SPEAKERS

Dylan McCabe, Brad Barron

Dylan McCabe  00:00

limitless roofing podcast episode number 27 Welcome to limitless roofing CEO show My name is Dylan McCabe. And in every episode, we give you a seat at the table. As we interview owners and CEOs of roofing companies and industry experts so that you can gain the strategies you need to take your own company to the next level. And in this episode, I talk with the chief operating officer of Cornerstone construction. Now, at the time of the recording of this podcast, they are up to seven locations, they are crushing it, you’re gonna hear about their onboarding strategy, their training strategy, what they call the race to 15 sales, representatives at each location and how they want to have a company is doing at least 10 million a year, every residential, mostly Residential Roofing location, we’re going to get in deep. Now if you want to catch the live stream of this when we do it live and get some feedback and questions and answer time, you need to join our Facebook group, just search for the limitless roofing SEO group in Facebook, and you can join this live Alright, and if you haven’t done so, before we get into the podcast, definitely consider our roofing CEO groups, we have limited seating every year, but we bring owners and CEOs of roofing companies together in peer groups, kind of like a mastermind but smaller and very structured, we actually go through the entire EOS system, you don’t know what that is just do a Google search for EOS worldwide, you will be really impressed with the business strategy system they offer. And I’m actually an authorized EOS implementer. We work it out in our roofing CEO groups it is unlike anything else you can get an interaction that’s top notch, and a business structure and strategy to get you to where you can get what you want out of your business with the right processes and planning. It’s incredible stuff. So just check it out in our Facebook group where you can go to our website, limitless CEO group.com. And you can schedule a discovery call today. Alright guys, let’s get into this discussion with Brad Baron, CEO of Cornerstone construction. All right, we’re live with our special guest today, Brad Barron. He’s the CEO of Cornerstone construction. He’s got some really cool stuff to share today. So Brad, thanks for joining the show, man.

Brad Barron  02:13

Thanks, man. Glad to be here. CEO, snow and I CEO was CEO. But yeah, no worries. Super excited to be here. Yeah, excited to share some stuff today in chat via

Dylan McCabe  02:29

Yeah, the way this started was, I think you had left some comments on something in a post I made inside of our limitless roofing CEO group. And I thought, wow, this guy’s got his he has feedback for operations, feedback for processes. And I think a third question out there like what’s, what’s the biggest challenge or something I don’t know. But you come in, and I thought, Hey, would you like to be on our show, you have really good feedback. And then as we talked, you let me you know, you shared your story. And now you’re the CEO of Cornerstone construction, which for those of you listening, that’s the company that hunter Balu owns. He also founded Rukh Khan. Cornerstone construction is up to seven locations at the time of the recording of this process, podcasts, very successful business, really a good template for how to be successful in the roofing industry and how to scale to multiple locations. So I was really excited to have Brad on and we’re gonna get into the best advice for scaling and growing well, we’re gonna get into what you call the race to 15 salesman, we’re gonna unpack how scaling depends on solid processes and stuff like that. So before we dig in all that, Brad, if you could just kind of share your background, how did you get into this business?

Brad Barron  03:38

Yeah, and so came back from a deployment in late 2017 deployed to to the Horn of Africa and came back and got a job in early 18 with Home Depot exterior so that was an outside sales position in Division depot at the time doing roofing, siding, gutters, Windows and like attic insulation and stuff. And so was sitting in customers homes. 100%, retail didn’t work with any insurance, which is obviously a huge part of the roofing industry at large. And so yet didn’t I mean, I didn’t know how to read an insurance scope or do anything. It was kind of an interesting thing. You know, I come I come tell you hey, you know, Mr. McCabe, I’ve got this $14,000 roof you can buy an insurance it’s gonna save you 10 Isn’t that great? It’s still gonna cost you four or five though. And as you can imagine, that was really hard to sell against and still did okay, but but Home Depot ended up I think, as a whole It was hard to sell against the the restoration industry and they shut the whole division down in February of 19. And I left just a couple minutes before that, in December, went to work for a local restoration company that had come and done my roof actually. So they came and knocked on the door. And I say, Well, hey, you know, I’m selling roofing. I know what I’m looking for. I’m knowing what I want to see installed and things like that. And so I’m going to make sure they do it right. I don’t really care who does it since I could watch them. And so that Kind of introduced me to the restoration industry ended up going to work for them and man was just a was everything this company was everything stereotypical about the roofing industry so dude in a back office, it’s it’s smoke filled and he’s got his like leather jacket on and his hair slicked back and a Pinkie ring. And I mean 100% Chuck in a truck, but I didn’t know it at that point. And but it gave me a lot of room to start watching videos from folks like Becca and Adam Benson and things like that and start learning stuff on YouTube and say, Well, why are we doing this supplement process? Or why are we taking money for trades that we’re not doing? Because we’re just saying you just give us all the insurance money. That’s how this works. And, and so that really started kind of my learning and really digging in. And I think it’s really paid off. Because even as like a salesman starting out, I started really digging into what’s the higher level knowledge that goes into doing this? And how do we how do we do this the right way? And how do we, you know, get the most value out of it? How do we make it as profitable as possible? And so yeah, and then actually left the industry went to language school with the army in 2019, to learn to speak Arabic, took a position with Joint Special Operations Command on Fort Bragg in early 2020. That fell through with COVID and partially COVID. And partially just some personalities and things like that, and that deposition didn’t work out. And so then I was kind of scrambling, honestly, like, like COVID hit you No, no, I know what’s going to happen. I came across a post from from Cornerstone like, one of my cousin’s his real good friends with a girl hair and share a post and hunter and I started talking and it kind of just went from there, man, just, we spent two or three months kind of talking to each other, went and launched the Little Rock market for Cornerstone got it up to scale pretty quickly and really got it homerun. And then just as we, you know, as Hunter, I guess, in at the time started looking at, you know, how do we structure the company for future growth? And what makes sense. You know, I got, you know, honored enough to get asked to step up and kind of take a different role, obviously, and, and that kind of brings us to where we’re at right now, I guess. Yeah.

