Building Business and Balance with Hunter Ballew

Ever wonder how a small-town guy from South Carolina can transform into a successful entrepreneur? Meet Hunter Ballew, the founder of Revolt and Roofing.com, who shares his compelling journey from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of business success. Listen as Hunter unveils his life story, which spans his idyllic upbringing, a fortuitous meeting with his wife at a gas station, a stint in the Marine Corps, and his foray into entrepreneurship.

Hunter isn't just a business mogul but a maestro of connecting people. He will guide us through the growth journey of his ventures, notably Roofcon, which blossomed from a small gathering of 40 to a magnificent assembly of 3400 attendees and 250 vendors. Get insights into his passion for hosting events, the challenges he faced amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and consecutive hurricanes, and how he overcame his introverted nature to become a pro at connecting with people.

But Hunter's story doesn't end with his business success; he's also a beacon of balance, brilliantly juggling work and personal life. He'll share how he maintains harmony between his professional pursuits and his relationship with his wife. Plus, get a glimpse of Hunter's transformation from focusing solely on income to creating meaningful impact, which culminated in the Six-Figure Blueprint program. His friend Jordan's story serves as a poignant reminder of the impermanence of life and the drive to make every day count. Whether you're an entrepreneur seeking motivation, a lover of South Carolina's enchanting landscape, or simply in search of inspiration, this episode with Hunter Ballew promises to be a riveting listen.

NOTABLE QUOTES
"I feel like the more money you have, you can impact more people. Not that you can’t impact people without money—you can. But I do think at scale you can help more people with money." – Hunter
"I just always loved bringing people together and building that community." – Hunter
"Most people don’t make money on events. But the impact that can be made is super fulfilling." – Hunter
"One thing about starting your own events is all the relationships you can create through those events." – Hunter
"How much do you believe in what you do?" – Hunter
"I will develop millions of leaders that go to impact billions of lives." – Hunter
"It was a flip from the focus on income to the focus on impact." – Hunter
"The more consistent and the more I stand firm on my belief in the things that I want to go after, the better it has been in the relationship with me and my wife as well." – Philip
"For me that was attractive. I wanted to see her just do her own thing and not just be supportive of me." – Hunter
"We’re going to give you all the tools, all the training, all the technology to make six figures, but at the end of the day, you have to bring the work ethic." – Hunter
"That’s how you make good money. Showing up, being consistent, being there. Over time, people will get to know you, they’ll like you, they’ll trust you and they know you’re going to stick around." – Philip
"KPI trackers just help us keep the train on the tracks, moving towards the goal." – Hunter
"Being able to see that high-level detail and then being able to break that down really quickly is a huge part of being in that business owner perspective." – Philip
"Make every day count." – Hunter

RESOURCES
Hunter
Website: https://roofing.com/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redwhiteballew/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunterballew/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redwhiteballew 

Philip
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Transcript

Philip Sessions: 0:15

What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Speaking Sessions podcast. I've got Hunter Blue here. He's a founder of Revolt and Roofingcom. He's a Wall Street Journal bestseller Make it count, Make sure to go check that out and he is doing a bunch of phenomenal things Besides that. He's also a husband and a father of two younger kids. So he's right there in that area with me with my one younger kid, but he's doing some phenomenal things. We actually had to reschedule the podcast because he was going to go hang out with this guy, John Maxwell. I don't know if you've heard of him. He's kind of like the father of leadership. No, but it's really cool and I'm excited to have you on here, Hunter. But tell us a little bit more about yourself before we dive into the podcast episode.

Hunter Ballew: 1:04

Yeah, man, I appreciate you having me on, phillip. It's always a joy to hop on and talk shop business and life. I didn't know you're the same age as me before we got on, so that's pretty cool that we're right there together and both trying to make an impact. But for me, man 32 years old, I'm from this little bitty town, travelers Rest, south Carolina. I always tell people I was born, raised and stayed. I really love it. I travel all over the place and people always ask me what's my favorite place? Where would I want to move? And I really love it here. You got the mountains, you got the lakes, you got the beach. A couple hours away there's Atlanta and Charlotte. For big cities, greenville is a pretty big city, so I really love it here.

Hunter Ballew: 1:40

I grew up in CR, went to Travelers Rest High School and actually met my wife, who also went to Travelers Rest High School. She was a year behind me after we got out of high school at the local Sphinx gas station here in Travelers Rest. So I always tell that it's kind of funny that I met my wife at the gas station, but it's the truth. I was at pump four, she was at pump 13. And so we've been together now 12 years. She was 19 and I was 20 years old. We have a little boy that's almost five years old He'll be five in December this year and then a little girl that is about a week from being a year old, so pretty excited about that. She's getting big, crawling all over the place so close to walking for like a month and a half Now. We thought she was going to do it any day, but she's so stubborn, so that's kind of the personal side, man. I graduated from that high school in 2009.

