SPEAKERS

Dylan McCabe, Tucker Adamson

 

Dylan McCabe  00:00

Roofing mastery podcast episode number 16 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 of roofing companies and thought leaders so that you can get the tips, tools and a roadmap you need to take your own business to the next level. And in this episode, I interviewed Tucker Adamson from the Virginia slate company, she is going to totally unpack why you should be selling slate roofs, what it looks like to install a slate roof what the key selling points are of a slate roof, how it’s beneficial for the homeowner, how it’s beneficial for you and your general contracting and roofing business to get into more affluent neighborhoods to increase your profit margins. She’s really going to break it down in a very educational and insightful way. We’re going to also talk a lot about just sales tips in general. And so I think you’re gonna get a lot out of this if you haven’t sold, especially if you haven’t sold any slate roofs. Before we get into that I have one big question asked, Do you have a grip on your business? There’s a big reason why we launched roofing CEO peer groups. And the reason is, is most businesses are not getting to the level they want to get to and they have some major weaknesses that are holding them back. A good way to get a baseline is to take our quiz and I challenge every leader and owner of a roofing company listening this podcast to take our quiz. It’ll take you about five minutes each 20 questions, they are very powerful. You’ll rate yourself on a scale of one to five with each question, you can take the quiz now at roofing mastery.com and find out where you’re weak, where you’re strong. And then if you’re interested, we can follow up with a discovery call to find out how to deploy the strategies to take your company to the next level with an elite team of other owners and CEOs and our peer advisory groups who are dedicated to you learning from them and then learning from you so that everybody can achieve the success that they dream for. Alright guys, that’s my shameless plug for our roofing CEO groups. Now let’s jump into this interview with Tucker Adamson. All right. As I mentioned, we have a special guest on the show today Tucker Adamson with Virginia slate. So Tucker, thanks for joining the show.

 

Tucker Adamson  02:06

Thank you for having me.

 

Dylan McCabe  02:07

Yeah, well, we connected on LinkedIn. And I’m really looking forward to this interview because you are an expert when it comes to Slate Roofing and I know there’s a lot of general contractors out there that would like to sell slate on more jobs or get into more affluent neighborhoods and sell slate because of a lot of reasons that we’re going to get into. But before we get into all of that, I’d kind of like to just give you a chance to share your background in the industry and then what you do today for Virginia slate,

 

Tucker Adamson  02:33

perfect. So Slate Roofing has been around for you know hundreds of years. We started with our company started about 50 years ago with a quarry in Buckingham County. I’ve been working for the company probably about 17 years doing all sorts of different jobs. We sell slate that comes out of Buckingham but we’ve also diversified we sell slate we have quarries up in Vermont, Vermont’s gonna give you any of the colorful slates, the reds, the greens, the greens, the blacks, we also import in slate from Spain as well slate account Spain accounts for nine out of every 10 roofing slates currently installed in the world. So and that’s because of Europe’s desire and consumption for natural slate. They don’t use asphalt shingles. So they typically only use hard roofing products. So hence why Spain provides so much of the roofing site for the world.

 

