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Dylan McCabe 0:00
Roofing Mastery Podcast episode number eight! Welcome to the roofing mastery podcast. My name is Dylan McCabe and in every episode we give you a behind the scenes look at the roofing industry, as we interview CEOs, owners and industry experts in roofing companies so that you can gain tips, tools and a roadmap to take your own roofing company to the next level. And I’m excited about this interview because we have a special guest on the show named Cannon Berrong with Berrong Construction, they are Berrong strong, as he likes to say. And he has a really cool story about how they transition from mostly Residential Roofing to commercial roofing and he talks about the reasons why they made that transition, how it impacted their sales process. He also talks about his most valuable insights on running a successful company based outside of Atlanta, Georgia. He talks about the process driven company instead of a person driven company. And he also talks about the big things they’ve learned about dealing With big large loss claims and doing big commercial jobs with big large loss claims he’s going to get we’re going to get into the nitty gritty glean some we’re going to mind some gold from his experience and give it to you so that you can take it and implement it in your own company. All right, let’s dive right into this interview with Cannon Berrong. Alright, as I stated, We have special guests Cannon Berrong today with Berrong Construction. Cannon. Thanks for joining the show, man.

Cannon Berrong 1:25
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Dylan McCabe 1:27
Well, same here. I you know, I’m glad we got to connect on LinkedIn and you know, got to learn a little bit about your story. But for those listening and watching, just kind of share your background, share about your company, Barone construction, and then I want to hear kind of how you got into general contracting construction business in general.

How did you get started in residential roofing?

Cannon Berrong 1:45
Okay, so we’re here in metro Atlanta, brows in Georgia to be exact. I’ve had Barone construction for about seven years now. We kind of started out in the residential field and you know, you weren’t even really doing roofing it was more of remodels and Over the years, I’ve kind of moved towards roofing saw some other guys doing some great things with it came across a few clients who had some insurance claims, and really knew nothing about the insurance process when we first got into it years ago, and from there just kind of started learning what it’s about, you know, we would get the insurance scope from from a client, they call us and say, Hey, here’s what we got. You know, can you do the roof for us? And, you know, we look at the scope and go, I mean, it’s $12,000 Yeah, I guess we can do it for that price. And so, you know, really kind of started there and then have kind of developed into more of a multifamily and commercial at this point. We still do dabble in the residential space but do a lot of multifamily commercial now. So that’s kind of where we’ve where we’ve gone to and a quick nutshell is you and I were talking the other day. My background was as a financial advisor. Come out of college got hired on as a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual, was with a couple companies after that doing a few different things in that field. So got a taste of insurance from the other side of it, there was more life, disability, health, that side of it was the PNC side. But so, you know, started on that side, and really fell into construction, if you want to be real about it. As I told you the other day, my brother was a firefighter, had worked for a builder back before and was having a second kid and he just decided, you know, Hey, man, I need to make some, some side money. If you’ve got anybody in your neighborhood that’s interested in finishing their basement. Let’s bid it see if we can get a job. I’ve got all the guys to do it and he was saying that he get all the guys to do it. We just need an opportunity. And so ended up getting a couple opportunities and, you know, we’re kind of just starting to spread and From there, it turned into a business real quick. And then it was like, Alright, well, I think I’m gonna get out of the field that I’ve been in the last few years and roll it into construction. So real quick version. That’s kind of how we get into it.

Dylan McCabe 4:16
That’s cool, though. I mean, that’s that’s the American dream. And I feel like that opportunity is there for anybody but not everybody stays with it, and it’s successful. And so you guys started, you grow, and I looked around on your website, Look, you’ve got some impressive job, images and video on there. So you guys clearly know what you’re doing. So it sounds like you got into construction, then you got into a lot of residential roofing. And then you started thinking, Man, we need to get into more commercial roofing. kind of explain that thought process. Why did you want to get into more commercial roofing?

Why did you want to get into commercial roofing?

Cannon Berrong 4:47
Yeah, so it kind of as we talked about before, there’s a few different states that we worked in. Georgia is where our home bases and is where we do 99% of the work that we do outside of storms. So, in the state of Georgia, there’s very little restrictions on roofing, which is a good way a good thing and a lot of ways, but it’s a bad thing. And a lot of ways to you know, we end up with a lot of roofing companies here in the state of Georgia who have zero background in roofing have never put on a roof. And so when you’re talking in the residential space, you know that the guys who have been around for a minute and do good work have been able to see over and over time, that the competition, there’s nothing wrong with competition, competition is a great thing. But when you get competition that’s so inferior, as far as what they’re offering as far as knowledge, the product and what they’re really doing for the customer. It really kind of waters down that space. And so for us, we’ve figured that moving into the multifamily commercial space that there was first off gonna be a whole lot less than competition there. From that point, you know, there’s the project size. The projects are a whole lot bigger when you’re dealing with, you know, 46, residential or 46 commercial buildings than if you’re dealing with one homeowner. The other thing there is this repeat business. And so if we’re dealing with a property manager who is in the southeast, they’re going to have, you know, 2050 100 1000 different properties. And so it’s getting that repeat business over and over again, that we found is, is really worth our time because we enjoy working with homeowners, but at the end of the day, we’re going to put on a great roof for you. And we don’t really plan on seeing you for the next 15 2025 years. And so, you know, to be in the commercial, and the multifamily space gives us the opportunity to work with people over and over again.