Dylan McCabe  07:16

So there’s so much I want to highlight about that. But let’s, let’s just jump on some main points here. You got into the industry working through Home Depot, then you go and work for this company that you know, it’s a stereotypical almost to the extreme scenario of

Brad Barron  07:31

like this dude had done as we got into it had done 16 months for a kickback scheme in New Orleans on some contracts. And that’s what that’s what sent him to Little Rock. I think ultimate like me, so yeah, just I know, there’s a stereotype But anyways,

Dylan McCabe  07:45

wonderful, right? Why are you expanding in different markets? Well, because I’m a criminal. The law?

Brad Barron  07:50

Yeah.

Dylan McCabe  07:51

So so but you start learning about the storm restoration industry, you’ve got an inquisitive mind, and you’re, you’re entrepreneurial, enough to think about how to grow a business. And so you’re thinking, how do we do this? Well, how do we incorporate that? Why aren’t we doing this, you’re starting to think that way. And then through some connections, you meet you meet you come across Hunter’s path. Now the cool thing about Hunter is he’s, he’s got so much, he’s got a lot of irons in the fire, but he’s also accessible. And he, he’s a very relational guy. So high relationally as a leader, makes him such a strong leader. But for people listening to this, they’re thinking, Okay, Brad got a job at a very successful roofing company. And then Brad got the opportunity to go basically be over a branch over one of those seven locations. So what did that conversation look like? I mean, obviously, you’ve got experience in the military, you’ve got experience in Home Depot, and thank you for your service, by the way. So what did that look like? How did you kind of sell yourself to the owner of a roofing company? Because there’s a lot of sales guys listening, this going? Well, I’d love to run a branch. But how do I get that opportunity?

Brad Barron  08:57

Yep. So I think you hit a couple of things right on the head, you know, when you look at 100 being relational, and like his passion for developing people and giving people opportunities, his passion for moving with speed, you know, he talks like the idea, you know, fail fast, whatever, whatever it is, you’re going to do, do it quickly. And if it doesn’t work out, then iterate and do it again. Right? And so that’s his mentality for sure. And that’s, you know, kind of keys in we taught relational and building people and mentoring goes right into roof guy and revolts and all that kind of stuff. It’s just a passion is but yeah, like, it started with a Facebook message. I mean, I was out doing some handyman work with a guy that’s kind of what I was doing to pay the bills after getting let go from that other job and sent hunter a message one day on May 9, send him a message. 15 minutes later, he responds and says, Hey, brother was a good number to call you on. And so that was our first phone call that day about five minutes in he said, Well, why don’t you just start your own company? Like why are you Why don’t you just do this? And I was like, well, I could have thought about it, I’ve got a logo drawn up, I’ve got some ideas, but I said, Man, I just the licensing and the backend admin and the insurance and like, like, I want to lead and I would love to do something, but I, I don’t know that for me, I care about having my name on it, you know, like, I just if I could have my own office, and I could build a team, and I can lead guide and direct like, that’s enough for me, you know, I don’t need the headache of everything else. And. And so we talked a little bit, I came down to Greenville road with a couple guys, we talked some more. And then I actually went to Colorado to work with another buddy that was starting a company in Denver. I’ve worked with him between language school and North Carolina. And so for just like a couple months and met this guy worked out there. He was starting his own company. So I went to work with him in June of 2020. And I honestly, like hunter says, Why, you know, because I’ve kind of, I was like, man, if you’ve never messaged me back, I don’t know this would have happened. But he said, Well, hey, you took the risk first. So yeah, okay, I messaged hunter first, but honestly, I got inside my head, and was like, Man, this this guy. He started this $10 million roofing company. He’s got this national conference he does. He’s like 29 years old, I’ve just lost my job, I’m trying to pay the bills. I don’t, I don’t need to bother this guy, you know, but and and all of a sudden, while I’m in Colorado, he reaches back out to me and says, hey, how’s life. And it kind of went from there, like we spent the next couple days talking about Little Rock more. Because I said, you know, that’s where I was before we toured, that’s where I know the market that’s already a cruise, I can call. I know, the distributors and you know, had all these relationships. And I know some guys that can hire right off. And that’s just what made sense. I mean, we just spent, he invited me to the sales retreat that he did with the cornerstone team in mid July, which is early July like ninth through the 12th. And a week later, we were in Little Rock march in the market. And so I think the conversation was just, you know, two salesmen that are out there. yourself, if you can, you know, you understand adjuster meetings, and you can walk on the roof and pick out items that need to be supplemented, and you know how to correctly read a scope and break it down and take the right money and not the wrong money. If you have trained other guys that have come after you and you’ve helped build them up to help them understand, and you’ve got a city, you know, you want to go launch a market and your owners, I think it’s just impressing upon them that you know what you’re talking about, I don’t think you have to be a million dollar salesman. And that, honestly, is one of my biggest pet peeves in this industry is companies that the default mode is that, oh, let’s take our million dollar producer and turn him into a manager. Just because that guy can sell has no bearing on his ability to lead. Now there are plenty of good salesmen, they may be able to lead, but they are one does not equal the other, right? Like that dude may be a killer on the doors. But if he’s not willing to take the time to mentor and train other people, then he has no business being a manager. And you’re just cutting yourself off because now you’ve taken him away from selling right. So there goes all your revenue. So yeah, just just that’s I get on a bit of a soapbox about that, because I think you just see a lot of companies where that’s just the default guy, and maybe he’s excited about it. Maybe he thinks he’s ready for it. But if you’re not doing some actual analysis, and you’re just like, Oh, yeah, he sold a million dollars this year and a half. That doesn’t mean he’s your natural leader, you know, so?