Dylan McCabe  03:30

Wow. did not know that. And we were discussed also you mentioned the history of slate is is kind of interesting. It’s something I didn’t really think about. Yeah, so sleep started back in, you know, they’ve they’ve traced it hundreds and hundreds of years back. They used it for sheltering stone, they started realizing that it could split them if you go to the you go over to Spain and some of the hillsides you’ll see these little communities with just slabs of stone on their roof that are overlapping. So that was the beginning you know, and these, these little houses are still there. And they you know, 1000s pounds on the roof and holding up and protecting everything inside. It wasn’t until later on that they started cutting it into meat more uniform and allowing it to be more of a uniform shape more than rectangular or with a triple overlapping system that came about from Europe, I would say England kind of started that. And then they also started using it as ballasts coming over in the ships. So when the new world was found it over here, they would put the slight in the bellies of the ship and bring it over and it helped with the stabilization of the ship and they found it they found sites in Jamestown that came from England. So that’s what they were able to use for some of the early buildings in New America. So down in Charleston, you’ll see a lot of Welsh slate Jamestown all the way up up and down the East Coast. It was about in the I want to say 1700s that they discovered slight deposits in Buckingham, Virginia. They started coring those, which is a beautiful hard slate. They also found slight deposits up in Vermont, Pennsylvania as well. Those started to be excavated, quarried, the Vermont again is where you’re going to get all your colorful slates. And it’s a little bit of a softer stone compared to what the Buckingham slate is. That is so interesting. And in Virginia score, like we discussed, that’s my home state as well, I mean, just such a beautiful place. So it doesn’t surprise me that something beautiful is coming out of places like Virginia and Vermont, and Spain. But I know there’s some people listening to this. And you know, I want to address the elephant in the room. Some people listen to this. And they’re saying, Well, yes, like, it would be nice, but I’m used to selling asphalt shingles all day long. And I can just sell that. So let’s talk about some of the unique selling points of slight. Why would somebody want to learn about slate start trying to sell slate offer to their customers? Let’s get into the main points of that. Absolutely. So we talked to contractors, homeowners roofers everyday about this exact same question about, well, it’s so expensive, why would I do it, it’s so this is that, you know, if you really look at it, slate is expensive. It’s one of the most expensive roofing products, but it’s going to last three to four times the length of any other roof. So you tell somebody who’s building a $2 million house or you’re gonna put a cheap roof on it, you’re gonna have to reroute it when they’re putting half a million dollars into the kitchen, and they’re gonna make the roof the cheapest thing possible. It just it doesn’t make sense, the roof is what’s going to protect everything in the in the house. A slate roof is obviously it’s, it’s proven its value, it’s proven its longevity, there are several products that come out, you know, on a yearly basis that are synthetic slates or it’s this type of slate or this type asphalt shingle, that’s the new and latest and batteries, Slate Roofing, you go to Europe, and the cathedrals and the homes, they’re all slate and they’re all the longevity is based on what is the first layer of defense, and that’s going to be your roof. So we are constantly on the phone with, you know, because it is you know, there are not very many site roofs that are actually put on, we’re constantly trying to let people know that our absolute value to it, it is going to be more expensive, it is going to be probably about four to five times the cost of asphalt shingles. But in the long run, if you amortize it out over the length of the roof, it’s worth it, especially when you’re talking about a church, a university, a house, that’s going to be over a million dollar house, you know, why would you your first line of defense? Why would you skimp on that one? Well, and something that comes to my mind with this is, you know, in Texas, you get we have the new house bill pastor that says you can’t eat your clients deductible. And so some people are scrambling going, Oh my gosh, how are we going to sell, it’s going to be a race to the bottom, all that stuff. And I flip it and I turn it the other way. And as I’m educating the customer on, here’s what we’re gonna do, here’s a scope of work, here’s how we’re going to build our estimate. And by the way, there’s a lot of contractors that even though this house bill is passed, they’re still going to figure out ways to eat your deductible By the way, that’s a that’s a crime that you can be penalized and go on a criminal record, you don’t have to worry about that with us. So I flip it and use it as a selling technique. And I think about the same thing with with slight and a nice product, like you said, if it’s a two or $3 million home, you should definitely give that as an option to your customer and never sell out of your own pocket might be expensive to you. But it’s probably not expensive to them if they’re buying that kind of a home. And I learned that years ago selling suits at the men’s wearhouse years ago, years ago. And one of the things that they their training was phenomenal. They said don’t ever sell out of your own pocket. And when a customer walks in, don’t hesitate to show them the Valentino suit. So you know what I did, I started showing people two options. I get their sizes, and then I take them over and I’d say here’s a suit that will fit you. This one’s and I wouldn’t even mention price. I’d say here’s this one. It’s typically a $300 suit. But this one also fits you. And here’s