Dylan McCabe 6:59
That’s interesting, and so do you guys do any storm damage restoration work there in that area of Georgia?

Cannon Berrong 7:04
We do. And you know, in Georgia, you’re not going to get the same kind of hail that you’re going to get in Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, some of these other places, it’s going to be smaller hail, you know, typically maxing out it an inch and a half, two inches and sometimes, but, you know, it doesn’t matter if it’s half inch hail, or if it’s five inch hail. If it damages the roof, it’s damage the roof. It doesn’t matter if it’s damaged that much, or if it’s damaged, that much is damaged. So you we do a lot with that. We end up having a lot of wind storms here. A lot of stuff coming off the coast. And so that’s the biggest stuff we’re dealing with here.

Dylan McCabe 7:44
Gotcha. Yeah, that’s one of the things we deal with here in Dallas as well. I think there’s like six to 9000 roofing companies in Dallas. Oh, yeah. We just looked at a roof yesterday we walked up rare on the roof. The lady had filed a claim and insurance company said they Pay for the roof roofing contractor had the materials ordered materials delivered to her house came pick up the check and left and never came back. Oh really? Yeah, there’s just no way to track this guy down. He doesn’t have a listing on he doesn’t have a business listing on Google. He doesn’t have a web I don’t even know how she found the guy but it’s just crazy because anybody can go become a roofer.

Cannon Berrong 8:21
You see it all the time.

Dylan McCabe 8:23
So with us it’s like well, how do we remain competitive we we rely heavily on reviews, we always ask customers for reviews. We ramped up a pretty intense review management campaign. And then referral business as well always asking every customer for two or three referrals and then of course networking as well with realtors insurance agents, stuff like that, but with it’s just so saturated, so but like you said competition is good. We actually went to a job yesterday and the competition worked in our favor because the the other general contractor just did such a terrible job of explaining to the homeowner what the process was, what it looks like and stuff like that. So So so when you you got into resin a lot of residential roofing and started to expand your business model and, and make a stronger business model into commercial roofing. Got to explain the process, what are some of the biggest challenges going from a lot of residential work to commercial work?

What’s the biggest challenge to getting into commercial roofing?

Cannon Berrong 9:18
I think the biggest thing is, as you’re kind of moving into that space is making those relationships, showing people that that you do have the ability to do it is extremely important, you know, you need to be able to, to kind of take those steps, sometimes you’re going to get lucky and you’re going to get a big one and you’re going to be able to build off that big one. But the biggest thing is building those relationships. Because if you can build those relationships and you can maintain those relationships, just like you’re talking about in the residential space, you’re always going to want those homeowners to be able to refer you people. You’re always going to want them to give you reviews. You’re doing the same thing on the commercial side and on the multifamily side. But instead of doing it with homeowners you’re doing it with property managers you’re doing it with, with property owners. Yeah, we were dealing with one other day. This is a property here in Smyrna, Georgia, they’ve got 35 buildings. And unfortunately, they were in great shape and met with a couple of the owners of this firm. And they’ve got over a billion dollars in properties. And I don’t just say they’ve got over a billion dollars. I’ve seen all their insurance policies. And so it shows what they’re insured for. And so as we’re sitting here going through it, you know, we are with this guy, his roof look horrible. I mean, they’re just, they’re not pretty roofs, but there’s no damage. And so, you know, going back to this guy, and let them know, Hey, man, I want to do the roofs for you. But at the same time, I want to help you and I want to make sure that I’m telling you the right thing and that I’m here for you. With what we’re doing right here with this with this project. You’re gonna get declined number one I don’t get paid for coming out there and inspecting it, my guys don’t get paid to inspect it, we pay to get it approved, or we get paid to get it approved. And so if I’m telling you that you shouldn’t file a claim, I’m doing that, you know, in your best interest because, trust me, we want to get paid. And, you know, so this guy, he was able to see, okay, while I want a new roof, now I can trust you, you’re not just trying to sell me a bag of goods, that’s no good. And he sent us up to three other properties that week. And so we’re going to get some other work but, you know, by this guy doing the right thing, he sent in other places, he sent us other people. You just got to do that for everybody. It’s all about doing the right thing. And you know, we always try to preach that. And, you know, there’s gonna be times that you mess up and you don’t do everything exactly the way you want to, but at the end of the day, you know, we want to be striving to be doing the right thing every single time.

Dylan McCabe 11:59
For sure. And so for for guys that are listening to this and gals that are listening to this and say, you know, I’ve had my my business for a few years now I’d also like to branch into more commercial to for the same reasons. What, what would you say is a kind of a key takeaway from how you build those relationships, how you connect with those property management companies and stuff like that. I mean, are you going on LinkedIn? Are you cold calling? Are you going to networking events? How do you go about that?

How do you build key relationships in commercial roofing?