Dylan McCabe  13:28

No, that’s good. That’s really good stuff. And you cut out for a minute there. But yeah, I think I think that’s something that happens a lot. You take these guys that are pure hunters, and you turn them into managers. Yep. It takes somebody out of a situation where they’re really using their unique ability, and it’s just not good. So so for, for getting into what you do now. And obviously Hunter is the owner of the company, having a lot of employees, he could size up your your past experience your proven leadership, along with your personality and your wiring. Now he assessed that it was it was worth taking a risk on you to go start a market. So you started a market. And I know you guys are very strategic. I know you and I talked about how you guys had a week long leadership meeting there where you had your whole leadership team, you guys are going through everything from compensation plans, to sales strategies, to numbers to goals, all that stuff. You guys are very strategic. You’re a great model of how to build a successful company. And so let’s get into kind of the three major things I want to get in into with you on this show. And I’ve got my notes here over on the right. And one of the things we talked about was how the best advice I said, What’s your best advice for anybody that wants to scale and grow? And you answer with a few things. You talked about that leadership planning, weak organization, structure, bonus structure, and so forth. But let’s get into that. What’s the best advice you have Other companies listening now you’re the CEO of Cornerstone? What if you had five minutes with them? What would you say?

Brad Barron  15:08

Yeah, I think. So, if I, if I’m curious if I said, here’s the best piece a few weeks ago, if I would say the same thing now or not, if I remember exactly what the same thing was. But I think that I think there’s a handful of things that are key, but I think the number one is like, understanding the back end data and processes, which is still maybe not an exact single thing, do you lose? Did your pods die? Or am I out?

Dylan McCabe  15:41

I’m good.

Brad Barron  15:41

Okay. So yeah, I think understanding what your numbers are and what your metrics are to get you to success, like, how do you how do you recommend, like really broad, but like some of the things we talked about, you know, we, we know what our average roof is worth, we know what we expect a salesman to sell in a month, you know, we know what the minimum quantity is. So in turn, we know how many salesmen we’ve got to have in a market in order to hit the revenue goals for that market. And so doing that back end diligence, and it’s not even super tight numbers, it’s fairly rough, like, but it’s but it’s again, we know, you know, we can pull from our CRM, here’s the average contract price, you know, year over year, and then divide that out across how many per month per salesman and then Okay, how many salesmen Do we need in a market? And then you definitely have got to have the repeatable processes. And that’s, if you if you don’t have a training process, that translates into a new market with guys or girls that don’t know anything about you yet, then you you can’t jump off that cliff and go into a new market. I mean, how are you? How are you going to, you know, essentially, franchise what you’ve done in your primary market into a new one? If if you don’t have that stuff, codified and written down somewhere? So I think those are our two of the biggest things.

Dylan McCabe  17:12

Yeah. So let’s, let’s camp out on that. And for those of you watching live, my air pod pros decided to disconnect. And so I couldn’t hear Brad. So now I’ve got my big chunky headphones on. But what we’ve had a lot of questions inside the limitless, CEO Facebook group, and a lot of the questions have been around the same topic, which is, how do you find good people? How do you hire good people? Or I’ll post when I invite new members to the group, I’ll say, What’s your biggest challenge in business today? And they’ll say, finding and keeping the right people. So kind of talk about as as far as your structure, I know, you guys are very intentional about going through all the things that you need to go through for annual planning. But how do you do hiring? What has worked for you guys? And what has not worked for you guys?

Brad Barron  17:59

Yeah. So what we’re doing is, we have an ad, we use zip recruiter, as the platform is, and I think that just compared to maybe monster, or indeed or, you know, Facebook, or whatever, we just, we feel like the value of folks that are on there, maybe it’s I don’t know if it’s a socio economic group or whatever, you know, if different websites market themselves or kind of get picked up by different crowds and the kind of what’s the, what’s the average you see of folks using that site in that platform to find jobs, we feel like zip recruiter works well for us. But then it’s a very intentional funnel. So when they apply on zip recruiter, there’s in another site that we direct them to as a part of our recruiting funnel, there’s some videos there a personality test, a phone screen, and then and then a face to face after that, if everything else is still falling into place. And that’s some insight into that with some of our masterminds and stuff with without saying that you’re like too much about it, but But yeah, it’s it’s the key is it not necessarily what the specifics of it are, but that it’s a funnel, I think that’s the key thing is that we’re, it’s not every single person that applies on whatever site you’re using. But if they haven’t taken those extra two or three steps that tell them about the job, by the time they’ve watched those videos, a number of those objections have already been dealt with, right, it’s a 1099 we don’t have a lot of benefits to offer you. You got to use your own vehicle, you know, and we have, we have options pass out like we have a truck program and things like that, but initially right you’re driving your own vehicle. But we talked through all that we talked to you gotta knock doors you got to do you know, and so if they still proceed to sign up with the phone screen and want to talk to somebody at that point, they already know a good bit about the job and so that filters out a lot of time and we’re not having to waste on people. They just saw an ad They said, Hey, you can make 90 to $100,000 a year, so on roofs, because every Yahoo that, you know, that thinks they can do it is going to apply to that, right? Because that’s a lot of money, and you can make that kind of money. But there’s some catches, right? It’s 1099, you got to have your vehicle, you got to knock doors, you’ve got to be outside. You can’t be afraid of heights, you know, whatever the case may be. And so yeah, I think that’s the, that’s the key is having that funnel there is huge for hiring with us. And then obviously, once you get them in, again, if you don’t have the training and the systems and the processes to back that up and to make them want to stay. And if your corporate culture doesn’t want to make them want to stay, well, then then it’s it’s not so much an attraction, but retention problem, right? I mean, that’s you start, you know, was it not the right person? Or did you not have the right stuff in place to retain a guy that could have been a killer? You know, is it is it them? Or is it you? You know? And if, if you’re constantly having a problem, I mean, it’s just like a dating relationship, right? If you’re, if you’re always the one that’s, that’s having relationship problems, and everybody else around you is getting hitched. Maybe it’s you instead of them. And so if you just can’t retain people, rather than thinking that the 50 people that came through your office in the past year, were not a good fit. And maybe you got some stuff to work on. Right?

