Good Neighbor Podcast: Colorado Springs

EP #73: Roofing with Integrity: How 7 Summits is Changing the Industry

• Tony Hills & Geoff Bray • Episode 73

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What makes Geoff Bray with 7 Summits Roofing a good neighbor?  

Meet Geoff Bray, part-owner of 7 Summits Roofing, who's on a mission to restore trust in an industry notorious for storm chasers and fraudulent practices. With an unexpected background that includes running a Mexican orphanage, chairing a neuroscience department, and playing weekly hockey games, Geoff brings a refreshingly ethical approach to roofing.

Since 2012, 7 Summits has built a strong reputation serving Colorado Springs with both commercial and residential roofing solutions. They've become preferred contractors for multiple school districts while expanding into residential services under Geoff's leadership. What truly sets them apart? Their revolutionary "no money down" policy - customers pay nothing until completely satisfied with the finished roof. This approach, combined with free upgrades to premium Class 4 hail-resistant shingles, demonstrates their unwavering confidence in their workmanship.

Geoff shares compelling stories from his career, including the baptism by fire he experienced with stringent Army Corps of Engineers requirements at Fort Carson and the monumental challenge of installing a bell-shaped dome on an Orthodox church. These experiences showcase his determination to deliver excellence regardless of obstacles. Whether you're dealing with storm damage, animal intrusion (yes, he's seen critters burrowing into soffits!), or simply need a trusted roofer who prioritizes customer protection, 7 Summits is ready to serve. Reach them at 719-432-8619 for same-day inspections or visit their website to discover why Colorado Springs homeowners are choosing a roofer who refuses payment until the job meets their standards.

To learn more about 7 Summits Roofing go to: 

https://www.7summitsroofing.com/

7 Summits Roofing

719-432-8619



Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Tony Hills.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a great commercial and residential roofing company? What might be closer than you think? Today I have the pleasure of introducing our good neighbor, jeff Bray, with 7th Summit Roofing. Jeff, how's it going?

Speaker 3:

Hey Tony, Thanks for having me. It's going great. It's getting warmer, so I'm very happy about that.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Hey, we're excited to learn about your business, so tell us about your company.

Speaker 3:

Well, 7 Summits Roofing has been around since 2012. We're located here in Colorado Springs and we've got a great reputation. We historically in 2012, really started out concentrating on commercial roofing and that's been a strength of the company for many years. So, linking up with school districts we're a preferred contractor for district 20, district 49, district 11. And so we've got a great reputation on the commercial side.

Speaker 3:

And when I came to the company, I brought the expertise of, of the residential side of things. So, um, any residential roofing material, um, I put it on, um, and I've got a breadth of experience in all kinds of, you know, funny residential situations in people's houses that we run into all the time. In fact, today I looked at a guy that had an animal bury itself into the soffit of his house and the insulation's hanging out, and so it's just like how in the world did that even happen? But not to worry, we can figure it out and get it taken care of. So Seven Summits has got a great reputation, you know, and that's something that I've worked very hard to maintain and it's and well, before I go there, I'll just preface it by saying that the roofing industry itself has a terrible reputation. Roofing is is one of these industries where you have storm chasers come through, you hear people being fraudulently ripped off all the time, and it's got a bad reputation, and so we do everything that we can to combat that on a regular basis.

Speaker 3:

And know we'll get into some nuts and bolts about how we do that, but um, maintaining a sterling reputation, um is is above and beyond. Uh, what, uh? One of our mandates is here in this industry?

Speaker 2:

okay, how did you get into this business?

Speaker 3:

well, uh, personally. So I've got a very odd background. I'm originally Canadian, and don't hold that against me, but you know I worked in the nonprofit sector for about 2008 until 2018. One was in a position of the executive director of a nonprofit that had an orphanage and home building program in Mexico. So that was just a volunteer activity that I had done for years and years and years, you know in the late 90s and then took over the organization and ran it for a number of years and then once I completely burned out on fundraising and nonprofit management I actually have a master's in neuroscience as well.

Speaker 3:

So I was the founding department chair for a liberal arts college in California. I was there for five years and then I made a move for my family and I have a wide breadth of project management experience, and so I made the move to Colorado Springs in 2018. I started working with another commercial roofing company as a project manager, and then the company, unfortunately, was on the downswing of their life expectancy and so they had to close their doors and I ended up with another residential roofing contractor Denver based, but I was kind of running their branch here in Colorado Springs and I did that for five or six years and during that time about seven summits, and I'm now the part owner of the company and I run the residential side of things. When I say residential, it's anything that's not a flat roof, so anything with some pitch to it, so it could be multi-family complexes, apartment buildings and residential houses.