Cannon Berrong 12:28
We’re doing all the things that you just said. We are members of a few different apartment associations here in the metro Atlanta area. We do a lot with that. We do everything we can to build those relationships, take those people to lunch. I’m a firm believer that breaking bread is it just brings a completely different relationship than just going and sitting down with somebody in our office and trying to sell them something. Get to know these people, the people that you’re selling to they’re normal. People they want to be heard. They don’t always just want to talk about roofing. A lot of times they don’t even care about the roof. You often I always tell the guys to read the room, we’re going to have certain customers who they want to know everything in the world about everything that we’re going to do. They want to know everything about roofing. We’ve got other customers that they just want you to listen to them. And you know, whether it’s about work stuff, whether it’s about family stuff, whether it’s about the fact that there’s no sports right now. You know, whatever it is. And so I think building relationships, the biggest thing that you can do is just listen to people and figure out, figure out what they want. Zig Ziglar says if you can get somebody what they want, you get what you want. And so I’m paraphrasing that a little bit. But so you know, that’s kind of how I tell our sales guys to lead is to help other people get what they want, and it will come back tenfold.

Dylan McCabe 13:56
Let’s so good. Well, this is obviously not scary. We’ve got a rough kind of outline of what we want to discuss today. But let’s talk about sales. I mean, it sounds like you’re into sales strategy and training and stuff like that. So what would you say is the best sales advice you have for something that’s worked for you and your company that could benefit other owners and CEOs of roofing companies?

What’s your best advice on growing a successful roofing sales team?

Cannon Berrong 14:18
Um, that’s an interesting question. I’m really into books. And so I do whatever I can to read something that I can take away from. I don’t read for fun. I read to develop, I read the bill. And so one of the books that had a huge impact on me and has had a huge impact on our business. It’s called traction. And so if, if I was to tell somebody this, listen to this, the best thing that they could do for their business, I would say is to read the book traction and start to implement those things. traction is basically a books, a book on processes and procedures. Figuring out, one of the things they talk about is the franchise game. And so figuring out if you had a franchise, if you wanted to take this one business and put it in however many different places, how are you going to do that you’re going to need to be able to put that on paper so that every single place you every single new franchise that you get that you can duplicate that. And so as I was reading the book, traction, we were doing a lot of work with chick fil A’s. And so as we were in each of these different chick fil A’s, I mean we’re in chick fil A’s all over the southeast, and every single chick fil a that we would go into, they’ve got the same guy doing the same thing every single time. And then right there to the right of him is the same guy doing the same thing every single time. And you know, when you go through the drive thru at chick fil a, you say thank you, they say, my pleasure. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. And so It’s one thing if you just want to have a business and it just be you, you can do it however you want to do it. But if you want to grow it, and if you want to have the the type of guys that you want, duplicating the process over and over again, I think that’s a great book. Again, that’s traction. And so for us, it’s been getting those processes and procedures in place, whether it’s inside the office, or whether it’s sales so that we can be effective and we can be effective day in and day out the same way over and over and over again.

Dylan McCabe 16:35
Man that is so good because then you’ve got a process driven model and not a person driven model. It is because if it’s all centered on you and your ability to direct and guide and do things well you can’t leave. Exactly. But if you’ve got a repeatable process in place that your your back office can use and your sales guys can use Well, you can go on vacation for two weeks and your business keeps running.

Cannon Berrong 16:57
I know but I’m so stressed whenever I leave.

Dylan McCabe 17:02
like, Man, I’m supposed to be enjoying this vacation. But…

Cannon Berrong 17:05
I’ll tell you what, though, we’ve got some great people here. And so there’s a lot of things that they do to make my life easy. There’s some days that there’s a lot of things that they do that makes my life hard, too. And but you know, but it works both ways. And so I think that’s great for, for any company. And the problem is with whether you go and listen to a great speech or whether you read a great book, it’s not taking it in, it’s internalizing that and putting in, you know, put in motion, so that you can really benefit from it. And so that’s been something for us. Traction has been a good one for us.

Dylan McCabe 17:46
Yeah, I think it’s so critical. A company I was with previously it was a healthcare software company, and the CEO and CEO both cofounders of the company were 100% about process, it was actually required for us guys, we were called account executives sales guys. We had to read a book by Chet Holmes called the ultimate sales machine. I’ve heard of it, man. I mean, he says it over and over and over again to the book, like, I’m going to tell you to do these things, and you’re not going to do it. But if you do do it, you’re going to be successful. And if you’re pig head, if you have pigheaded stubbornness to do it over and over and over again, everything from Okay, you just had a phone call? Did you ask these three questions? And then did you log it in the CRM? And then did you put a three day follow up in the CRM and just all these little things, but man after a while, it really starts to work. So I’m gonna have to check you out. Yeah, oh, totally.

Cannon Berrong 18:40
Gary Vee was at Win The Storm I think this was 2018. And he’s telling all this different stuff while he’s up there on stage. And there’s, I don’t know, 1500 of us, sitting there listening to everything. He’s saying, you know, really hanging on every word that this guy is saying. You know, just such a great dynamic speaker and it’s At the end of it, he said, You know why I don’t mind doing this and why none of you ever going to do this the way I do it, it’s because 99.9% of you are never going to do any of these things that I talked about. You’re going to sit there, and you’re going to take notes today. And you’re going to think about like, oh, man, this is awesome. I can’t wait to do this next Monday when I get back into the office, bla bla, bla, bla bla, but 99.9% of people don’t ever do it. And that’s a huge deal.