Dylan McCabe  21:22

It’s like that song, I’m looking at the man in the mirror, yeah, you’ve got more problems with everybody else than you do yourself.

Brad Barron  21:30

It’s not insurmountable. You know, again, it may not be anything that’s wrong with your personality, you may care about people, and you may be a great person of integrity and whatever but, but if you just don’t know how to design training, or you don’t know how to communicate it to other people, or create a repeatable process, or, or it’s not that you don’t have the money to pay your people, you’re not stealing from them, but you don’t know how to manage cash flow to where you can get commissions to them or whatever the problem is that you’re having issues with, whether it’s joining a mastermind, whether it’s you know, buying into some training program or whatever, you know, getting on some coaching calls or something, that, again, it may be you like that’s maybe there’s something you need to step up to, to help line out that side of your business. If you just can’t seem to find any success getting people on, you know,

Dylan McCabe  22:19

definitely then we all we all need to develop as leaders, you never arrive. Yeah. We’re all a mixture of our character, our vision, our skills, and the health of our relationships. And so

Brad Barron  22:29

something like important to say to like, okay, we have roof con, we have revolt, and we’re at a point where we’re teaching other roofing companies how to do it, but 100 will buy into a training program faster than almost anyone. I mean, we’ve got Ryan Groff, we’ve got Becca Switzer, we’ve got Dale Childers, we’ve got Sam Taggart. So we’re doing a lot of stuff on our own. Now, now that we’ve reached this point. So we we didn’t just get here by just knowing how to do this, right. Like that’s he spent a lot of time investing into those programs and a lot of money investing into those to get this company to where it’s at, and to equip the sales team with everything they need to be successful. And that’s, that’s something we tell guys interview, too, we give you all the tools, training, and support to make $100,000 a year, but we can’t give you the work ethic, like you got to those will give you everything you can we can not give you work ethic. And we want to be able to say that if you quit on us, and when you walk out the door, we want to be able to sleep at night confident and we gave you absolutely every opportunity to be successful. And you you let yourself fail that you you chose not to do it. And because it keeps us out. I mean, I you know, we’ve already gone through a couple guys in the lroc market, we’ve retained most of them since you know we hadn’t been there all that long. But But hunter rotate it keeps him up nights when a guy quits. You know, I mean, it’s such an opportunity. And we feel like there’s there is great money to be made and a great culture. And so when a guy just quits on us, or can make it work, it’s it’s, you know, we get in our fields about it a little bit. It’s frustrating, like, what did we miss? You know, they didn’t make it successful for that guy. So, yeah,

Dylan McCabe  24:07

so let me ask you this question, because this is something a lot of people deal with. And I’ve heard this from pretty much every owner I’ve talked to at length about their sales guys. How do you retain sales guys? And how do you keep from hiring guys that think, well, I’ve been doing this for about two years, and I’m pretty easy to run the numbers. If I were off on my own, I would be making a lot more money. And then you lose one of your best sales guy. So how do you do that? How do you retain that talent? Or what’s your you know, I don’t want to we don’t need to camp out on this for the next 10 minutes. But I’m just really curious how you guys deal with that challenge.

Brad Barron  24:40

On the one hand, we obviously want to retain those guys and whether or not we’re looking at kind of the ancillary benefits the truck program the you know, clothing and iPads and retreats and you know, all the stuff that that hopefully makes it worth it beyond just the basic commish and then the The second thing we do is we instituted a team leader programs is something that that hunters developed and started last year. Once you’re kind of, you know what you’re doing, you’ve been on for three, four or five months, you can start getting guys under you, and making 2% off of them. So now if I’m a million dollar salesman, making a percentage and $100,000 a year, and then I’ve got five guys under me that are each million dollar guys, that’s another 100 k now making 200 Well, okay, maybe it looks a lot less, you know, attractive to go again, just like me take on that headache of starting a new company, like I’m making plenty of money. I’ve got some quote unquote, passive income, because once that guy is trained, I’m still I’m still learning from him. Right? And, and so yeah, so that’s, uh, I think a big thing for us to have that. But then on the other hand, like, I would say, even with all that we do that to retain. But I think we’re also okay, like, Look, man, like, we want to foster an entrepreneurial spirit, and we want you to set your own sales, and ultimately, whether it’s roofing or another business, if you come here, and you learn, and you grow. And for you, that’s starting your own thing. Like, we’re okay with that too. Like, you know, like, we want people that want to be here. And, you know, it’s something I had an army mentor, tell me this, you know, as a young lieutenant, like, give, give the other guys everything you can that that you’ve developed, you know, so as we’re developing products, and military for briefings or training or whatever, right, you’re technically competing with all the other lieutenants with you to get promoted to the next rank, or the next position or whatever, who cares, like, give them everything because it’s mine, and I’m still going to be better than you’re going to be, like, I’m going to do my thing better than you’re going to do it. And, and if I give it to you, it just causes me to iterate and have to get better again, right. So that product was old, that strategy or that that tool was old, now, I just got to come up with a better one, you know, and, and so it constantly pushes you to get better as