some of the differences. This is a $2,000 suit. And so many times I had customers go I’ll take that one. And when they walked in, I never would have thought they’d buy a suit like that. But I was selling out of my own pocket to me at the time. A $2,000 suit was expensive. So I feel like it’s a similar principle with this. Absolutely. And it’s when you go into a car dealership and you walk in you don’t see the you know, basic, you know, sedan sitting in the dealership showroom you see the Corvette that everyone wants to go look at. So make sure your customers you know as a roofer, make sure your GC make sure customers know that you’re capable of doing a slate roof you know constantly it also advise our clients on how to problem solve if they hit you know, an area on a slate roof that they don’t know how to do a detail. We work with them. We do photographs, we do videos and send them back to them because it’s not, you know slates installed with too. Copper nails, there’s not it’s a natural rock that comes out of the ground that’s hands split, they it’s actually still hand split all over the world the same way with a hammer and chisel. And then it’s cut to size. So and then on the roof, it’s the underlayment goes down, and then it’s installed with two copper nails, or stainless steel nails. That’s the traditional way of doing it. So well let me read in a lot of, of paper of, you know, adhesives or anything like that to drip out or to go wrong. So Well, let me ask you this. So for somebody, like, let’s say you’ve got a general contractor, that’s they’re very comfortable selling roofs, but they want to get more into, they’ve got a couple of customers in a more affluent neighborhoods, and they want to sell a slate roof. But they’ve never done that before. What what specific resources do you have that would help educate or train them on that. So slate sells itself and this is what we try and let people know is nine out of 10 times if I can put an actual piece of slate into a client’s hands, they go with a slate roof, if they can feel that value, they can feel the strength of IT. And especially if it’s a piece of plastic, if they’re looking at a synthetic slate roof and saying, Oh, this will be just as good. You can put them both in the same hands. They go, you’re right, this feels better. And typically the cost difference especially versus synthetic is not much at all it’s been a lot of times I’ve seen that as coming in at the same price for fully installed. So what we do is have our have the roofers, the GCs, even the homeowners will call us and request samples, we send them out all the time, we get that into their hands, we let them see the colors, we let them see, you know, we tell them to drive around, find a house that they really like and say what’s on that roof. And we’ll you know, they’ll take a cell phone picture and send it to me, and I’ll say, Oh, that’s a Vermont gray green mixed with some, you know, unfading purple. And so then we can build a portfolio from there of what they’re looking for. But starting the dialogue and getting them to at least just look at the product, and again, feel it and educate themselves a little bit more on it. Unfortunately, the slight industry is small compared to the synthetic market or even the asphalt shingle market. So people don’t, there isn’t a lot of great information, they just hear that it’s expensive. But they don’t really know how expensive it is, is it you know, 100 times the cost? Or is it five times the cost. And typically, it’s not out of reach for most of these homes. And so let’s talk about that. I know that something you mentioned was the difference between natural slate and synthetic that I’m guarantee there’s a lot of people listening to this that may not know the difference in experience, either installing it or selling it. So let’s break the differences down. Absolutely. So synthetic, the value, you know, added is it is a lighter weight product. Whether it is a plastic, typically plastic or rubbers with a lighter weight product it is you know, your structure doesn’t have to be as strong. But you know, we also there’s no way to completely quantify this. But if you could, you know when we get some of these wind up lifts, especially here in Virginia, we get on where the tornadoes come through or just strong winds having that density on the roof to hold the whole structure down. As opposed to that blowing so there is a value to have a nice weight to the roof, whether it’s visual or in this case physical as well. So that’s one of the main main differences is it again, slate has proven its value sleep spin around natural slate, I mean, their homes all over Virginia, in up and down the East Coast, especially since it’s so old, that are 200 years old and had put been put down with red rosin paper and are still going strong. Um, you know, the roof might have you know, some of the metal valleys might have come apart but that’s about it. So you know, we try and make sure people understand slates done the works like proven itself. Slate is you do have to hand install it with a with a hammer and nail. But I know a lot of roofers that I’ve worked with that are when they’re doing synthetic installations, they’re also doing a hammer and nail and they’re curling the sights or the synthetics, because they’re worried about them pinching and curling up later. So again, you technically can put synthetic on with an air gun but a lot of people are doing hand and nails. So then there’s a the same thing to um, it’s it’s mainly letting people know that the product is available. A lot of times they’ll say, Oh, well, we can’t get the material in a timely fashion. And we can get this you know, synthetic delivered to us right away. Our company keeps we keep anywhere from two to 3000 to 4000 squares in stock at any one time so that we can meet those demands so that somebody that doesn’t become an excuse. We found that too many times if you say for if a roofer comes onto a job and says, Hey, I can get to your work, but I can’t get the material it’s going to be you