Speaker 2:

So that's my, that's my, my wheelhouse okay, who are your target customers and how do you attract them?

Speaker 3:

so our typical client is um single family residence owner. Um, you know somebody and you know the. The average age of a homeowner in colorado springs is well, it's getting harder and harder to get into every day, so a lot of young people are renting um, so it's typically people you know, 35 to you to plus are the homeowners. So similar family residents in Colorado Springs, and we have a variety of ways that we try and reach people. We get involved in community events we have. We're really doing a big push this year for our online digital presence. We network with a bunch of insurance agents, people that we've worked with in the past who provide a win-win-win solution for their clients. They know that they can recommend a trusted contractor to them and they'll be happy and it's not going to make them look bad by referring somebody out that'll do a good job and take care of their clients. So a lot of referral-based business trying to branch out into different modalities to let people know about the type of work and service that we do.

Speaker 2:

Okay, outside of work, what do you do for fun?

Speaker 3:

Well, I am an absolutely addicted fisherman, so fly fishing is a massive love of mine, and I try and escape once a year and go after tuna off the West Coast. So I spend more time than my wife would probably like on the water, um, but she's a she's a great lady, and that allows me some freedom to get out and clear my head. And then I also play hockey once a week, um, robson arena downtown, uh, at the colorado college campus, and uh, just, uh, just an adult beer league. And I get to suit up the gear once a week and get after it with the guys.

Speaker 2:

Okay, let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or life challenge you overcame, how it made you stronger and what comes to mind?

Speaker 3:

Work-related or non-work-related?

Speaker 2:

Depends on how you want to describe it.

Speaker 3:

I've got all kinds of fun stuff.

Speaker 1:

Let's see Podcast suitable.

Speaker 3:

That's a good one, All right. Well, let me take an easy one that's work-related. So in 2018, obviously, Colorado Springs had a massive hailstorm and it took out the animals at the zoo and the entire Broadmoor area was destroyed and I was new in the roofing industry and in 2019, I had just joined with this company in order to sell shingles and residential property roofs and that kind of thing with them.

Speaker 3:

But I had brought in some contacts from the commercial world and there was a. There was a a general contractor that was doing some work on Fort Carson and me being green, is all green gets as a as a roofer made contact and sold his job in Fort Carson. Now, what we don't know is that work on Fort Carson is very, very arduous with the requirements, working with the Army Corps of Engineers, and so there was just an absolute list long as my arm of things that I didn't know, things like on a normal residential property.

Speaker 3:

You know, the roofing truck pulls up and it has shingles and it loads them on the roof, no big deal. Well, when you do work for the Army Corps of Engineers, you have to have an approved lift plan and a vehicle inspection for any lift and all the rest of it. And so now we weren't able to load any of our roofs on fort carson with this lift. Um, you know, I got the call in the middle of all the things I like to do is play golf. So I was playing golf and the guys were supposed to deliver all the material. Nope, can't deliver the material, that's all going to be on the ground. And there was like 30 000 square feet of shingles that were just sitting on the ground at this point. So I was scratching my head.

Speaker 3:

Obviously my golf game went out the window for the rest of that day and I was shanking it into the woods, um, but just that type of thing, the the arduous nature of working on post um, and for the stringent requirements of the army corps of engineer when I knew nothing about.

Speaker 3:

You know, looking back, knew nothing about roofing and what it took, so that was a baptism by fire, um, in the roofing industry, um, and it it took, uh, it took a, took a piece out of me for sure. Another work related struggle that I had was actually for my church, and there's a church that just got built off of Woodman Drive called St John the Baptist Orthodox Church, and if you go east on Woodman it's the big old domed church on Mohawk and Woodman and I put the roof on that church and it has a bell-shaped dome on it and it's very beautiful, but not unlike the Fort Carson story. I had no experience doing a double curved metal panel roof and so, you know, just put the trust in my crew and we went out there and I thought it would take about six days. It wasn't huge, it was only 40 panels, but just the nature of this construction it took over a month, probably a month and a half, to do, five days to a month and a half, and we redid this single dome probably seven different times. Um, and it was just the complicating nature of, you know, panels that were manufactured slightly misshapen, the the color of the material. It looks like it's got a couple of bubbles in it if you don't put it on just right. And it took seven days a week, 14 hours a day, every single week for about six weeks to get done and I lived, ate and slept that job.