Hunter Ballew: 2:30

I got out of high school, went to the Marine Corps, then I went to the fire department full-time for five years and just kind of try to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Both of my parents were addicts. When I was younger, I kind of split my family apart, and so I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do for me, what my legacy was going to be. Funny enough, I got the shirt on what my legacy was going to be and I knew pretty quick, like within the first couple years at the fire department in the Marines, like this thing, I'm going to cut it, like I want to do some big things on to impact people, and I feel like the more money you have, you can impact more people. Not that you can't impact people without money you can, but I do think at scale you can help more people with money. So I wanted to step away from the fire department and just chase kind of that entrepreneurial dream, and so I did that.

Hunter Ballew: 3:13

Man and I started a company called Cornerstone Construction. For anyone watching in the upstate of South Carolina, they probably have seen the yellow trucks driving around everywhere. I'd say we're probably one of the bigger companies in the upstate and from there, man, we just kind of created this ecosystem in the roofing space in the industry. It started with Cornerstone and then we started a conference called RoofCon. Then I sold my company Cornerstone and I acquired a company called Roofingcom. Then I reacquired Cornerstone Construction and in the process of all that we started Revolt because we wanted to make an impact on people outside of the roofing industry as well just business owners in general and so we started a company called Revolt.

Hunter Ballew: 3:52

We throw about a dozen events a year. I think we're around. Our first event ever was like August 8th or August 9th of 2019. So just four years ago and we're right there at 60 events. We throw a good bit of events. We have a good time doing that. I've always loved bringing people together since I was really young, and so that's a way for me to do that is through retreats, through conferences and things like that. So that's kind of where I'm at now. We do have an app as well that's closing in on 100,000 users, called Repcard, that sells reps and entrepreneurs use. But that's kind of the core of what I do and who I am.

Philip Sessions: 4:28

Man, yeah, you're doing a lot of things which is really cool and really exciting. I want to go back to that personal thing real quick, because you didn't mention that. For those that are not from South Carolina, spinks, at least to my understanding, is a South Carolina based gas station as well. I know it's starting to spread out and everything. So it's kind of funny You're keeping everything TR and South Carolina within your whole personal life and everything, which is it's really funny there also.

Philip Sessions: 4:55

And like you, man, I'm from, oh, I'm from the Houston area, unlike you, but I love it up here because, yeah, you're close to the mountains, you're close to the beach, or pretty close. I was a little bit closer being in the Houston area, but beach is about the same brown water, brown sand kind of thing. But I love the mountains so much more because I'm pretty pale, so I kind of turn into a lobster and back to pale again. So it's better for me just to be in the mountains and everything. It's just a beautiful area for sure. But, man, I really want to dive into the fact that you talked about. You're doing all these events and everything, and I feel like so many speakers. First of all, they struggle with speaking, but I want to take a little bit different route here really quick and just talk about besides, like let's just start with. Why did you decide to start doing events?

Hunter Ballew: 5:42

Yeah. So I really just kind of piece this together in like the last year, year and a half, and kind of had this realization when I was young bring people together. I just always was the guy that would get my group of friends and say, hey, this Saturday let's go to the park and let's play ball, let's have a party. You know, when I got into high school it was inviting half of the class and having 100 people up in the mountains doing a bonfire. I just always loved bringing people together and kind of building that community. And then I left high school, went to the Marine Corps camaraderie. I left the Marine Corps, went to the fire department camaraderie and when I left, that started a business. Well, first the business we didn't have dozens and dozens of employees, it was me and a couple of other people, so it wasn't this big group and I missed it. So that's why we started Revolt and we started RoofCon was to have another place where we could bring people together.

Hunter Ballew: 6:30

Now with RoofCon you know that's an annual event this year in November will be our fifth year doing that. It went from that first year we had like 40 people there to the next year 900 to the next year 2100 to the next year, 2200. And then this past year we had 3400 attendees and 250 vendors. So that's great and it's been a lot of fun seeing the growth.

Hunter Ballew: 6:51

But in between the rest of the year, like I want to hang out with people, I want to spend time, I want to grow, I want to level up, I want to surround myself with other entrepreneurs, and so that's when we do those events through Revolt and we just haven't wanted to stop, like I'm always thinking of new events. We just announced one today. I don't know if you saw my Facebook post publicly this has kind of been out there for my Revolt members that are part of our part of our mastermind, but publicly I just announced today a new wilderness retreat we're doing called Inferno, and I'm super excited about that. But always trying to get creative, come up with new events. We had our couples retreat two months ago. Last month we did our father son retreat. So yeah, I just love bringing people together and leveling up and surrounding myself with good people.