Dylan McCabe  27:02

well. That’s good. I mean, that kind of servant leadership, where you truly are focused on empowering and equipping others is going for most people, all that’s gonna do is create more loyalty. So I just love that because those guys are going to, they’re going to want to stay to be part of a great culture to be part of a great program, where there is upward mobility where there is incentive. There’s also a great culture, there’s trust there, there’s there’s a lot of good things happening there. And it’s hard to go recreate that mean, just because somebody does sales a cornerstone doesn’t mean they can go create a mere example a cornerstone, there’s a lot of things you guys are doing really well, that create that unique experience. So well. Let’s get into the to another thing we talked about, which was the race to 15 sales, you guys have clearly you haven’t only moved in one other market or to other markets. At the time of the recording of this episode. You’re in seven markets, and you’re doing it well. And one of the things you told me the big challenges is processes start to break when you scale. Yep. So first, I want to ask you, what are the processes that you guys really focus on so that they don’t break? And then next we’ll get into what’s that race to 15? Like?

Brad Barron  28:10

Yeah, so with processes breaking, I mean, again, it’s like, you know, if you’ve got, you’ve got the person in the office that does onboarding, right, and they, you know, filling out paperwork or taking photos for a business card or email signature, you know, whatever the case may be. And we saw that, like, even with our first couple markets, only an hour and a half, two hours out of Greenville, you know, they didn’t necessarily break, right. But once we launched Little Rock, and we’re 10 hours away, will now those people can drive back to Greenville to onboard and that’s that’s what we were still doing. Like they were they were coming from those markets an hour and a half away, take a day, go to Greenville, fill out your paperwork, get your photos, get some shirts, do all this and then drive back and and so yeah, figuring out what processes do you have in place right now that are gonna break when you’re more than a few hours away? And and how does that look? Is it you know, what do you digitize? What gets done maybe locally at the new market? and all that. So I think that’s all stuff that’s critical to think through before you launch into that market and find out Okay, we’re here and crap, we can’t we can’t do any business because we forgot this step or that step. You know, like in this we don’t have access to our CRM or access to email or shirts to go out in or business cards or whatever. And so I think that’s all stuff to look at. And then yeah, the the race to 15. So again, it goes back to looking at what’s our revenue goal for a market, which for us, is it kind of philosophically is is $10 million a market and revenue that’s that’s where we want to be. Obviously, that can vary, you know, we’ll see over time each market cities are larger or smaller and things like that, you know, your mix of commercial or residential Retail versus insurance, but that’s kind of our, our philosophical goal. And so if we take 10 million, we divide it out by the average value of the jobs that we’re doing. And then we divide that out by our minimum goal for each salesman each month, which is five roofs. And that puts us at 15 salesmen in a market is what what gets us to $10 million. And so basically, when we launch a new market, that’s kind of the mandate for that branch manager, that’s their first rock is to to start hiring those guys on and get to 15. as quickly as possible. Yep.

Dylan McCabe  30:34

You know, you throw out a word, they’re called rock. Yeah, that makes me that that means you’re you guys are running on Eos. Yeah. So let’s get so process begin to break. If you don’t get once before we move on to the race of 15. What’s the best advice you can give for somebody listening to it says, We’ve got two locations, we want to scale to a third that is going to be a 10 hour drive or whatever, what’s the best piece of advice you could give them have a free, not a free but a tool or a resource they should look into?

Brad Barron  31:01

I think, I think it’s not even sounded like it. I think it’s creating a checklist, I think it’s going down like like, just like creating a, you know, you know, again, to borrow my my world military for 15 years, it’s a D minus 90, d minus 60, d minus 30. Like, you know, 90 days out, we need to start getting if it’s a different state, right, we need to license in that state, we need to incorporate, you need the residential builders license or commercial, whatever, it’s going to be the general contractor, we need to make sure we update our workman’s comp and general liability to cover multiple states, we need to order business cards we need to get with a commercial real estate broker, whatever, you know, whatever it is that 90 6030. And then, you know, what do we need to take with us a packing list of yard signs and shirts and hats and you know, whatever whatever the case may be. And then obviously, you got to look at your budget like we we look at probably 30 to 40,000, to launch a market. By the time you buy shirts and hats and the initial business cards, lease and office, buy some furniture, that’s kind of kind of where we found that we’re at. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s the biggest thing is that it’s a lot of things. And so you need a list, like come up with a list so that again, you don’t get there and you’re twiddling your thumbs because, you know, crap, we forgot to do whatever, and we can’t actually go sell anything. You know,

Dylan McCabe  32:21

that’s good stuff. I love the analogy of the military, too, because the military runs off of standard protocols for everything. And all that is is a decision that’s made in advance, you know exactly how you want something done. So I really like that. So you mentioned also with the race to 15. I love that you guys, you’re beginning with the end in mind, you know that to reach 2 million, you really need 15 sales guys, on average, doing five jobs a month, one of our members in our Facebook group asked a question and said, What is your commission structure look like? Is it 10% off the top and then split the profit? Or, you know, how much can you share about that?

