Jessy Cardenas of Sentri Roofing

Welcome to the Build Something Media Podcast! Join us n as we welcome Jessy Cardenas, the owner of Sentri Roofing, a Hamilton county TN roofing company, back to the studio 

In this episode, Jessy shares her journey in the roofing industry, which began unexpectedly but quickly turned into a passion. Celebrating five years of serving the Chattanooga community, she discusses the evolution of her business from primarily insurance work to focusing on retail services, emphasizing the importance of building trust with homeowners.

Key Highlights:

• Jessy's transition from door-to-door sales to establishing a reputable brand in roofing.
• Insights into the challenges of marketing and client acquisition in a retail model.
• The significance of personal connection in the service industry and how it impacts customer relationships.
• Tips for entrepreneurs on using social media effectively to showcase their brand and personality.
• The evolution of the roofing industry and the importance of adapting to changing market demands.

Tune in as we explore the highs and lows of running a small business and how authenticity and community connection can lead to success. Don’t miss this insightful episode filled with valuable lessons for entrepreneurs and homeowners alike!

For more information, follow Sentri Roofing on Instagram @SentriRoofing or visit their website at https://sentriroofing.com/

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Transcript

(Upbeat Music)

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Welcome to the Build Something Media Podcast. Today I'm joined with Jessie Cardenas. Did I say that right again? You did, nailed it. Nice, nailed it, all right. I first appreciate it. Jessie is hanging out with us again. She's been on another show in the studio, not our show.(...) So she's been a guest in the studio before. And she's the owner of Century Roofing. Century Roofing. So you wanna tell us a little bit about the business and how long y'all have been here in Chattanooga. Yeah, love the business, the business is my baby. We've been around for five years in Chattanooga, celebrated five years back in April.

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That's when we did our first roof, five years. We've been around since January.

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We do roofing and gutters. We work with all kinds of homeowners and small businesses, large businesses, but we're just here to make sure you have the best roof on the block and that we take care of you with diligence and care. So I've been in the industry for 13 years. Yes, you know. We've actually worked at the same place at one point in time. Yeah, at different times. At different times. And so I got into roofing accidentally,

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but then against my own, didn't want to love it, but fell in love. (Laughs) Yeah, there you go. It was a great way to work with people and a great way to help them grow and to serve really great clients, homeowners, and to just have it look back. Yes.(...) So do y'all do mostly insurance or private pay? Yeah. So we do mostly private pay or what we call retail.

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We got into it through insurance, which was a fun wild, wild west side.(...) Roofing and contracting. Knocking doors. Yeah, knocking doors. That's how I got into the business. Me too. Okay, yeah, knocking doors. I was hired to knock on doors and create a canvassing department.(...) I was seven months pregnant with my son. Oh my goodness. And I was hiring and recruiting folks to knock on doors and couldn't get a no when you're pregnant.

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I would imagine that that would be a pretty good sales tactic. It was. People were like, "What are you doing out here?" I was like, "I just want to let you know "there was a storm." Gotta feed this kid. Yeah, I'd feed this kid. Take care of his life. Before that I worked for the Boy Scouts. So I had a lot of door-to-door fundraising and petition signing experience and just working with volunteers and people.

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But to answer your question, we're retail. We still take care of homeowners on the insurance side of things. We're really knowledgeable about it, but we just don't prefer the fight as much.

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And we're just gonna be really honest with homeowners and we understand how insurance works. And sometimes we know that it's not worth the fight. I'm fighting with three insurance companies right now. Carlos is one of them. Yeah, oh, see?

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And we just won't do it anymore. We won't put ourselves through it. We want to be good at roofing and contracting and taking care of our homeowners and not really good at legal jargon and paperwork. And it was really detracting from our ability to serve because they also hold onto your cashflow for 90 days or more. And so we slowly moved away from that and stayed really focused on the trade(...) and taking care of people and communicating(...) what we're going to do with homeowners and how we're gonna take care of their problems. And so now we used to be 100% insurance back in 2020 when that tornado came through and all that stuff. And now we are 95% retail, 5% insurance. We were all insurance that year. Yeah, we all were, we all were.

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Everybody, even the folks from out of town who came in. Oh goodness, don't get me started on that. Yeah, but it's good. And that's how we've moved the business model and are really enjoying it. Good, yeah, I'm proud of you for that. Thank you. It's not an easy transition. Cause it's a whole different animal. It is. I feel like we're finally just this year truly understanding and mastering that model.

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Because before you were just a person who was really great at guiding a homeowner through an insurance claim process and getting some really great subs on the roof. But now it's really listening to homeowners problems, finding the specific issue and then creating the solution that's best for them. Well, just getting in front of the homeowner.