Philip Sessions: 7:35

Man, and that's that's pretty cool, that you're doing all these things. That's a lot of fun bringing people together. I found that I like to do that as well. I used to be this shy, introverted kid, didn't want anything to do with anybody, but then I started realizing I was getting passed over and I wanted to change something, and so that's why I got into speaking. So you doing all these events, I mean it's really cool and I want you to break down real quick. Roofcon, because some people probably have heard of that, and it's obviously becoming a bigger event Once you get over a thousand. I would definitely say it's a bigger event, for sure. But you said the first year was 40 people. Bring us back there. Like how did you feel like going in and starting this thing called RoofCon and then I'll just say, only having 40 people? I still think it's great for a first event, but you're a big dreamer, so I'm guessing you're probably like man. We only had 40 people. But bring us back to Hunter five years ago when he had 40 people at RoofCon.

Hunter Ballew: 8:34

Yeah, no, that's really spot on man. So the first event was again, I don't remember if it was August 8th or 9th, but it was one of those days for sure 2019. So just over four years ago, we had our first event. That was in Greenville, down on Rutherford Road, at a little event center, and we had about 40 people at that event too, and I left that event and one of the speakers that I brought in was from the roof and industry and he's like dude, like we need to do this. That event was for revolt and it was about growing your business, but also about the personal side, and our core values are integrity, leadership, legacy that's what we preach and so one of the guys that was from the roof and industry that had spoke he's like dude, we need this for the roof and industry. Like every conference out there and there's only a couple of conferences at that time but they were all about money, money, money, money, money. And, to be honest, a lot of them most of them that were already created were about hey, get away from your family, come to Vegas, let's do drugs and go out to the strip clubs and do the things that roofers do. Roofers do their crowd not all roofers and so I was like you know what, let's try it, let's throw it together. This was again August of 2019. And I decided, for sure, to do it in September of 2019. And then, about 60 days later, we were having our first event. It was November 8th and 9th of 2019. So almost four years ago this year. And so we threw it together.

Hunter Ballew: 10:04

I had some pretty good speakers from the roof and industry. I thought, for sure, we were going to have 100 people there. You know, my speakers were kind of promoting it. They thought we were going to have 250 there. Got there, there was 40 man and I was bummed, like I was super bummed, because I am really competitive. I want to be the best, you know, I want to provide the most value, and I felt really let down and I felt like I let the speakers down as well. You know, a lot of these guys were big names in the industry doing a lot more revenue than I was. At that time I was still kind of small potatoes. We only had done like 5 million that year in revenues and these guys were in the multiple, multiple weight figures, and so I remember going around and like apologizing, basically, to these speakers.

Hunter Ballew: 10:43

We were in a little crappy hotel. This is a kind of funny backstory here, maybe motivation for anyone listening that wants to do an event and not to be too hard on yourself. But I wanted to do this event. I talked to a dude. I'm like hey, where should we do it? You know we're looking at nationally is like, oh man, the opera land. You know what the opera land is here to that Mm-hmm, pretty nice of him center there. And so he's like dude at the opulent. I'm awesome, let's do it at the opulent. So I tell my one of my people on my team I'm not gonna say their names so I don't embarrass them so they call in, they book it.

Hunter Ballew: 11:14

I get up there, I roll up to the hotel on the first one there, of course, on November 7th 2019 and I walk in. I'm looking around, like this place is not nice, like Floating in the hot tub Floor, looks like dog puke on it. I'm like what the heck is good, this is not nice. So I called the dude that said it was really nice. He's like yeah, man, I don't know what you're talking about. And he pulls up and he's like bro, you booked the Opryland in, not the Opryland, so he booked the wrong hotel and it wasn't super nice, but we pushed through it. And I tell you what one of the guys they grabbed me on the shoulder when I was apologizing for the low turnout.

Hunter Ballew: 11:51

We had 10 vendors there and 40 attendees, so 10 people companies came and set up their booths and promoted it and all the things. We had 40 people and one of the guys grabbed me around the shoulders and he said listen, all we need to do is change one life as all it matters. If we do that, that is a success. As I left there kind of thinking, okay, probably not gonna do this again, if I'm being honest, and that next week, man, if there was 40 people there, like 39 of them were on Facebook talking about how it's the best event They've ever been to, and I still, to this day it's crazy because there's only 40 people there, but it's like every three or four months I'll reconnect. I just did it.

Hunter Ballew: 12:27

This past weekend we had a retreat Gallibur I do came up to me. He was like hey, man, I know you don't remember me, but I was at the first roof come best event I ever been to. And so I was like alright. Well, maybe, maybe it's worth doing. You know, if we can get a couple hundred people there this next year, let's just do it, let's commit to it.