Dylan McCabe 19:24
Yeah, that’s a kick at the seat of the pants, man. Because it’s like, what, what good is it if you don’t put it into practice, so I’m gonna have to check out that book traction. I like to read books on sales and leadership as well. So let’s, let’s change gears and talk about uh, sounds like a key part of your business, which is large loss claims for these commercial properties. kind of explain how you got into large loss claims and then we’ll dig a little deeper into what that looks like and what some of the challenges are with that.

Explain your experience with large loss roofing claims

Cannon Berrong 19:51
Yeah. So when we first got into doing Residential Roofing, again, like I was saying a little bit in the beginning, there was really There was nothing out there to show us exactly how to do it. We could sit there and we could research stuff as much as we wanted to. But there really wasn’t that much out there. We started doing more with SVG store ventures group, we started doing some stuff with a couple groups like that, and started learning at a certain point when we found out about those, but before we really got into the roofing community, we knew nothing. And so we ended up latching on to a guy who was an adjuster with USA. And he was just a cooler young dude, who he would come out there, he’d hop on, my lights are censored. So he was just a cool young guy who was willing to show us on the roof that we had him come out there to look at why or why not something was damaged. Obviously, we appreciated that we’re learning. I mean, there’s nothing like an education like that, especially from an adjuster, who’s just a little bit Dude, who is some of these guys are out there to pay. Some of these guys are out there to not pay. This was a guy who was he was out there to help the homeowner if it was damaged, he wasn’t gonna help him if it wasn’t damaged. But for us, he helped us a ton. And so I remember the first day that we met this guy, just kind of hit it off with him. I said, hey, you’ve taught us a lot on this roof. Do you mind coming to this one, three houses down, and just taking a look at it for me and, you know, tell me what your thoughts are about this. So it was me and a couple other guys who worked for us. He takes us down there start showing us okay, here’s why this here’s why not this. And very quickly, we kind of started to learn from there. You know, we’re doing our research. We’re learning more about exactly. We’re getting, again involved in some of these groups. And I’m hearing about public adjusters I had no idea what a public adjuster as I’m hearing about appraisal, I’ve got no idea what appraisal is I know what it sounds like, but I don’t know what the actual process is. There’s there was just so much stuff that we just started taking in. And it’s like I would come in here on Saturdays and Sundays and sit in office and I would just read through all this junk trying to figure out okay, what’s gonna help us what’s not going to help us what makes sense? What’s the law in Florida compared to the law in Georgia and how does it affect the process? You know, cuz so often you’re listening to guys who are in other states, and if they’re telling you something for one state, it’s not always the same for the next state, especially when you’re talking in Florida is a whole different animal in a good way, but sometimes it can be in a bad way too. But so really getting to know those insurance processes at a small scale. And so once we get to know them on a small scale, and got really good with it, used a few different ppas took a few cases to appraisal. We really started to learn Greg cannon is a great piece. He’s out of Oklahoma. Matt Mulholland is a great PA. He’s here out of Georgia. David toller is another great one here out of Georgia, calling these guys guys who are good dudes who are more than willing to help you with some questions. I these guys have Heather cannon, Greg’s wife, she started writing scopes for us. This was 2017. And so we knew nothing about writing scopes. I mean, we knew what needed to happen on the roof, but exactly makes a completely different deal. And so it’s one thing to dabble in the residential space. But you’ve got to get everything straight in the residential space. If you want to be able to take that to commercial the commercial space, because you’re going to look like a fool or you’re going to get eaten alive, and you’re going to blow your contract. It’s just not going to work out. So my best advice right there. I know that’s a long winded response, but is to tune in all those things. Before you try to get into that space because you don’t want to get into that space, and you know your buddy whose property manager calls you up, says, Hey, man, can you help me with this? And you show up to help him. Next thing, you know, you’ve lost this guy, he might still be your buddy, but he thinks you’re a joke, because you didn’t know what any of this stuff was. And so my biggest advice is, you know, get to get an education on the residential side before moving into that side.

Dylan McCabe 24:26
Totally. And there’s so many good resources. I know you and I are both part of level the playing field on Facebook, with Steve Patrick groups like that, that are just man, it’s just priceless. So share a story if you can without getting too detailed, but share a story where you guys have had the opportunity to work a large loss claim and kind of where we were started, what that process looks like and where you ended.

Can you share a specific story?