know, eight weeks, then they’re going to go with something else because they’re gonna want to push the job forward. So we try and keep a large inventory so that we can meet some Those demands, you know, and I think about that too though, going back to the selling point, I’m sure that the natural slate lasts longer, and is more durable than synthetic but for me if I was selling going back to the type of customer that you’re selling to we you know, we see slightly waves here in Dallas and Highland Park and and Preston hollow and park cities and all these neighborhoods that were the the home value is higher. And for me, if I’m selling to that customer, I would say, well, you It’s up to you, if you want a pho slate, or a real slate, it’s just kind of up to you, because there’s there’s Pho, marble, countertops, all that kind of stuff. But people in those neighborhoods, a lot of people in those neighborhoods, you know, they update their furniture every few years just to change the look, they update their paint, they, they have multiple homes, they have multiple, many of them have multiple income streams, you know, so it’s just a different ballgame. And I think that would just that mental block would be a big, big barrier for a lot of people that are not used to selling slate getting into selling slate. And your roof is a third, at least a third of your visual plane. And so if they’re gonna, you know, sell the best and then drop them down, you know, push the Ferrari on them push this, let’s try a natural slate roof, let’s you know, at least give them that option. Because then if they drop down later, at least you tried to sell them the best, you know, get them on that top wrong and see if you can get them to buy Donna. So what would be I know we talked about reasons why a roofer would want to sell slate, we talked about profitability, we talked about how it’s a good selling point for the homeowner. And we talked about using it really as a technique to get into more affluent neighborhoods. So let’s discuss those three points. So it is I mean, anytime you go, you see a listing, real estate listing? Oh, it’s a brick and slate. Oh, I mean, they’re gonna point it out. It’s like saying, Oh, it’s a 67 Ferrari. I mean, that is a huge, you know, wow, that’s real slate. And we’ve, we’ve done houses where, though one house is slate, and the two neighbors decide, you’re right, that does look better, and they want to go with slate. So again, it’s that repeat customers that you end up getting along the way, and trying to fill those in? And what about profitability? Because you mentioned at the outset, it is a more expensive product. But how does that alter the contractors profit margins? Absolutely. And this is a huge thing. So slight, if you can align yourself with the ability to do slate, do it well. It’s it is a laborious job to install it. But on the flip side, there are not a lot of people who know how to do it and to do it well. So if you look in your average city, most roofers know how to do asphalt shingles, out of 100% of roofers, I would say 50 of them can do or 50% can do Metal Roofing, right. And out of that out of the 100%, you know, maybe only 10% can do Slate Roofing. So again, you’re putting yourself into an elite class of there are only a couple of people in town that know how to do it and do it well. So this isn’t, it’s going to be it takes a lot longer. Typically, what my roofers will tell me is a one roofer can do a square a slate per day, which, but you don’t have the competition in it, you don’t have the people, you know, under bidding it that aren’t running, you know, that are doing something a little bit shady, or you know, kind of a Ponzi scheme where they’re buying the materials for this job, but putting them on this job. So with the slate, it’s going to take you longer, you know, it’s gonna it’s gonna be longer load in load out all of that. But they’re not as many people doing it. So the competition, you’ve got a lot more profitability in there because they don’t have the competition on it. Yep, I like it. It’s something we’ve talked a lot about it rain tight, general contracting is getting more, you know, we just did a couple of jobs in a more affluent neighborhood here recently. And we’re just talking about how to really get more focused on that bit just because like you just said, just a little bit less competition. And there’s ways that you can stand out from the crowd with customer service and branding and process and all that stuff. Things that these you know, customers and these more affluent neighborhoods pay attention to. So let’s talk about this. Let’s start let’s say you’ve got a reroute job. It’s an asphalt shingle, but you think that customer could be would be interested in slight? What are the changes that have to take place to account for the weight change and stuff like that? Absolutely. So slight runs anywhere from 800 to 1000 pounds per square or 10 by 10 area. Whereas asphalt shingles, I’m not even sure probably only like 150 pounds, so there is a tremendous amount. We actually just worked with a roofer and finished up a job where he took off asphalt shingles and went back with metal insulate. You know, the lower slopes he ended up doing with kind of our last pitch He did with some of the metal and with slate and he said that, you know, when he got onto the structure, you know, the, the trusses were actually set, you know, you want to make sure the distance in between the trusses can hold the weight, and you want to make sure that the thickness of the trusses can hold the weight, then it goes to the decking, you know, you can put it on with a thinner decking board, you know if it’s a half inch decking, but you typically want to go up to three quarter inch decking that just helps with the bounce when you’re actually hammering it on one and you go with a thinner decking board, it can be done, but it’ll just beat you to death with all the bounce. So yeah, so isn’t a lot of people in the industry with synthetic industry will say, Oh, it’s going to cost you a lot of money