Hunter Ballew: 12:42

So we started looking at the NRG you NRG Center in Houston and you know what happened in 2020. Covid hit. Yeah, oh, my gosh, dude, now we can't do an event, what are we gonna do? Or people gonna show up, and I was very like I Don't care, let's just do it anyways. That's what we did, man. We did it in in Houston NRG Center, october of 2020. We had 900 people show up and 50 vendors. So we had more vendors the second year and we did attendees the first year.

Hunter Ballew: 13:11

So that was. That was pretty cool to see that growth. But you know, not not easy. Events are not easy. Most people don't make money on events. You got to have some kind of back-end offer to make the money. But the impact that can be made is is man, is it's super fulfilling, to say the least, like super, super fulfilling the messages you get year-round of people and their growth. Not just as like a sales guy coming in and saying, hey, only did 800,000 last year and this year I did 1.2 million, but I saved my marriage, I lost weight, I was suicidal and now I'm not like those messages, or man, they're everything.

Philip Sessions: 13:49

Man, and that's incredible. There and and that's what I love about events to my first event only had seven people, which was pretty much all the speakers and then a couple of people, but yeah, it was. It was pretty crazy to see. Actually I think it was 10. I keep saying seven, but I think it was actually 10, so seven of them were speakers and then like three people in the crowd. So, yeah, you did a lot better than me and it is something. It's definitely difficult.

Philip Sessions: 14:14

Man, I like to do that event and so many people don't think about that and and actually I want you to talk about this real quick because it's not talked about a lot and this is a little off subject. But the fact that you said usually events, you don't make money, I think a lot of people see, and it's probably more like the 10 X advanced, you see, like these bigger fancier fans, for You're you're spending a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand dollars on a ticket and and you're like all these guys got to be making handover fist on this and really they're they're still not making money on the event Because of the speakers they pay, so so tell us a little bit about that.

Hunter Ballew: 14:51

Yes, rare that, at least from my conversations, that I've had a lot of conversations with people that run events, because I've just said in that circle and usually they're not making money on the event unless they have a back at all for that they're selling. So like for us, you know, our way to make money is to say, hey, we got three thousand people that showed up to our vent, but of those three thousand they're not all buying units, like they're not all people that we have something to sell to. Because we work with entrepreneurs, we work with business owners. So if the average guy and this is just you know math that the average business owner brings nine people with them and that means we only have 300 business owners at the event, it's really more than that. Our average is probably like four per team, but you just do the math on that. It's like okay if we can close ten of those at whatever your your Ticket prices. So like for us, revolta's thirty thousand dollars a year.

Hunter Ballew: 15:42

So last year we closed I think it was 18 and we didn't really pitch it like I just mentioned it from stage on the cave you have interest in joining it because we kind of from the very beginning. That was another thing that differentiated us is we focused on personal development, not just business. We focused on integrity, leadership, legacy. But we also promised that it wouldn't be a pitch fest, because every other vent is just pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch pitch. So we have never wanted it to be a pitch fest. But at the same time it's like, hey, we can't just keep losing money on these events.

Hunter Ballew: 16:11

There are some people I know that make money, money on events, but usually those are the guys that are doing you know that. They've been in business for 20 years and their brand is so big that they don't have to spend a ton of money marketing the event. They just fill it up Because of the reputation for us. You know, last year did we lost over a million dollars on our event, even though we had that massive growth 3,400 people, 250 vendors showed up. But we planned the event for 5,000 Because we thought we were gonna have it just based off a trajectory and the people talking. And then we had a hurricane hit the week before, which is not good when I'm in the roofing industry, it's all the guys going to wear the hurricane and then we had it was like two weeks before and then we had another hurricane hit during the event.

Hunter Ballew: 16:55

So yeah, I just wallowed our ticket sales man. I mean I spent $750,000 just on AV, just the stage set up screens, the audio, all that stuff and it was beautiful. I mean it looked like a full-blown Taylor Swift concert in there. It was. It was awesome, but it cost me a lot of money. Yeah, we've. We've learned to adjust and make sure we account for things like hurricanes moving forward.

Philip Sessions: 17:21

Yeah, that's definitely tough. I would think you'd want to make sure not to plan around that time of year there.

Hunter Ballew: 17:27

So she literally Company. Yeah, you wouldn't think there's a hurricane in November. It's just bad luck.

Philip Sessions: 17:33

Yeah, yeah, man, oh, that's rough, but yeah, that's the side that most people don't see when it comes to these events. They just see, oh yeah, this big ticket price or oh yeah, you've got these vendor packages, which definitely helps when you have the sponsors and the vendor packages to help make up for some of that Money, but it doesn't do everything that for you, and so let's let's shift a little bit here. So I know you've been speaking on a lot of stages, and not just the ones that you've created. Obviously, that's a great way to be able to go speak, and I suggest that to people as they're trying to get those reps in. So I would love for you to kind of give us some insight to you, because obviously you've created a lot of events and I'm not exactly sure when you started getting invited to other stages, but I'm I'm gonna guess that it was like after you started doing some of your own events. But tell us that journey of how you went from or how it started, where you got on the stages.