Cannon Berrong 24:51
Okay. Let’s do this is one of Atlanta. It’s 46 buildings. ended up getting a call out there. You talking about networking groups. A girl who’s in the networking group who works in the landscape side, had a property manager that she was tied with who she worked with here in Atlanta. And this guy basically said, Hey, we’re having some foundation leaks. We’re not sure if it’s the foundation or the chimney. Can these guys come check it? Do you have anybody who can check out the chimney? She said, Yeah, I’ve got a guy. So she calls me, she sends us over there. We hop up there, we take a look at the chimney. As my guys call me. They’re like, Hey, man, chimney looks good. I don’t think it’s an issue up here. But these shingles are shot. I said, Okay. You know, give me a little bit more about it. Shoot me some pictures over company cams, great if anybody’s looking to a place to take pictures that you really keep good records of everything. So he puts it into company cam. So I’m looking at it from off site, and could tell very quickly, that they had a very serious insurance claim on our hands. Again, 46 buildings, it was over 3000 squares. So I go back to this guy and I said, Hey, man, I think the chimney is good based on what we saw on the ground, though it looks like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah with the erosion by the house or by the the townhome. But you get some real issues on your roof up here. Have y’all thought about getting your roofs looked at? And he said, Yeah, we’re actually planning on replacing them here in the next couple of years. And I said, Well, let me help you guys show you what that could look like. So he allowed us to come to their board meeting. Well, by that time, we have all their insurance information as well. So we go to their board meeting, they’re about to change insurance companies, they’re going to nationwide to another insurance company, they had a $10,000 per occurrence, deductible deductible. So these 46 buildings, they have a you know, a tornado that comes through there and tears them all up. $10,000 One one deductible, whereas they, their new policy was gonna have a $25,000 deductible per building. So 46 buildings that’s, you know, a million dollars roundabout in, in deductibles, whereas with the chat right here is 110 thousand dollar deductible. So we went ahead and immediately filed with the insurance company nationwide had the guys out there got them up on the roofs where to go look through everything. This one we had hired a PA on. By the time we were able to file the claim. It was a new it was the new insurance company because we’ve met with them the Thursday before the first and so it just changed over to the new insurance company. So it hired a PA who who hadn’t done much work within the past but in on roofs, but he had done some interior stuff for us and have done a fine job on it. And so we ended up bringing him in there and And we get $400,000 in the first round end up going back in there. Yeah, $822,000 on the second go around. And so this is a complex, it was planned on paying somewhere around $1.5 million for the rooms. And we were able to go get them pretty quickly. $122,000. And so, you know, the cool thing to me is, as we’re doing this, it’s great to be able to put on a great roof. And there’s a lot of companies out there that can put on a great roof. We’re friends with a lot of them, a lot of them, you know, do great work. But we took these peoples out of pocket expense from $1.5 million to under $700,000. And so we’ve completely changed the financial outlook for this community for the next 20 3040 years by letting them hold on to that $820,000 that we got from the insurance company. And so needless to say through that process, These guys were pretty ecstatic. Now I’m trying to keep that as brief as possible. There’s a whole lot of stuff that’s happened in there with inspections with scopes. The scope that we wrote was 107 pages, I take that back the Executive Report we put together with 100, and some pages. So some of that is pictures. But the scope that we wrote for these 46 buildings was over 150 pages long. So there’s a whole lot of stuff that goes into it. And that kind of goes back to if you’re good at the residential stuff, and you can scale it, you can do it. If you’re having a tough time with the residential stuff. Get with some guys who are you thinking kind of up your game? Keep learning, get to that point where you can really go help these people.

Dylan McCabe 29:50
And what was the timeline of that whole process?

Cannon Berrong 29:53
It’s about eight months. And so you know, I skim over. The PA, the PA part of it a little bit because it was not a great experience. At the end of the day. I greatly regretted using this guy. Somebody wants to email me and ask me who it is I’d be more than happy. No, it was, it was a miserable experience. And so let me tell you what I mentioned. A few guys earlier in this I mentioned Greg cannon, Matt Mulholland and David toller. The reason I throw those guys out there is because they’re great PA’s and they’re great at what they do. We screwed up royally going with the guy that we went with and so I throw those guys names out there so that if somebody else’s debate non using somebody, if you want to right off the rip, make sure you get with some good dudes, those are three guys that I would that I would really push you to get with. But you want to go into a little deeper of, of how that process was a mugger. Yeah. So So it took you about a month and a half to get out there. To start doing the inspections, me and my guys had already done the inspections. We already had the pictures together all that takes him another six weeks to put everything together, then we get the adjusters out there. Now in let me say these guys, I know they’ve got a lot going on too. And so, you know, I don’t want to hammer him on the timeline for that. What I’m getting to with that is all this stuff takes time. Then we get the report back and this particular pa wanted to send it straight to an attorney. And so you know, I looked at the scope, but I’m like, bro, we’re gonna pay 33% to an attorney. And then you want your 10% on top of that. There’s some low hanging fruit right here. That’s pretty easy for us to go after that we should be able to get 100% of the time. I don’t need a PA to go after some of this little measly stuff, as I said measly stuff, stuff that we get on a daily basis. We’re dealing with a Residential Roof. And we should get it 46 times over dealing with these commercial roofs. And so he said, you know, basically, well, if you guys want to do that y’all can do that, put your scope together, blah, blah, blah. So in my office, we put the scope together, I wasn’t going to let this customer get screwed by a PA who wasn’t doing his job. So we put that big scope together that I told you about, we go back, we ended up getting it all the way up to $122,000. At that point, it was my recommendation to the client to go ahead and take it to appraisal. The whole time I told him, I thought we would get somewhere between 1.2 and $1.4 million. But told him it was also going to take an extra two to four months, maybe longer to go through the appraisal process. And so ultimately, they decided, hey, we’re good with the 22. Let’s stick here so we can go ahead and get the work done. And again, at the end of the You know, I told these guys, I said, Hey, I’m here to give you advice. I’m here to tell you what I think. But at the end of the day, I’m going to do exactly what you want me to do, because this is your job is your houses and your townhomes. And I’m here to do the right thing for you guys. At the same time, I’m gonna educate you as much as I can. But so all in all, it was a good experience. Again, the part I didn’t like is that the PA didn’t fight the way that they should. And that’s why I threw a few of these other names out there. If people are looking for some great ppas is they can take a lot of that pain off their back. So.