Brad Barron  32:56

Yeah, so I mean, I think it’s something that I don’t think there’s any issues here and i think i think Hunter is probably talked about it at Rukh Khan and stuff. So we do it 12%. And, you know, I think that for 10 5050 model, I think you’ll see again, in some of these various Facebook groups, kind of a number of the larger companies that would talk about the 10 5050 is potentially not leaving enough for the company. I guess it depends on what you do with that other 50%. Obviously, if the owner puts it in his pocket, and that’s how he gets paid over the course of the year, then you’re absolutely not leaving enough for a company to scale to multiple markets and grow with trucks and the grow the brand and your reach and things like that, right? It’s just 10% is not going to be enough. I worked under 10 5050. Originally, when I started in the industry, and was averaging what probably closer to like 15 16%. So you’re talking three to four points right there. You know, there’s a lot of overhead that could go into that three to four points right there, right, and, but again, we’re paying 2% to a team leader. And then we also branch managers can get one to 2% depend on their numbers. So we’re still at that 15 ish total on a job. But it’s spread out. And if you’re a team leader, make it 12% plus two, or you’re 14 anyways, it’s just somebody else’s two, right. So again, we’re kind of in that range. But but we want to kind of frame it a different way. We want to set it up where guys are motivated to be leaders. That’s that’s the point of the whole team leader thing again, maybe it keeps them from doing their own thing. But we also want everybody to have the opportunity to lead and to learn how to lead people and to learn how to develop others. And there’s just honestly not enough management positions to do that. Right. And so having that team leader role allows for that, but straight up 1212 on self generated 8% on company generated, so gotcha.

Dylan McCabe  34:57

Yeah, there’s, I’m just warning you, you’re gonna get a lot of follow up questions about this as we went on, this video is gonna be recorded in our Facebook group forever. But another question as somebody said, do you start new sales guys at the same pay rate as seasoned guys?

Brad Barron  35:13

Yeah, so we do. And we’re looking at doing some different stuff with like, do we want to bring guys on as canvassers and things like that. So we’re kind of rolling that out for 2021. And again, there’s another opportunity to feed your, your, your seasoned sales guys that are taking the time to train someone and mentor them. And it also gets that canvasser lots of reps on the doors in the first 3045 days, just helping that pm set appointments and things like that. And then once they get through their training, and they’ve generated a certain amount of leads qualified leads, they can move to that project manager position. And that’s the goal. Like, we’re still hiring project managers. We’re not we’re not hiring for a full time campus position. But but we are looking at having them start out is that Yeah,

Dylan McCabe  36:01

so let’s get into let’s get into another aspect of all this, and I just love how you’ve highlighted culture is coming out a lot in this process and systems. And even what you said about the commission, you know, the the 10 5050 deal is okay, probably, if you’ve got a couple of sales guys in one location. But when you want to bring in the economies of scale, and all that that entails, ooh, Boy, that’s going to be challenging. So I think a lot of people

Brad Barron  36:28

I mean, I think what it comes down to is you got 100 points on every job, right? And you got to know how many points are going to material? How many points are going to labor? How many points are going to the sales guy, how many points you’re on overhead, and what’s your net profit. And if it’s a 10 5050, it’s hard to kind of ever figure out how many points the sales guys get. I mean, on one job, he’s getting eight or nine because that job didn’t hit, which I guess Okay, kind of protects the company in a job that didn’t hit well. But we also have a 40% profit limit. So we kind of insulate ourselves there, he can’t get more than 40% of the total profit on the job. So if it’s just a terrible job, or you sell retail, too low, there’s kind of that there’s a backstop. But yeah, that’s, it’s hard to figure out, what’s my planning factor, if it’s a 10 5050? Because I mean, on this job, you may get 18 or 19%. On this job, he gets 11%. Like, what? How do I plan long term, you know,

Dylan McCabe  37:20

what’s so good. And I know a lot of this too, is comes from you guys taking the time to have a strategic leadership team meeting to talk about goals and stuff like that. I also know Hunter is really big on hiring the right people having the right people in the right seat, and he did a video where I saw him talking about your CFO, and his prior experience and stuff like that. So that’s good stuff. So let’s talk about how that you mentioned rocks. And I know you guys have started to incorporate Eos. So going from what you went through in the military and knowing a lot about processes and systems. And now that you’re that is your role. I mean, you are the guy over operations. Tell us about how you guys leverage EOS to to help your business thrive?