Hunter Ballew: 19:19

Yeah, yeah. So there was a Few before I started my own events mostly smaller kind of gigs, but definitely the bigger ones with like thousands people, hundreds of people Came after I started doing my own events. One thing about starting your own events is all the the Relationships you can create through those events. So, even like our retreats, our smaller retreats with just our members, we have, you know, 80 members come out to retreat and I'll bring in guest speakers, because my members don't want to hear me Just talk and talk and talk. I like to bring in guest speakers that are, you know, experts in their space. They might be an expert in marketing or operations or sales or Real estate investing or whatever it is it's. I'll bring in other people. Well, that's a great opportunity to say, hey, I'm gonna give you access to my stage and my audience for you to talk and to get another rep. And then, in turn, what do they do? They turn around and when they have an event or they have a friend that has an event, they're looking for somebody. They refer me. So that's been really cool. Cool to see the growth in that.

Hunter Ballew: 20:20

You know, last year I probably did I don't know 25 or 30 stages last year, which was a lot, you know, to be traveling that much like two, three times a month, it was just non stop, especially during the summer. And this year I kind of committed to staying home more. I've done only a couple of you mentioned it before we started the show. But yeah, going to going to Africa next week to speak at a pretty big conference I'm excited about that.

Hunter Ballew: 20:45

I did that one just because I've never spoke in Africa, so I figured that'd be pretty cool. But outside of that man just kind of taking it easy, focusing on the business, I think there's a real thing around. You know, porn into others, but not refilling your cup enough or refilling the cup of your people enough inside of your team. And 2022, I spent so much time just going out, pouring into others and speaking in events and running events and I don't feel like I did enough of pouring back into me and haven't having mentors pouring to me and be pouring into my team. So this year was kind of reevaluating that, making sure that I did a good job of spreading the love.

Philip Sessions: 21:24

Mmm man, and you beat me to it. I was just gonna ask you how, how did you create that harmony there? Because I just think about some events that I go out and speak at, or go one of these business conferences, and everything, and that Does creates a look, some stress within my marriage because, okay, I'm going out and doing this, so we've got a daughter under two and so now that's just a lot on my wife to take care of, plus Going to work full-time. So how are you creating that harmony? First of all within marriage, and then we'll go into the business side.

Hunter Ballew: 21:54

Yes, actually one of my favorite topics to talk about man in my book. You mentioned that, make it count. There's a section in there it's called work life beliefs. Everyone talks about work life theory and my whole concept is working life belief. What that means is you got this seesaw and the pivot point is based off of your belief in your why and what you do and your Wife's belief in what you do.

Hunter Ballew: 22:17

First, it starts with you, the individual. Like how much do you believe in what you do? Because if I really believe and going out and speaking and changing lives and I'm doing it for that purpose and not just to make extra money that I can be willing to sacrifice a little bit of time at home. But my wife has to believe that too, because if she sees me just doing it for money at some point you don't need any more money. You know for us, like and not to say that in an arrogant way but like you, just you don't have to keep stacking up money, right, like it has to be about the impact. And so I just challenge people all the time to get real clear on why you're doing what you're doing. I know that sounds cliche. That's like the thing to say nowadays, while these motivational videos but it's true Like, get very, very, very defined on what your life mission is. For me, we have an exercise called Define, where we help people define their life mission statement. All these businesses out there, these entrepreneurs, they have mission statements for the business but they don't have them for their personal life. For me it is. I will develop millions of leaders that go into impact billions of lives.

Hunter Ballew: 23:14

I believe that with all of my heart and all my soul and I know that I have to have to sacrifice some time with my son, with my daughter, with my wife, with people at work I have to do these trips to Africa. I have to go to Knoxville, I have to go to Portland. I have to do the things. But my wife believes it too, and if she didn't, she wouldn't be as supportive, she wouldn't be taking care of the kids, knowing that I got to be gone, you know, two weeks out of the month. But she does get it and she does support it and she does.

Hunter Ballew: 23:39

The cool thing for us man is like she gets to see all the text, she gets to see the messages, she gets to see the mail I get where I get a handwritten letter from someone that's been impacted by our retreat. She sees it. She sees the change. She comes to the couples retreat and here's the guys that have come through our retreats talking about their life being changed. She sees the wives of those men talking about how they're a better father, how they quit drinking, how they lost weight, all the things. So it's not just me maligning off talking about it. She gets to see the result.