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That's completely different. Cause when you're doing insurance, you're going to them. Absolutely. And then when you switch over to retail, they're coming to you. And so now you gotta figure out how do I get them to come to me? Oh yeah, that was a big struggle too. Marketing and finding clients was a huge change. So we used to be 100% door knocking.

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Which is not really sales and marketing.

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It's you're finding a problem and presenting a solution, which is sales in a way. It is.

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But you're literally walking through the neighborhood and seeing damage and walking. And that's for the most part, that's an easier sell.(...) And you're selling someone something that someone else is paying for. Yes, exactly. So the biggest challenge was building a brand for us.(...) Someone that you could think of whether you had a big problem like hail and wind and shingles all over the ground and water going through your ceiling. Or if you just know it was time to change your roof. And I have got $18,000, $20,000.

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Who can I trust to give it to? It's not gonna be the person who just knocked on my door. That's just not the way the world works. And so we had to figure out how to communicate who we were, what our values were,(...) and then try to build a brand that folks in China could trust. And that's taken-- It takes a while. It takes a while, it's not immediate. Because now they have to know who you are before they need you. Correct. Which is a much harder thing to do. Because it's easier to get someone to sign up with you when there's water actively pouring into their house. You are the solution to all their problems.(...) You're my angel, God sent you here.(...) That's completely different than, hey, my roof's getting kinda old, it's 30 years old and it's time to change it. Who do I call? That's a completely different thing. It is. And so it's a different business model. It's a different tactic. And now you've gotta get out and get into the public eye. Yes. Which is what you're doing right now. Which is what I'm doing right now. Hello, public eye.(...) And it's a challenge. This is actually more challenging for me, putting myself out there in front of the public, than door knocking. I would prefer to go knock on a door. And talk to one person at a time than to do this. But I'm slowly learning the value of it and getting much better at it. It gets easier. Yeah. The more, because I struggled with it when I first started my business. And it was, my business coaches were like, you've gotta be on camera.(...) You've got it, so the first guy that I worked with, he made me record myself every single day. Okay. And send it to him. Oh, wow. Like he was like, sit down. Oh, wow. Here's a topic, just sit at your desk and record yourself on your iPhone and send it to me. Oh, wow. And we would critique it. And then I went from there to going live.

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Because once you go live, you don't have a choice. Yeah, go live. So Facebook Live, I would just be on the job site and just showing what we were doing. Okay. Which is a very good way to do it. Yes. And it's very low budget, but it's real. And I got a good response out of that. And so that's kinda how that started. And then that led into the podcasting because it's kinda the same thing. It is. Where there's not, like we can cut and redo and stuff like that in here, but we typically don't. Like it's just sitting down having a conversation. And we're talking to a camera and it's almost like it is live. And so those things kinda go hand in hand. So going live, if anybody's listening and you have a business, if you want to get out there and try it, going live is the best way to do it. You're motivating me. I'm ready to go and record myself now every day. Every day. Talking about some things. That's all it takes. And because it doesn't all have to be professional high production like this. Like you need that. Your phone is also professional high production. If you went 10 years ago, the camera quality on your phone would have cost 10 grand on a real camera.

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So putting it in perspective like that, I'm ready to go. Let's leave now. You just gotta be in front of people. They just wanna know who you are. They do. They wanna know who you are. And they wanna know you more than just a brand now and the business and your offerings. They wanna know who's behind it. Brand is dead. Oh my God. Oh, that's a statement. That is our new slogan. Okay. Brand is dead. Tell me. People don't, that's more of a Chris, like that is like his baby. Okay. But it's basically like people don't care

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what you say you do, they care what you do. Oh man. Like for instance, he shared the story the other day about the Starbucks CEO and how everybody's like up in arms about Starbucks because they're all about green and paper straws and all this stuff. And their CEO flies like thousands of miles every day on a private jet to go to the office. Yeah. And people are like, you're not practicing what you preach. What you preach, yeah. And so it's people don't care what you say you're gonna do, they care what you're actually doing. And it's not about the brand, it's about your actions. Amen, well that's not new though. It's not, but it's people have more say in their opinions on it now because most stuff is on the internet and on social media and people can comment on it. Yeah.(...) So 15 years ago, every ad that you saw for a business was on television. There's no comment section. No, there's no feedback. There's no reviews, there's no like, it's just this person talking at you while you're sitting in your living room. You could say you're a business that everyone can trust for 10, 15 years before. And they could have 20 lawsuits pending. There's real verification of that.

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I mean what's the first thing you do if you see an ad for a business on your Facebook timeline? You go to the comments section. I do, I do. Or I go to their website. Or I'll go Google them and see if they've got reviews. Even your website,(...) you can only put up, you can put up the reviews. You pick the reviews. That's true, no absolutely. So you pick your best reviews and you put them on the website. Absolutely.