Brad Barron  38:00

Yeah, so it’s huge. I mean, we are in the early stages of it, we, we actually did our vision day this week. And so we sat down, and it was kind of interesting, because like, you know, we did like that comment that I posted a few months ago, or a month and a half ago. And they kind of started off this whole conversation was kind of what we had sat down and done was kind of like a vision day, like an initial like looking at what’s 2021 look like? And what is our corporate structure need to change to what you know, what programs do we want to roll out? What are our biggest issues right now. And we weren’t maybe calling them rocks at that point. And we didn’t have, you know, visionary and integrator and things like that. But But yeah, we’re, we’re, we brought in Eos. And I think it it reinforced some of the work we had already done, which was cool, we there were some things that we didn’t really change. There were different names we put to some of it and a few different you know, the five roles under each person. For those of you that are familiar with us, there are a few things we moved around, but, but a lot of it stayed really similar. But I think what is really cool to it is you know, the conversations we’ve had after doing it is having our implementer here and putting him kind of outside of us. And while he’s in the room on a level higher than us, it put even a bunch of bunch of alpha guys and the owner of the company and CEO, CEO, oh, we’re all at the table a step down from that dude. And while he’s in the room, and he freakin commands the room. I mean, he will, he’ll cut you off and he’ll tell you, you know, take that off your paper that doesn’t fit. It’s it’s that’s not how that’s gonna I mean, he even said it’s covenantal but you do it that way. We’re just not gonna work together anymore. Like he will stick into like, this is how us works and and this is why it works. And it is you know, a this has been done in 10,000 different companies, there’s probably a reason that it works. And so that’s how we’re gonna do it. So we actually have a guy that’s This getting trained as an implementer as well, we’re not going to use him, but we want to be able to work with other companies doing it too. And so, so yeah, we’re gonna stick because again, it’s it’s hard to be a prophet in your own land, right and so so we’re still going to use an outside implementer for us that we like working with. But But yeah, we’re gonna, we’re gonna try and start bringing that as something that we offer to you because we definitely see the value of it, everything just, it’s well worth the money spent just to have that outside guy that again, can put you all on an equal plane can drive that conversation and help you pick out those rocks. And then free you up we talk about it to the the freedom to say that, okay, of all the great ideas we’ve got out there. These are the four I’m working on this quarter like these, when he comes back next quarter, I don’t want to have to walk into a room and tell him these didn’t get done right. And and, and I am going to tell other people and we’re going to tell each other that when you bring something up, that’s not one of these. That’s not this quarter. Like I don’t add that as a great idea. But I can I can put it on the issues board and I can take it off my plate for now because it’s not what we’re doing right now. And it will I definitely think it’s going to move the needle forward in it. It’s baggage on on the school I use Michael hyatts full focus planner is my my planner every day. And it’s a it’s a quarterly planner. I mean this thing is it’s it’s not thin, and this is one quarter. So I get mailed one of these every quarter. And it’s kind of the same thing. Like it’s it’s basic, it’s like you set annual goals and then you set quarterly, you set your weekly big three, and then your daily three comes out of that weekly three. And so whether it’s my clients planner or another system for us at the end of the day, I mean, it’s it’s, it’s not rocket science, like it’s basic, like you can’t get to $100 million company just because you will, right, you’ve got to break that down into digestible blocks. And if you don’t, you’re you’re just kind of rudderless, you know, but but if you can break it down into daily and weekly action steps, that’s how you actually move the needle forward and get going somewhere. And so, say I think EOS is a it’s a great way to do it. It’s gonna it’s gonna be massive for us. Yeah.

42:12

Yeah,

Dylan McCabe  42:12

that’s so good. I love the fact that you guys brought in an implementer you know, and to hear you say that. So I you know, a lot of people listening this know that I’m an authorized EOS implementer. And we use EOS inside of our roofing CEO groups, but but I never, you know, when you said he basically says we’re not going to work together. So EOS worldwide is huge on YouTube, not diluting their content at all. I mean, they are fanatical about it, because they’re basically saying, we know this is a proven system. Keep it pure. Keep it pure. Do not dilute it with any of your own thoughts. Don’t dilute it with anybody else’s books. Yeah. So it’s so funny to hear you say that he basically said, Oh, that’s a good idea. Put it aside. We’re not use it.

Brad Barron  43:00

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely a couple things where he’s like, that’s great. We’re just this will be our last session together. We just won’t work together anymore, if that’s what you’re gonna do.

Dylan McCabe  43:08

So funny. Yeah. But you know, it’s, it’s like you said, it’s not rocket science. It’s a proven system. It’s the roadmap, and then it just takes pigheaded stubbornness to just follow it. And I think that’s the power behind us. When you work with an implementer. You got that implementer coming in keeping you accountable, saying, Hey, where are we, you know, we nailed down your issues. We nailed down your goals for the next 90 days or rocks? How are they you know, and looking at every person that comes? That’s so cool. I just love that you guys are using that. And you’re going to use it to help others as well. So that’s great. Well, we’ve talked about the scaling to multiple locations with processes. We’ve talked about goal setting and strategic planning. We’ve talked about sales compensation in the race to 15. And the last thing that I want you to touch on just briefly before we bring this to a close is training, what is the key to your training process? Yeah, so

Brad Barron  44:03

Yeah, so ours is you know, and it was developed before me. So I’m in the midst of you know, overhauling it, it’ll have my touch to it, you know, by this time next year, but I you know, I don’t want to take credit for setting it up by any means. But we use an online learning management system. And some of it is videos out on a job site, some of his videos in the office that are screen grabs, but it’s basically something that we can log a guy into and against something that hunter will talk about, like I know he talked about in his breakout at Rukh Khan and things and I think even from the mainstage, but like, it’s a it’s a long line of videos that we’ve embedded into this system. It takes you from our mission and culture and vision all the way through, you know, door to door strategies and lead generation and product knowledge and our CRM financing you know, all that stuff and so You know, a lot of companies will do like two or three days in the office, you know, in a, you know, maybe we’re hiring once a month or once a quarter and we do like a class, we don’t do any of that. I think it’s something that I’d maybe like to see us do like to give us a one or two day like, we’re sure we’re delivering the same quality of product for these handful of topics that we want guys to know, right off the rip. But the vast majority of ours will stay in that digital platform, that again, once we onboard a guy, and he’s got an email address, he can log into it and go through, it’s called six figure blueprint, can go through all that training from start to finish. And by the time he gets done, has a good grasp of what he needs to do, you know, out on the streets every day and helping folks get their routes taken care of. And then it also because it’s there, they can also come back to it at any point, right, like, so if they don’t get something in that in person training, well, then it’s just gone. Right. But the video setup, they can always refer back to it. And so and so we have that. Yeah, I mean, that’s a we have we have six figure and we’re we’re developing a game, we look at processes and repeatability. We’re developing a figure blueprint for managers right now. So how to turn your market into that eight figure blueprint. So all the things that we’ve learned along the way? And, and yeah, and it’s it’s also something that we’re white labeling to potentially bring to other folks as well. But right now, it’s it’s set up for internally, Cornerstone, and yeah,