Philip Sessions: 24:08

And so how was that? Obviously, now you're at this point, you've created this impact. It's you know. I can see the naysayer saying well, of course, hunter, it's easy, your wife can see all that. But what about when you first started, when it wasn't necessarily there? How did those conversations look to get her to believe in you and believe in the goal where y'all were trying to go, or I guess you, more specifically, were trying to go with it all?

Hunter Ballew: 24:34

Yeah, man, I think there's a level of luck involved that I found such a supportive, awesome wife. I mean, I tell people at the time I give her a hard time but I tell everybody else you know I really lucked up Like she's as supportive as she could be, she's the best mom, the best wife I could ever ask for and I think there's a level of luck to it. But also, just from the very beginning, being super clear on what we wanted out of life, like our daughter is adopted, and from the first year of us dating, I made it very clear I had a cousin adopt when I was like 13 years old. I remember it and just thinking how impactful that was and I just always wanted to adopt. So as soon as me and Mac started dating and we were real serious, it was like hey, we want to adopt, I want to adopt, I want to make sure you're cool with that.

Hunter Ballew: 25:18

When it was getting into business I'm not going to lie to you and I tell people this often my mission when I got into business was to prove people wrong. All the people that said I couldn't do it at the fire department from my childhood, from the Marines, all the people, all the naysayers, but it was to make a million dollars. I wanted to be a millionaire by 30. I just kept saying it over and, over and over and over. But as we grew in the business and we started to bring people onto the business, that mission changed real quick. It was to impact people, was to grow leaders within our organization instead of just making that money.

Hunter Ballew: 25:50

I always tell people it was a flip from the focus was on income to the focus was on impact. And I mean that again, it's not to be cliche, it's just true. When we started seeing ourselves reps who were making $14 an hour laying brick or doing pest control or doing some hard labor, come in and be able to make $100,000 with us and go buy their dream property, buy their dream car or take their wife on a vacation, a honeymoon they never had, that stuff was that was super fulfilling. It was more than just about the money for us. And so, as that changed, I think that for her man it was an easy buying.

Philip Sessions: 26:28

Man, that's awesome. So make sure you go to Spinks to find you the perfect wife when in travel is rest, not Marietta. Yeah, yeah right, we got to make that distinction there, just got to go a little bit further or no travel. Which ones? I forget. Which ones first.

Hunter Ballew: 26:43

Yeah, travel is rest first.

Philip Sessions: 26:45

Okay, yeah, I can't remember, yeah, I don't go up there too often, clearly. But yeah, man, that's really cool and I think there are just that. Clear communication, being clear on your goals, being consistent, is such a huge thing, and I know I found for me the more consistent and the more I stand firm on my belief in the things that I want to go after, the better it has been in the relationship with me and my wife as well. Because if you're just going like one day you're gonna do this and the next day it's this and you just keep changing, eventually your wife's gonna be like okay, dude, I'm not listening anymore. Clearly, you have no clue, so I'm not following somebody that has no clue.

Hunter Ballew: 27:24

I'll add one thing to that man. Like, how can you get your spouse involved? Like I mentioned that she gets to see the stuff but as as the businesses has grown, she's gotten more involved. In 2020, we started our nonprofit, which is now called the Revolt Foundation, and getting her involved with that to help lead those and lead the events and bring the kids together and, you know, contact homes and things like that. That was cool.

Hunter Ballew: 27:50

We had a conversation. I'd spoken at an event in January of 2020. We're on our way back from that. It was in Indianapolis and I just said, babe, like you're super supportive and I appreciate you for that, but I want you to have your own name. Like I want you to be passionate about something else, and so the Revolt Foundation is what that became and her really just taking a hold of that and helping lead that, because it's something I wanted to do and we kind of had a vision for it by her just taking it by the horns and owning it. So that to me sounds corny, but for me that was attractive, you know, because I wanted to see her just do her own thing and not just be supportive of me.

Philip Sessions: 28:31

Yeah, I would say it's very attractive as well. I mean, it's nice as a man to have a woman kind of following you, being supportive of you and everything. But it's also very attractive to seeing them go out and do something and where you can go support them back, and I think that doesn't happen too often. Either way, it seems that it doesn't happen too often. But let's go ahead and make a shift onto the business side now. So we kind of mentioned this and you brought up a little bit about how you went from focused on the income of your own income becoming this millionaire, making all this money. And I agree with you at a certain point money really doesn't matter anymore and the more impact that you can create changing people's lives really will just. It fulfills you so much more. And so you started building up this team and everything. Tell us about that, how that communication started as you started to develop and build up this team.