Speaker 3:

I was so unhealthy, I was stressed out of my mind. I had the entire building was open because it was raining inside the building. You know, they were waiting to put the dome on top of this church in order to get it waterproof so the rest of the construction could continue. And I'm sitting there struggling with this and the contractor is looking at me like when are you gonna get done? And I was just throwing my hands like we're trying to do the best we can here.

Speaker 3:

But we came up with a solution to, you know, catch all the water inside the building as it would rain inside the building and pump it out of the building while the dome construction was going on. But thankfully, thankfully, we did finally get it on and it did get craned up there. The crane was booked. We finished it a day and a half before the crane showed up to put on the building and, uh, yeah, thankfully we got through that one, but that was yeah 14 hours a day seven days a week, every single day, I was there okay, jeff, please tell our listeners one thing nature remember about seven summits roofing um a lot of companies offer about Seven Summits Roofing.

Speaker 3:

A lot of companies offer deals, this and that. One thing that I think people should know is that they should not settle just for any roofer. You know there are many roofing companies in colorado springs and it's up to people, when they have especially when they have an insurance claim, to not only find somebody that's going to do the work and do it well and back it up, but have somebody that they can trust. So one of the ways that we do that is we offer a no down payment, no money up front, uh roof, so we'll do your whole project, no money down, no deductible, no deposit, and we'll just collect it at the end once you're satisfied. So that leaves that customer, the consumer protection in the customer's hands.

Speaker 3:

So it's like hey, you guys didn't. Uh, I don't like the way that looks up there. Can you guys change that? Obviously I haven't received any payment yet. I will get up there and I will do whatever it takes to make you happy, so that you're happy and that you know if. If your neighbor needs a roof, hey, I got a great guy, jeff's going to come take care of you and that's going to be great. But we do these things in order to separate ourselves from the roofers with a terrible reputation that take advantage of people. We use only high quality materials. We give people class four shingle upgrades all the time for free. So what that means is that the class four roof means that that that shingle is resistant to two inch hail and it passes a United Laboratory test. With United Laboratory test, where they impact these shingles with a steel ball and simulating forces generated by hail to inspect it for damage and if there's anything that passes, that test, it gets

Speaker 3:

this class four rating, saying, hey, this is going to stand up to the hail to a certain degree, and so you usually get a discount from your insurance by having these shingles on there. Most companies will upcharge you for these shingles, but this is something we regularly give people as a free upgrade on their home um further within their insured amount, um. So no money down up front and free for class 4 upgrades, always willing to do whatever it takes to make every single person happy. I'm Canadian and so by definition, I'm way too nice and I want to make everybody happy and this is something that I just have as a very core value.

Speaker 3:

You know I hate it and you know there's been only two or three customers in my entire life where people were just like that was. You know that wasn't cool and I bent over backwards and they still weren't happy. But it's everything that I can do to to make people satisfied with the work that I'm, that I'm doing and that they're entrusting in me to do. So that is a core value. So we do everything that we can to maintain that, and the easiest ways to do that are no money down and free cost for upgrades.

Speaker 2:

Okay, you mentioned that your network of insurance agents and your referral base. What other ways can let's just find out more about seven summits roofing sure, well, they can visit us online.

Speaker 3:

Uh seven summits roofing dot com. With the number seven not spelled out, they can attend a vibes game where we have a presence. We've been a partner with the vibes last year and we'll probably continue to do that again this year we can do.

Speaker 3:

Stop by our office at 957 East Fillmore Street, colorado Springs, right in the heart of the city. We're in an inspection. We're 20 minutes away. We offer same day inspections and we can. We can get to you at any time. Um what other ways you can reach us? Um via our office, if you need to schedule anything or an inspection. Our office number is 719-432-8619. Or you can reach me via email. My name is spelled funny it's Jeff B, but the way to spell Jeff is the old British way, so it's G-E-O-F-F-B. At 7summitsroofingcom.

Speaker 2:

Great Jeff. Well, I really appreciate you being on the show. We wish you and your business much success and good for it.

Speaker 3:

Thank you very much, tony, take care.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPColoradoSpringscom. That's GNPColoradoSpringscom, or call 719-679-4720.