Dylan McCabe  46:26

that’s good stuff, well, you guys would be a great one to white label it, because you have successfully, you’ve done it. So So you’ve got a video training online, you got a learning management system there with with follow up accountability, all that stuff, you also have in the field training. And then I think the other piece of it, though, so I feel like I feel like most companies do one or the other. They either have, the owner has has enough foresight to say, I need to give guys upward mobility and give them the hope of greater income earning potential, and the ability to help others. That’s good. But usually they don’t have solid training in place, or they have good training, but they really don’t have a strong aspect of that upward mobility and mentoring and all that. And you guys have brought both together. So but I know one of the things you said you’ve got the video training, and I’m looking at my notes here. You said you don’t do a day or two in the office, you guys really want them to like start selling groups within their week.

Brad Barron  47:24

Yeah, yeah. So and and, you know, again, is the dynamic change a little bit there, we’re kind of starting this canvassing aspect prior to becoming a pm. But yes, up to this point. That has always been a goal is like so you get out with whoever your team leader is going to be and start shadowing them. You got to put your knuckles on the door, the team leader is there to help you but but we want you knock in those doors, day one, day two, and hopefully get your first roof in the pipeline that week, because we all know that it takes some time to generate a first paycheck, right? We don’t do any drawers, we don’t do a training stipend. And so, so knock that door as quickly as possible. At the end of the day, if you knock 10 or 15, on day one, with some basic objection handling, you ought to get on a couple roofs. And if you’re in an area where there’s damage, you ought to be to get one side and we generally see the guys can get one side within their first couple days. And so then that sets them up, you know, within the next 10 to 14 days that ACV check is in and they’re they’re picking up their first check and getting some commission going. And so that’s that’s definitely our goal, we want them to, to feel that success and to see, you know, what the job can pay and how it can generate income and their life and be you know, be life changing really, you know, again, for guidance that’s maybe made 3040 $50,000 a year to now could be to come to this. So yeah, we want that to be pretty quick.

Dylan McCabe  48:52

That’s good stuff. Well, I really appreciate what you’ve done here on this, this live stream today. And you’ve unpacked what you guys have done, and it’s taken a lot to get there and a lot of trial and error. And you’ve written you guys have really figured out what’s worked and you’ve proven it over and over again at multiple locations. There’s going to be comments in the Facebook group. So for those of you listening this to catch these live streams and be able to do q&a, definitely join our Facebook group, the limitless roofing CEO Facebook group, but before we park Brad, you know, knowing what you know and your journey and what you’re doing with cornerstone for somebody that’s sitting back saying, hey, look, I’d love to scale to another city. That’s whatever. 10 hours away in another market. What’s your parting piece of advice to that business

Brad Barron  49:32

owner? Just do it. Just stop being scared of it. Like you did it once in the city you’re in, right? Like Yeah, you Okay, you need a little bit of cash to get an office. But there’s ways around that. I mean, you could and literally the first 60 days we were in an Airbnb, like why you know that’s maybe 15 $100 for a monthly rate for an Airbnb and you don’t have to sign a year long lease, like get your licenses go get an Airbnb hire if you guys mean I had no problem hiring the first probably six or seven or eight guys And Lorac by meeting with him at Starbucks and Panera and telling them, hey, we’re getting we’re working on getting office, we’re looking at real estate. We’re in an Airbnb right now. And we met at the Airbnb every day, and we did our sales meetings there. And nobody thought anything of you know, it’s not like they thought, well, these aren’t a real company, or these guys are, you know, storm Jason or whatever. And so that’s what I would say, like, jump off a cliff, man, like you’ve done it once. If you’ve got, you had a good profitable year, you’ve got a little cash stuck back, you know, buy some extra yard signs and some extra shirts and find a find the right leader and go. I mean, like, that’s, that’s the biggest thing. And I think, I think hunter would say the same thing. I think that’s the only that’s why he’s successful, because he will, he will take the risk, and he will jump off a cliff and he’ll say, Oh, my God, why shouldn’t it work? You know, I’ve done it once. Let’s go do it again. You know, and and there you go. Before you know it, you’re six or seven. So

Dylan McCabe  50:51

good stuff. We’re bredbury Chief Operating Officer Cornerstone construction. Thank you so much for joining us.

Brad Barron  50:57

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Dylan McCabe  50:59

All right, excellent interview with Brad bear. And I love that they are running their company on EOS, which again, if you guys want to learn more about that just reach out to us through our Facebook group, the limitless roofing CEO group, and we can jump on a discovery call to learn about how we use EOS in our roofing CEO groups. And I really like what he said about how you know what the key to all this stuff is really the kind of culture that you are building. And also having a very good hiring and onboarding process. They really have an entire funnel built around, getting people in there, making sure they’re the right people before they even have an in person interview. So these guys are crushing it. I think they’re an amazing model of business success in the world of general contracting and roofing. And if you want to learn more, you can definitely get to know Brad on Facebook. That’s Brad Barron on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. Alright guys, thanks for joining us with the limitless roofing show. My name is Dylan McCabe and I will catch you in the next episode.