you seem to be very self aware of where your strengths and your weaknesses are. And so yeah, I think that’s a key to like, you knew, man, I’m just, I’m not in the mood, I’m not feeling it, I kind of want to just hit Delete on my whole day. Let me just stop and slow down. And that that takes some self awareness as well. So I think a big key takeaway from that is, you know, I’m a Christian. And one of the things that the Bible says is, examine yourself, and also examine what you believe. Yeah. So that you there needs to you don’t want to over Examine yourself, because then you’re just gonna, you know, over analysis leads to paralysis, but you need to think through, how am I feeling? What am I doing? And what am I saying today? And also, what am I believing? What are what am i allowing the thoughts that are coming into my head? So I love that that’s a great point.

 

Armando Jacox  47:44

Yeah, absolutely, man, thank you. And I tell her guys all the time, you guys like, I’m still learning as a leader, like, give me a break, man, like, I don’t have it all figured out, you know? And, and it’s just, they all just kind of like chuckle and stuff. But I think that’s part of my, my own style is just like, hey, like, I just I don’t have this figured out. Like I’m working at heart as a leader. And I’m doing everything I can. And hopefully, you know, one day I’ll actually live up to my own standards, you know, that’s good.

 

Dylan McCabe  48:12

That’s good stuff, man. Well, man, we could go into so much. But before we bring this to a close, just for the sake of your time, I want to ask you to let people know how they can learn more and getting plugged into your platform, because you’ve got a podcast, YouTube channel and all that.

 

Armando Jacox  48:29

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think, yeah, check out check me out on YouTube, Armando. jaycox. Just, it’s just my name, you know, and then I have my company has a YouTube to foothills roofing exteriors. And we have some really good content on there, actually, you’re welcome to copy it, steal it, whatever. But, you know, I think the, the foothills channel is what we use just for customers looking for Roofing Services. And then there are mando channels where I get a little more creative, a little more fun, little more edgy. And we’re just kind of like doing like a web series type thing where people can just kind of mixes entertainment and education. You know, we try to have some fun doing all of that. And so, so yeah, check me out on on that. And friend requests me send me a friend requests for sure on Facebook, and you can join the podcast. The podcast is called roofing it. You can join a podcast group as well. I’ve got that going on. So yeah, I’m on the internet quite a bit. So yeah, definitely can find me. And I think the best thing is just find me on Facebook and send me a friend request.

 

Dylan McCabe  49:25

Awesome. Well, thanks for being accessible. And thank you for opening up about how you guys do some things and differentiate yourselves and opening up about your leadership as well. We really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you, Don, I appreciate you having me. All right, great interview with Armando jaycox. I love how they have love in their core values. I mean, who doesn’t want to be a part of a company where they truly care about you? I love how they do their warranty and I mean it’s working like he said it is totally working. And it’s really neat how they took their marketing in house. So guys, I hope you got a lot out of that. If you did, please share with your friends. Other owners and staff people at other roofing general contracting companies help us to get the word out. And if it’s been beneficial to you please take 90 seconds to rate and review the podcast. Just go to rate this podcast.com slash roofing mastery. It’s a huge way to say thank you to us and help us get the word out. Just go to rate this podcast.com slash roofing mastery. Alright guys, this is Dylan McCabe with the roofing mastery podcast and I will catch you in the next episode.