Hunter Ballew: 29:27

Yeah, so with Cornerstone it was early 2019, january of 2019. We kind of like to be honest halfway taking Cornerstone seriously, I'll still do some marketing and some other things that I was doing when I left the fire department just to get by and make money. And early 2019, january 2019, I created this program called Six Figure Blueprint. A lot of people know about it now. I've been talking about it for years at our events and things like that and just encouraging people to build out their own framework of Six Figure Blueprint. It's really just a course that I created for ourselves to be able to come in with zero experience in the roofing industry and make Six Figures. And so everything from introduction on our core values, our mission statement, why we're different, why you should be proud to work with us, what we do in the community, the next section of basic of roofing how do you measure a roof, how do you set up a ladder safely, just all the things door to door, cells, financing operations, installing a roof just trying to teach them everything they need to know to come in and and make Six Figures. That was a big change in our business because for me to be able to go out, recruit sales reps and grow the business. I had to feel confident that I had all the tools, all the training, all the technology for them to be successful. It's something I've said probably thousands of times at this point at our events and on podcasts like this.

Hunter Ballew: 30:47

That became kind of our little slogan that we told people when they were interested in joining our organization is we're going to give you all the tools, all the training, all the technology to make Six Figures, but at the end of the day you have to bring the work ethic.

Hunter Ballew: 31:01

We'll provide you all the tools, all the training, all the technology to make Six Figures, but you have to provide the work ethic. We can't do that for you. You can see these other guys that have come to the company. They've made good money but you got to show up every single day and put in the work. If you'll work 40 hours a week, you can't not make really good money in this industry when you're giving all the stuff we're going to give you and you have the brand we have and the support and the love of the people on our team, but there's just a lot of people that don't show up, they don't put in the work. But that changed everything for us. Because we believed, we said, hey, we know that we're giving them everything we got. Now it's just up to them.

Philip Sessions: 31:37

And it's so sad. I was talking with some friends and we were like, oh yeah, they show up. It's so sad that the standard has gotten so low that if you just show up, you're better than most people. And a lot of times that's how you make money, like good money, just showing up, being consistent, being there. Over time, people will get to know you, they'll like you, they'll trust you and they know you're going to stick around. So just showing up is probably 70% of the battle, which is really cool.

Philip Sessions: 32:08

And it's really cool that you all created that six-figure blueprint. I have heard about that and everything, which is a really cool thing that you've given all that training. I think it's such a smart thing creating those systems and processes for everybody, the training so they can know exactly what to do. As long as they run that play, they will make that six figures, and so now with you. So obviously you've been kind of. You weren't really in the business. Then you started being in the business and I would say you probably are you out of the business completely. Now when are you at when it comes to the business, the day-to-day and everything?

Hunter Ballew: 32:43

Yeah, so there's kind of five main businesses. There's some other ones that I'm just like invested in.

Hunter Ballew: 32:48

Yeah an operator at all With the five main businesses. We do have operators in place for each of them. So you know, for cornerstone construction it's Walker, for Repcard it's Brad, for Revolt it's Michael, for RoofCon it's Diego and for roofcom it's Markers, like, they lead the team, they have a team, they lead that team, they communicate with that team and for me, for the most part on three of the businesses, I get weekly reports from those presidents and then from two of the teams I get monthly reports and those are the two most established, been around a long time or they don't have to worry about them, they're super well old. The other ones I'm a little more active with, just because they're newer companies, they've only been around two, three years. So that's kind of where I'm at and it's always a balance of like how do I use my time best?

Hunter Ballew: 33:39

Because I want to live in my strengths, I want to do what I'm good at, like I'm not a finance guy, I'm not an operations guy, I'm really good at vision, team building, culture, things like that strategy. I enjoy speaking, I enjoy doing the podcast. What can I do that's going to help benefit the team while I'm also playing to my strengths. And then we just brought on a new COO, so that's super exciting and it's actually going to be heading up all the companies working with those presidents individually. So now my job moves from working with each of those guys individually to just working with Tim, who's kind of the right hand, helping me grow these things.

Philip Sessions: 34:13

Man, that's awesome. So I was literally about to go into that question. So how does that communication look? And just tell us now the communication that as it is and how it's going to be with the COO.

Hunter Ballew: 34:25

Yeah, yeah. So right now we basically do weekly scorecards is what they give me. It's just called a scorecard. So, like you know, just as an example, revolt, the scorecard looks like okay, what's cash on hand, what's debt? We have 30 day liability column on the right side. How many members have signed up in the last week? How many spots have we sold to our revolt text retreat, which is our foundational retreat? And then just mainly those little stats roof con is how many tickets have we sold? How many vendor spots have we sold in the last seven days? How much cash on hand do we have? Things like that?

Hunter Ballew: 35:00

And then we get to the end of the month for, like revoltandroofencom, it's a KP out tracker where they're updating and they have targets that they have to hit. They're either on target, on goal or their own minimum, or they're not at all, and it'll be red, orange or green, and if they get red too many times then they get a deduction and salary and bonuses. And then if they get it way too many times, then obviously we have to start looking at moving people around. That's never a fun conversation. We'd rather just hold each other accountable and hit those goals and work together as a team, but those KP out trackers just help us keep the train on the tracks, moving towards the goal.