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I like the websites that have the automatic feeder. But I think even those filter out. You can filter them. Yeah, I would expect that the marketing company that hired. Yeah, they're paying for that website, they're in control of it. But filter it. No, that's true, yeah.

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So then we'll do that some more. We'll get in front of some folks. So how did you transition into media? If I can turn the mic around and ask. I'm so curious about that. I grassroots social media is how I built my business. I got my name out there, just networking, networking groups, events, social media. And I just was just posting every day. And then started doing more planned videos and started editing some of the videos and stuff. And just literally, I never paid for marketing at all.(...) Other than just having a website built.

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And then I built a deck for Chris. And then Chris was like, hey, I've got this idea for a marketing company. And he was wanting to market to contractors. And I was in the process of transitioning over to being a part-time, not really a business coach, but just a liaison. And somebody to bounce ideas off of. I was getting a lot of questions and I was helping some guys out. And I wanted to get to a point to where I was helping other smaller contractors grow their business. And that's what the home source network originally was gonna be. It was gonna be a network of services, all under one roof with a shared call center, shared marketing and all that. And then COVID hit. And then that got put on the back burner. And then that led into this.(...) And so this is a different version of that. It's all an evolution. We started with just the trades. And it was supposed to be mainly marketing, was the name of it. That's what Chris and I started. Mainly marketing? Manly. Manly marketing.(...) (Laughing) Manly marketing, guys with tools. Guys with tools, yeah. And it just, I mean, you've watched it because you basically have known us. I mean, we'd only been in business like two months. When I met you? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, so we're here like six months later. And it's grown like crazy. And so we've just kind of gone with the flow. And him and I are both very creative people.(...) So he's-- You are. He's the brains of the operation. I have transitioned him over to being on camera, on camera a lot more. Yeah. He did not want to be on camera at all when we first started. No, maybe. And you see how that's changed. Absolutely. And so you get comfortable being on camera. Well, and I'm thinking about how you're saying you eventually became comfortable and how entrepreneurs love being uncomfortable. We do all this-- Yeah, exactly. I'm thinking about people don't like to get on screens because they might look dumb. Yeah. Or do the wrong thing. Entrepreneurs are constantly taking risks, looking dumb and not doing the right thing. So it's a bit, but no one always knows that. I guess you can keep it a little bit behind doors, but this is the same concept. And so it lives inside of all of us. It's just a choice of whether we actually do it or not. If you want to get good at sales, get good on camera. Because you learn to think on your feet, especially if you're doing live stuff. Podcasting has helped me a lot. Okay. Knowing how to interview people. Yeah. And carry on a conversation. You're doing a great job, by the way. Oh, thank you, I appreciate it. (Laughing)(...) So knowing how to carry on a conversation. Yeah. Knowing how to listen and keep your mouth shut in certain situations.

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It goes hand in hand with sales.(...) And I would call it high pressure practice. Because the camera element adds more high pressure. Because you can be really good at listening when no one's watching or it's just your friend. But if it's high pressure,

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you have to retrain your brain to listen even more. So that makes a ton of sense. I'm gonna go to the office now until all the sales guys also just hey, (Laughing)

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Talk into your phone. Yeah, on your personal, people should know what you do. And so I've been a firm believer in that for a long time. Is if you're a business owner and everyone who knows you doesn't know what you do, you're failing. Yeah. Like you're messing up. I know there's some business owners that wanna be anonymous, they want the anonymity.

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I don't, because I want to grow my business as much as possible. So I want everybody to know what I do. When you go to my Facebook page, you should know what I do. Yeah. Then I'm a contractor and I do media. Yeah. That's, and we're trying to find that balance. So we've started transitioning my personal brand more to the media side and the construction side of Justin is under the home source brand. Because that's got a decent size following as well. So we're trying to kind of, because of the way the algorithms and stuff are now, it doesn't matter that you have 25,000 followers. It does it? It does not.

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On YouTube or anywhere? Oh. YouTube probably still helps a little bit more to have subscribers. That's right. But on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,(...) TikTok, all that stuff, you can start a brand new page today. And if you're posting the right content, it's gonna take off. And so having the days of just having a lot of followers and that's like a newsletter list is over. Just because they follow you doesn't mean they're gonna see your stuff. If it's not something that the algorithm is pushing to them because it's what they look for. There are people that I follow, I haven't seen forever on my time. I'm like, oh my gosh, I forgot, I follow you. It's because they don't post anything that you're actively interested in. So talk to me about that. I'm so curious, you're advocating

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that you put your personal life out there on top of business. And I know that I struggle with this, I want to do it, but now I have kids.