to upgrade your system to to accommodate this light. But it really does. And what we’ve seen from our roofers is, you know, it’s very minimal on, you know, to read up their loads, which goes back to, if you can afford a slate roof, you can afford some line items on there to build up the structure if you need to, right. Especially if you’re doing it, I mean, and, you know, we’re looking at the green building, and we’re looking at how we’re going to leave our footprint, and we’re looking at, you know, longevity of people, when they build a house, we typically don’t build a house, you know, to just flip it and turn it around you want it that’s gonna Hey, I really did this, and I did it well. Um, so you know, slate is an organic roofing product. I mean, it’s the only organic roofing product that there is where you could take it off the roof and throw it into, you know, any of your natural rivers, you know, that you could throw it into the Potomac River in Washington, DC, and they can’t say anything about it, they’re no additives to it, there’s nothing. So a lot of times you have people and you can use it as a selling point, you know, we do it all the time where, you know, homeowners are thrilled to go to Whole Foods and pay three times more, you know, for their apples, why won’t they pay three times more for their roof, you know, if it’s organic. So again, we encourage our roofers to mention that I mean, it’s, it’s a great product for that fact alone. I mean, you see it on tables at fine dining restaurants, where they’re using it for cheese bladders, and it’s the same thing going on the roof. So it’s not shedding oils, it’s not shedding into the water streams, it’s not shedding, you know, any of that, you know, the aggregates are the chemicals, it’s just a natural rock. So, which is great. I mean, it’s just another selling point. So let’s say you’ve got a situation where you want to talk to the customer about slate, we reach out to you, you send the examples, show the customer and they’re like, okay, I want this, what’s the turnaround time, we need to people have to go straight to you guys, can they buy it from a local ABC bution we sell through distribution, they can come to me, I’m not going to give terms to somebody. So a lot of the times the distribution is a great factor because they can get terms through their local supply house. Sometimes people you know, want to come to me because they want that personal attention. We usually, you know, I mean, I’ve had people call me with an emergency and go, Hey, my homeowner, you know, they looked at slaves, they had backed off, and they’ve gone with asphalt shingle. And we’re getting ready to put it on. And we put on two squares of asphalt shingles, and they changed their mind and they need slate now. And I’ve had to ship out three trucks or tractor trailer loads of slate within two days, and we can do it again. That’s what that large in stock inventory helps us do. It might not be the exact size or the exact, you know, but it’s going to be a slate roof in a very close, it might not be an 1810, it might be a 2010. But it’s going to be it’s going to be close. So we go through those different channels. You know, also distribution helps with offloading. You know, it comes on tractor trailers, typically about 50 squares of slight standard thickness will fit on a tractor trailer. So we ship it, we ship it all over the country, you know, daily, up and down, you know, California, we’ve been as far out that way all around. And so you guys are pretty nimble when it comes to distribution. Or we long as we line all that up for distribution. We’ve even had our distribution guys who don’t know a lot about slate, you know, because it is a specialty product. It is a kind of a everyone’s heard of what it is, but they don’t know exactly how it works. So we work with distribution and educating them and making sure if they have a spec of how to read it and how to see it and go from there. Gotcha. Well, we I know you could talk about slate for days. But to me, I think we’ve covered some great points. We’ve talked about the visual effects. It has the durability, the longevity, the profitability. We’ve talked about some selling points for the homeowner reasons why a homeowner would want to buy at the kind of target audience you’re dealing with. What would be a parting piece of advice for contractors listening to this and they haven’t worked with slate yet. You know, my thing is, do a little bit of research, you can do some quick research with it. You know, there’s there’s some great resources out there on what it what it exactly is called request of sample just to have, you know, a brochure just to have so you have the option to upsell it. It’s not an incredibly difficult material to work with. It’s not like you have to mix something to have this to have that if you don’t get it exactly right. It’s gonna, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s about it takes it takes attention to detail, it takes time to lay out. But it, it’s worth it in the end, and it’s going to get more interest from other people. Oh, if he can do slate, if that roofer can do slate, he can do anything. So that’s what we do plenty of training, call me for training, I’m happy to help. Like I said, if it’s even if it’s a small detail, if it’s layout, if it’s takeoffs, we do all that type of thing. Awesome. Well, how can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more, they’re welcome to call us directly. Our phone number is 854745 4100. And I’m also happy to give you my email address. They’re Welcome to send me emails. We respond very quickly. You know, our whole goal is to make sure that people understand slate and that customers understands light so that they have that option. As of right now, you know, people Oh, it’s just too expensive. I couldn’t afford it. Well, it’s not and I think people need to see that, that it’s, you know, they’ll be pleasantly surprised when they say, oh, bad Good stuff. All right. Well, Tucker Adamson with Virginia slate. Thanks for being on the show.