Dylan McCabe 33:39
Yeah, that’s so good. I mean, not all PA’s are created equal. Not all general contractors are created equal. Like Like you said, the adjuster you had back early, you know, when you were doing the rent, mostly residential stuff, educating you guys on the process, but I loved it. What I love about this story is it started through some networking Do a property manager, then that turned into an inspection. And then that turned into a greater scope of work. And obviously, at the end of the day, you guys had a very successful experience. So So what’s your key takeaway and all that. I mean, what’s what’s the big thing that stands out to you about that that you’d want to share with our listeners?

Cannon Berrong 34:22
I would say on the PA side of it, make sure that you’re vetting guys on the front end. Make sure you’ve got a good contract with the customer, make sure you got a good contract with the PA as well. So that going into it, everybody knows who’s supposed to be doing what and fulfilling what obligations, I think that’s huge. And then setting expectations for the client. You know, when you go in and meet with a client, we’re not going to be able to tell them every single time what an insurance company’s gonna pay because there’s going to be so many different variables that we’re not going to Always accurately, tell them exactly what they’re going to get paid. But go ahead and give them some expectation as far as what the process is going to look like. So that on the front end, they’re kind of learning about this. I think bringing value through education is such a huge thing, especially with client retention. If if it takes eight months for something to happen, and this person had in their head, it was gonna take two months, you don’t look that good. But if you let them know from the beginning, hey, based on how this comes back, it’s gonna be an extended period of time. And, you know, set some real expectations there. Nobody can be mad about that. And that’s been a big our biggest thing is making sure that we’re setting real expectations for these people.

Dylan McCabe 35:46
That’s so good. I mean, that’s our here here at RainTight General Contracting in Dallas. That’s our most effective sales tool as well. I mean, I think I mentioned it but I looked at a roof last week and the home Motor already had a general contractor come out and look at it and spend about 10 minutes with him and said, Okay, here’s the process, we’re going to have you file a claim, you’re probably going to get the roof paid for, you’re immediately going to get a check that’s ours, then we’re going to do the work, then you’re going to get another check. That’s ours. And then here’s your out of pocket. That was his sales pitch. Yeah. And so I stood out there with my cloth mask on, during the COVID epidemic, homeowners outside with his mask on and we talked for 30-35 minutes. Yeah, we talked about how we got to know each other. And then we went right into the project, talked about a scope of work, talked about the process, talked about what he’s going to have on his report. I hadn’t even seen his insurance paperwork yet. But I told him to email that to me, we’re going to look at that, then we’re going to put together full scope of work. there’s typically a great disparity between the two. Here’s the reasons why. And then even this morning, we had a short phone call because I sent over an estimate to him. That’s about $11,000 more than his claim. He said, Why is this? I’m like, well, they didn’t add the all these items. Here’s the reasons why, you know, it’s so, but that education puts people at ease. I mean, I know it puts me at ease before I got into roofing. I didn’t know a thing about You could have told me we need this thing over to this thing. Okay. Yeah. I mean, what do you just don’t know. So? Well, a lot of this, like we talked about offline comes back to your leadership. And leadership is a journey I’ve heard. I love reading leadership books by people like john Maxwell and others, and a lot of talk about how leadership is often a thankless calling. It can be a lonely journey, and it’s full of challenges and opportunities and all this stuff. But what would you say has been the biggest key to your leadership at Barron Construction?

What’s the biggest key to your leadership as CEO of Berrong Construction?

Cannon Berrong 37:49
You know, I think one of the things I said before the Zig Ziglar comment on help other people get what they want, you’ll get what you want. Again, I harp on that I do my best to lead by example, every single day. You know, obviously, we’re all human beings, some days, we’re gonna have better days than others. But if you can be a gamer for your guys, and if you can put a game face on, and then they can see the you’re their fearless leader. Yeah, I think that helps these guys, and being able to make sure that that you’re giving them time that you’re being able to see what it is that they want. Because if you can’t see what they want, you can help them get what they want. So to me, I go back to that statement. I think being a great example for the guys. It’s tough to tell guys to be here on time for an eight o’clock meeting. If you’re strolling in to we’ve got a big clock out in the lobby area that they can see when they walk in. And it’s, you know, it’s about that big and his big red digital letter numbers. So that they know if they’re late. And I tell these guys all the time, hey, if we’ve got a meeting at eight o’clock, you need to be there at 755. If you’re there at 756, you’re late, nobody needs to be waiting on you. And so I think just little stuff like that. Making sure to lead by example. I think just goes a long ways. Because if you’re not, nobody’s gonna follow you. And so I think that’s another good one. And then doing what we can to develop other leaders. When you own a business, you’re going to learn it, everybody’s not going to be a leader. That’s just how it’s gonna be. But when you get those guys who you feel like can do good and can be great leaders. Don’t just hold on to those guys. teach those guys when when I’m reading the book, and I think it’s awesome. I want these guys to be reading that same book next, and my guides will tell you there’s plenty of books that I tell them. Hey, you need to check this out. Went out the things. But doing stuff together, you know, at the end of the day living together,