Hunter Ballew: 35:40

Like for roof, where I was going with that is roofandcom and revolt. We have a lot of monthly recurring revenue because of subscriptions people inside of our partner program with roofandcom, people inside of our membership with revolt, and that's people paying a monthly fee. And so we have goals every month of hey, we want to increase by X amount of dollars in monthly recurring revenue and so they're either hitting it or they're not hitting it. We'll label it, like I said, red, orange or green, and that way we know where we're trending.

Philip Sessions: 36:06

And that's really cool that you're doing that. And I want to acknowledge there that you are not getting into the weeds, and too many, I would say business owners and then people that are that high level leadership, they're not getting so much into the weeds rather than knowing the high level and then figure out okay, you know what's going on with this KPI, why are we not hitting that, why is this below par? And that's when you go in and ask the question. But hey, if everything's on par, then it's cool, unless if it's like all of a sudden you went 10,000% above, then it's wait a second, what happened here? Where's this spike at?

Philip Sessions: 36:40

And then be able to see that high level detail and then be able to help break that down really quickly as a huge part of being in that business owner and almost like just the investor perspective. I know you're kind of in those companies still and not just the investor, but still kind of being that person that's up here, the high level. You're just looking at the whole thing and everything and letting them go and communicate down from there and get that information to you, which is such an important thing, and I know we could go into a lot more of that, but I do want to make sure that we get to our last question, and that question is if you could only share one message for the rest of your life, what would that message be?

Hunter Ballew: 37:21

Yeah, man, it's to make it count the name of my book For me in September. It's coming up September 17, 2015. My former partner at the fire department, jordan Howard. He got hit head on coming into work. Anyone from the upstate may remember the story. A guy was running from the crop, cops crossed over into the other lanes, hit him head on. Jordan was on his motorcycle. I was actually in Louisville, got the call, was super upset. He was a guy that really believed in me at the fire department, pushed me, and so, just a couple months after that, I left the fire department.

Hunter Ballew: 37:54

In that moment, man, I made a promise to make every day count. I realized you know it's cliche, people say it, you read it in books you're not promised tomorrow. But it's the truth, like it really, really is the truth. You know, I'd seen people close to me die a great grandma, a grandpa, an uncle, you know, but some of those they were older and it was expected to lose somebody that close in age and someone that you really looked up to and you loved. It was different. I mean, it just hit me different and I realized that we're not promised tomorrow and we do have to make every single day count, and so when we talk about income and we talk about impact and the importance of focusing on that impact piece, man, we mean it. Like you have an opportunity today to work on submitting your legacy.

Hunter Ballew: 38:37

What do you want your legacy to be? That's everything we talk about at these revolt retreats. Every time I speak, it boils back down to leadership and legacy and something I called legacy focus. Leadership Making decisions today that are going to impact people 100 years from now.

Hunter Ballew: 38:53

Not just the result you're going to get today or tomorrow or next month or next year even, but 100 years from now, after you're gone, and they might not even know your name, man. Like it might not be welcome to travel dressed home a hundred balloon or my name's not going to be on the football stadium or statue or whatever. Like that's not what it's about. It's about the impact you're going to make. Too many people they associate legacy with inheritance or money in the bank account or the assets you're going to leave your family. Man, that ain't legacy at all. It's not. It doesn't matter. It's the impact you make on people after you're gone. Because I'm so passionate about that and I really pound that home and that's kind of what I want to be remembered for one day is the guy that really got people on track with what they wanted their legacy to be.

Philip Sessions: 39:38

I love it, man, and I can definitely see that every time I've seen you speak and the interactions we've had and everything that I can definitely tell that you genuinely want to create the impact and that's what you're all about and it's awesome that you're already doing that. Obviously, the books out there. So guys make sure to check out that book and Hunter. If people want to follow you and be able to just have conversation with you or just see what's going on as you're posting up all of these new and exciting events, especially the Inferno Is that what you said it was? Yeah, Where's the best place for them to find that information?

Hunter Ballew: 40:12

Yeah, man, just Facebook. Facebook works and actually I bought a few thousand of my books and have them stored at my office just for when I do podcasts like this. If you guys reach out and just mentioned Philip's name or speaking sessions as the podcast you saw out there just had somebody do it today from another podcast I was on a couple of weeks ago If you reach out and just send me your information, I'll send you a book for free. But Facebook's the best place. Just look me up there.

Philip Sessions: 40:35

Awesome. Well, Hunter, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing so much valuable information. We appreciate it.

Hunter Ballew: 40:41

Yeah, man Thanks.