 

Tucker Adamson  26:39

Thank you Have a great day.

 

Dylan McCabe  26:42

All right. Very interesting points from Tucker I honestly was challenged by that I want to sell more slate and recently we’ve been getting jobs in some more affluent neighborhoods in Dallas. And I want to take what I learned from her I’m going to order some samples. And really just looking forward to expanding our business in that area. It’s it’s for for retired general contracting, where we’re at today at the time of the recording of this podcast, it’s, it’s not a common thing for us to sell slate. So I’m looking forward to that. If any of you have feedback on that definitely reach out on our Facebook group roofing mastery, you can join the group and weigh in on what you’ve learned from using slate we would really enjoy the conversation with you there. So if you’re not already a member of our group, just head over to roofing mastery.com and you’ll see a big button that says join our group we want to grow our group we want to engage in a lot of dialogue with you guys. And if this has been helpful if you haven’t done so already, please do us a favor, stop and take a minute to rate and review just go to rate this podcast.com slash roofing mastery rate this podcast.com slash roofing mastery. And also of course in the group you can let us know if there’s some topics you want to hear about or people you think should be on the show. Maybe you are one of them reach out to us through our Facebook group, which is just roofing mastery and Facebook. Alright guys, this is Dylan McCabe with the roofing mastery podcast and I will catch you in the next episode.