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And I also wanna keep some things private.(...) So how do you balance that? I know that you have kids, the whole thing about they're so young, they can't really consent to being online just yet and all of those things on top of it. So do you have any particular boundaries or set of rules for posting personal? Yeah, there's certain things that I won't post. But I try to keep it as like a ratio.

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So for every 10 things you post, maybe post one that's family or personal, just so you still look like a human.

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You need to know what you really want out of social media. If you're using it just for friends and family, then keep it that and then have another--

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Another separate one? Another separate profile. Because you can have as many profiles as you want. That's true. And so you can have a private one that's just Jesse for your friends and family. And then you can have one that's Jesse, owner of Century Roofing.(...) And so that's, like for me, I'm more of just a personality. So like my personal page needs to be what I'm doing. And so that's, like so we're focusing that more on the media side of stuff. Justin the podcaster, the motorcycle guy, stuff like that. The home source network is Justin Bethune, the contractor. Got it. And so the algorithms keep that separate. And I personally have actually seen the drop off with the new algorithm because I was posting so much different stuff. Everything kind of dropped off because it didn't know who to push it to because I was throwing out so much, because I do so much stuff. So you're talking about the separation between media and contracting? Yes. So you had to get really specific.

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So regardless of what you're doing, I think if it's like less than 10% of personal stuff, that's fine. That's not really gonna affect the algorithm. Okay.

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Because it can kind of differentiate the difference of that.(...) It depends on your personal preferences, really. And I think for me, it's gotten a little bit easier to consider and be open to posting more. I don't post a lot in general. I used to do Family 24-7, never did work. But as I'm understanding, I know the brand is dead, but my business, more and my goals now that we've really moved to the retail model and we're not chasing storms, we really wanna serve, et cetera, et cetera, I am much more open(...) to wanting to post personal stuff because I can be more intentional with it. Yeah, and in this industry and being a small business in a town like this especially, like in Chattanooga, people wanna know who they're buying from. Absolutely. They don't want to buy from a big national brand when it comes to stuff with their home. They wanna know that the person that they're spending money with is keeping it here, that they're not some big wig CEO,

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that you're taking care of the guys that are the ones actually working on their house.(...) Every market's gonna be different. It's way different here than it is in Atlanta. And I think we both worked in it. Yeah, we both worked in Atlanta and here. The roofing industry down there is completely different than it is here. It's a lot more detached. It's like here, it's more like personable. It is.

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A lot of venture capitalists,

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companies have moved into town though that existed in Atlanta. And so I'm hoping that it won't change. I think that it will, but just keeping my head on straight and trying to stay local and serve the community. Well, this is the best thing that we can do. And those things will happen sometimes, but. And that's the difference in retail and commercial.

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It's like if you're doing commercial roofing, you're gonna be dealing more with corporations and stuff. And they don't care who they're. They just want the cheapest. They do. As long as you can meet this criteria and give us the cheapest price. Do you mean residential versus commercial? Yes. Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, you're right. And we love our homeowners.(...) Some people say that that's the hardest side of the business and it is, but I think that the reward is also worth it. It's much bigger reward. I mean, personally anyways. Yeah, and it's, for y'all, a roof is like a one time. It is. Like you might buy two roofs in your life. If you're not someone like me who buys and sells houses all the time. That's your typical homeowner once, maybe twice. Like they're not like repeat clients. No, they're not. But you're gonna get a lot of good referrals. Yes.(...) And so it's, you really wanna build that relationship. Absolutely. And you don't have many opportunities to do it if you're only doing it once or twice in their life. Exactly. Like you screwed up once and you're done. Yeah. And they're also very nervous, right? Cause this is not something they do often. There's lots of questions. That's expensive. And it's expensive.(...) Since COVID it's gone up 20, 25%. And so, I think that's a challenge that I really enjoy is making sure that this really stressful process can be as easy as possible and try to, things will go wrong, it's construction. Yeah, oh God. But that we're there for them and that we help guide them through that. Any contractor that tells me they've never made a mistake, I don't trust them. That's a lie. They must have just started working yesterday.(...) They're just lying. Yeah, or that, yeah, exactly. We've all messed stuff up. It's about how you fix it. Exactly, yeah. We've had mistakes made and still got five star reviews and it's specifically because of the way. Those are typically the ones you do get a five star review on because of the way you fix it. Yeah, because of the way we handled it. 100%.

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Jessie, it's been a pleasure. You too. Thank you very much. Thank you. You wanna shout out where everybody can look you guys up? Yeah, so follow Century Roofing on Instagram at Century Roofing or go to our website.(...) CenturyRoofing.com, that's S-E-N-T-R-I, roofing.com. All right, well we'll see you on the next one. Thank you, bye.

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Whoa, cool. Okay, I was like, you said 15, right? Okay, I feel like I'm a chatty Cathy.

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All right.