I started my first roofing company with a partner who had $20,000 in the bank. No war chest. No investors. No roadmap. Just a solid local reputation and a crew that knew how to work.
We sold Cherry Roofing & Siding for $6 million at close, with more in escrow.
After that came Munz Roofing. We rolled three separate companies into one platform, built the systems, and took it to market. That exit was $36 million.
Across six companies in five industries, 1SEO, Dilling HVAC, Cherry Roofing & Siding, Painting Pups, Shock I.T. Support, and Munz Roofing, the total tops $100 million in exits.
I’m not telling you those numbers to impress you. I’m telling you because every dollar of those outcomes came from the same set of principles. Not luck. Not timing. Not some secret only private equity insiders know. Principles any roofing owner can apply starting this week.
Here’s what they are.
Every owner has a vision. “I want to be the biggest in my market.” “I want to retire at 55.” “I want to build something I can sell.”
That’s not a plan. That’s a wish.
Vision only has power when it’s attached to specific, measurable goals with timelines. Break your long-term vision into annual targets. Break annual targets into quarterly milestones. Review them consistently. The owners who scale treat their goals like a scoreboard, not a motivational poster.
Every person who touches a customer is a salesperson. Your CSRs. Your project managers. Your production crews. Every interaction either builds trust and creates referrals or it doesn’t.
Invest in your sales process. Train your team. Track close rates and booking rates every week. Without leads, salespeople can’t sell. Without a sales process, leads don’t convert. Both sides of that equation matter.
The roofing companies winning right now run operations like technology businesses. Field management software configured correctly. CSRs booking appointments in a CRM. KPIs pulling automatically. Marketing tracked to the dollar.
74 percent of contractors view AI as the next efficiency engine, but only 25 percent are using it. Early adopters are seeing 48 percent productivity gains and 45 percent time savings. That gap is your opening. If your operation still runs on spreadsheets, whiteboards, and phone calls, you’re leaving margin on the table every day. The right tech stack doesn’t replace your people. It makes your people better.
Your team performs at the level you model. That’s it. If you show up inconsistent, distracted, or reactive, your team will too. If you show up with a clear standard and hold it every day, your team rises to meet it.
Leadership isn’t a title. It’s a daily decision. Communicate your vision clearly. Make tough calls when they need to be made. Build other leaders inside your company so the business doesn’t depend entirely on you. That last part matters more than most owners realize, especially when it’s time to sell.
Referrals are great. They’re also unpredictable. You can’t scale on referrals alone.
You need a real strategy. Google Ads, local SEO, social media, email follow-up, SMS. Not all at once, but a deliberate mix that generates consistent, trackable lead flow. Know your cost per lead. Know your CAC. Know which channels produce and which ones don’t.
If your phone isn’t ringing, your ads aren’t working. And “our ads aren’t working” is almost always a systems problem, not a budget problem.
This is where most growing roofing companies fall apart. The owner is the system. Every decision flows through them. Every problem lands on their desk. The business can’t run without them in it every day.
That’s not a business. That’s a job with employees.
Documented processes, standard operating procedures, clear workflows for every role. These are what allow your company to grow beyond what you can personally manage. They’re also what a buyer looks for when they evaluate your company. A business that can run without its owner is an asset. A business that can’t is a liability.
Clear expectations. Regular performance reviews. Real consequences when standards aren’t met.
Most owners are too lenient for too long and then overreact when things go wrong. Neither extreme works. Build a culture where accountability is consistent and expected, not personal and sporadic. The best teams in this industry aren’t the most talented. They’re the most disciplined.
If you don’t know your close rate, your booking rate, your average job value, and your gross margin, you’re running blind. You might be profitable. You might not be. You genuinely don’t know.
Track five to seven core KPIs weekly. Review them as a team. Act on what you see. The owners who know their numbers make better decisions faster. That speed compounds over time into a real competitive advantage.
Bad communication kills deals, loses customers, burns out employees, and creates chaos on job sites. Most operational problems trace back to the same root cause. Someone didn’t communicate clearly, consistently, or early enough.
Set the expectation that communication is a non-negotiable standard inside your company. With your team, with your customers, with your vendors. It costs nothing and it fixes more problems than any software or system ever will.
The contractors who scale fastest put themselves in rooms with other high-performing owners. Not to network. To compete, to learn, and to be held to a higher standard.
If everyone around you thinks $3M is the ceiling, that becomes your ceiling. Get around people doing $10M, $20M, $50M. Listen to how they think. Steal what works. Raise your bar.
Every one of these principles connects to the same outcome. A business that is organized, scalable, and valuable. Not just busy. Worth something.
Cherry was worth something because we built the systems, dialed in the sales process, and ran it like a real business. Munz was worth $36 million because we took three good companies and turned them into one platform buyers wanted to own.
That’s what Build It To Sell Itâ„¢ actually means. You’re not just running a roofing company. You’re building an asset.
These 10 aren’t a checklist. They’re how the operators who exit at premium multiples actually run their companies. Start with the one that’s costing you the most right now.
The next Build It To Sell Itâ„¢ Mastermind is where contractors bring real bottlenecks against these 10 principles and leave with a 90-day plan. Two days, in person, with operators who’ve actually built and sold companies. That’s the room.