Dylan McCabe 40:12
I like it because it sounds like and I’m a kind of a I love leadership, I got my bachelor’s degrees in organizational leadership and we used a curriculum called the leadership compass. And the whole deal with that was, your leadership starts with your own inner journey. And from that flows, your character, your vision, your skills, and your relationships. And it sounds like you definitely take seriously the whole point of you know, that one of the thing we learned was when you combine a leaders character, and their relationships you have empowering and equipping. And you’re really into that. And you’ve also got a process in place which is measurable and repeatable. So you’re showing your guys how to do it, you’re training them on how to do it, and then you’re on the journey. with him, which is which is huge. So I just think that’s that’s key to talk about because the whole point of this roofing mastery platform is to interview guys like you that are running general contracting companies that are in roofing to talk about leadership, sales and marketing because everything really rises or falls on leadership, for sure. But then if you don’t have a repeatable sales process, you’re not going to grow I mean, you got to have revenue. It can be

Cannon Berrong 41:26
I tell you what I will take guys who are great leaders and great character guys, over guys who know about construction and know about roofing any day of the week, any day of the week, and I will crush you with those guys who are great leaders that are high character guys.

Dylan McCabe 41:40
That’s great. Yeah, that’s that’s key. So let’s let’s talk about the last item on our list. We’ve talked about leadership. We’ve talked about sales. Let’s talk about marketing. I mean, we know that general contracting is super competitive roofing is super competitive. What do you guys do to generate leads roofing leads referral business. Online leads, what’s your approach with all that? What have you done? That’s not worked? What have you done that has worked?

What’s your roofing lead generation strategy?

Cannon Berrong 42:07
So, you know, you always want to have different buckets, different avenues that you’re getting your leads from. So that you’re you’re hitting on all cylinders. We’ve done everything from Google ads, Google pay per clicks, Facebook ads, throwing stuff out there on LinkedIn. All those are good. We’ve got a company who runs our website. SEO is a huge deal. You know, to get yourself at the top of Google searches that are not paid ads is a huge deal because it’s an investment. It’s something you’re putting money into month in month out so that you can stick up there. Anybody can pay, you know, however much a click and be the top guy for a certain period of time. But if If you’ve got somebody who knows how to run your website, who can raise the amount of search engines, search engine optimization who can increase where you’re at, in those search engines? I think that’s huge. All that being said, I think the best thing in the world is word of mouth. Not just doing a great job for somebody, getting reviews for them. Having talked to their neighbor, having them talk to their co worker, if you’re talking about a multifamily or commercial project. I think there’s a book I was reading this called contagious, and it’s basically how things catch on and one of the things that they talk about. People don’t buy from me until they’ve seen your company seven times. And so do whatever you can to increase how fast you can get them to see your company a certain amount of times. And so, you know, for us in the residential space, it’s okay if we get, you know, john smith is gonna let us do his roof a couple days before the project, put out postcards in the neighborhood. Give it to the neighbors make sure everybody knows exactly what exactly what you’re going to be doing on exactly what day and that way they’ve seen you. And then the day that you’re in there, go knock on their door and let them know, Hey, we’re going to be next door. It might be a little loud. Here’s my card, anything fires in your yard, whatever it might be, call me. I’m here to help you. Second time they’ve heard your name. Later that day, you come back around the yard, go talk to them. Hey, you know, Mr. Jones, how everything looked today all day, blah, blah, blah. Now you’ve touched this guy three days before he even finished his neighbor’s roof. At that point, there’s a high probability He’s willing to let you on his roof if his roof has a similar shape to the neighbors. And then my computer was saying, internet unstable. So hopefully that’s not an issue I can hear. So you put yourself in front of these people as much as you can. And I think I think word of mouth is always going to be the best. I think you need to do those other things if you really want to be a player, especially on a big scale. But at the end of the day, word of mouth, the best thing you can do, don’t be afraid to tell people Hey, the way that the way that I’m successful is by former customers like you, helping the new people, here’s how you can help me.

Dylan McCabe 45:41
That’s so good. And you can’t do that if you don’t do a great job. So it’s just it’s all of the pieces of the process and and we talked about being remarkable give world class customer service in such a way that people will remark about you. They’re happy. We educate our customers. We anytime we do a job for a rainy day general contracting, not roofing mastery, but for Ray tight, we say, here’s the process. And at the end of the process, you are going to get a text message asking for a review. And our goal is to give you world class customer service so that you’re not only going to give us a five star review, but you want to, if there’s any point in this process where you want me to do something, or you have a question, and you’re not happy about something, tell me because I want you to be so excited by the end of this that you want to tell all your families and friends. And it works. It just works. It does. And then you get that review. And man you stand out when somebody searches general contracting company near me, and they see that list on Google and you’ve got, you know, 50 reviews with a 4.9 rating and your competitor has two reviews, and a 3.0 rating. It’s a no-brainer. Yeah.

Cannon Berrong 46:51
Go ahead. Sorry.

Dylan McCabe 46:52
No, so it’s just it’s like you said though, it’s all of it. You got to have a good presence. You have to do remarkable work. You have to to do some paid stuff to get things constantly going, but you have to be investing in the long term game with SEO and stuff like that, too. I like that you mentioned that. But at the end of the day, it’s all about doing a really good job and getting that referral business. So it’s good.

Cannon Berrong 47:14
Yeah. And I’ll tell you for us, every single year, there’s kind of something that we’re focusing on. And sometimes that changes throughout the year. Sometimes we know going into, hey, here’s an area that we’ve been weak, we need to get better at it. Going into 2020 for me, one of the things that I knew that I needed to do a better job of was networking within the business. I think so often, the roofing company down the road sees you as the enemy. And the fact of the matter is, very seldom do we ever come across each other. And there’s so many roofing companies out here, so many roofs, very seldom do we ever come across each other, really in competition on the same roof. And so one of the things that that I knew that I needed to work Con this year was networking within the industry. And that’s not for me it wasn’t going out and finding guys who just started the roofing company. And, and helping those guys, although, you know, it’d be nice for me to do that. But for me, I needed to go find other guys who I felt like their game was up here, so that I could make sure that my game was always airtight. And if there was something that we were great at, that they weren’t great at, that we were able to kind of bounce ideas off each other and help. And, you know, we’ve spent quite a bit of time with, with Lee hate and RCA there’s been a whole lot of stuff that we’ve been able to learn from Lee Lee is a great marketer. Lee is a great personality, as far as, you know, at least the kind of guy who could go out there and you know, sell Flex Seal, you know, he kind of got agent, he just got, you know, big personality to him. And so, you know, there’s stuff from that that we’ve been able to learn Couple other guys that we’ve done a lot with Dominic Frazier and Frazier roofing. You know, Fraser’s 20-30 minutes down the street here in metro Atlanta, great dude runs a great organization, real high character guy. You know, we’ve been able to bounce a lot of ideas off each other and help each other grow. Another one we’ve done a lot of work with here in Georgia. Jeremy Gilstrap, Jeremy’s over at DreamWorks, you know, there’s stuff that we’ve been able to help him with. There’s stuff that he’s been able to help us with. And at the end of the day, you’re doing this podcast you are doing this podcast to help all the roofers and so guys need to understand latch on to other great guys in industry. There’s so many good dudes out there. There’s plenty of bad apples to just like there aren’t any industry. But grab a hold on to some of those good dudes. Some guys that you really feel like you can learn with and grow with and that Everybody grow together because you’re not going to be competing against each other on a daily basis. It’s just not how it works.

Dylan McCabe 50:09
Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, we all stand on the shoulders of others. How in the world can you get to where you’re going without some insight from other people who are successful and going ahead if you and that’s the whole point of that’s why we call it roofing mastery, because mastery is a process. And there’s synergy when you and I get together and man, I learned things from you, and you learn things from me. And we’re both better on the other side of it. But if you have a scarcity mindset, you’re going to be afraid, like, oh, what if I say that I do pay per click ads? And what if somebody else does it? Well, they’re going to they’re probably doing it anyway. So so it’s so good. I love that that philosophy will well candidate I want to be mindful of your time and just have one quick question at the end here. What’s a parting piece of advice for anybody listening to this?

Parting piece of advice?

Cannon Berrong 50:58
I would say focus on your effort to focus on your processes and procedures. I think at the end of the day, when you find something that that you know is going to work, put a lot of effort into that, and put a lot of effort into that day in and day out. But at the end of the day, processes and procedures, you can be a great sales guy. But if you don’t have processes and procedures, you’re not gonna be able to sell anybody compared to the way you could, if you’ve got those processes and procedures in place. I don’t get paid to push the book traction, but I tell people time and time again, if there’s one book that I could give a ton of credit to, it would be traction. So I know a lot of roofers aren’t good at reading. So you can get it on audiobook as well. That’s how I get it. But so put some effort into that put some effort into those processes and procedures. And if you do that and you do it the right way and you will Work with good people and you network with the right people. You’re going to be in great shape.

Dylan McCabe 52:04
Heck yeah, good stuff. Well, Canon Berrong with Berrong construction. Thanks for joining the show, man.

Cannon Berrong 52:09
I appreciate it.

Dylan McCabe 52:10
All right, what a good interview with Cannon Berrong. I love what he said about the process. And if you want to know what that book was, the book is Traction by Gino Wickman. Traction by Gino Wickman. I got the book. I also got the audible version. So I got the paperback as well because you guys are going to see on my Instagram, you know, post in quotes from this one. I love the one he’s got a quote. Early on in the book. He says Vision Without traction is hallucination. So anyway, great book, also great insights. I love what he said about leadership. You’ve got to be a relatable leader, you’ve got to show by example. And you also have to just let your people know that you’re there to be you’re there to be there for them. They know they can count on you, you know, you can count on them. And I love what he said about marketing too. You’ve got to have a broad approach a long term approach with search engine optimization. But then you’ve also got to have referrals and pay per click and stuff to generate those immediate sales and immediate revenue. so shameless plug if you want to learn more about how we can partner with you to completely automate your review management process, and do like we’ve done with rain tide general contracting, and gotten almost 100 new reviews in the last 60 days. Or if you want to learn more about SEO, or whatever it might be just book a free strategy call with us there. And we’re also rolling out some exciting things in the future for owners of roofing companies that we’re excited to talk with you about. Please check out our website at roofing mastery comm To learn more, you can also join our Facebook group, which we’re growing is very small at this moment, but we want to grow it and if this has been helpful to you, please take a minute to rate and review on iTunes so other people know hey, check this podcast out. Alright guys, this is Dylan McCabe with the roofing mastery podcast. If you have any questions or topics you want discussed, go to our Facebook group, join the group and let us know and I will get you in the next episode.