How Being a Servant Leader and Business Owner Changed Everything

What does it actually look like to lead by serving? Daniel Cook lives the answer.

In this episode, Lyndol sits down with Daniel Cook — founder of Cook DFW and one of the most trusted names in roofing across Collin and Grayson County — to unpack the mindset that turned a contractor into a community pillar. This isn't a conversation about shingles. It's about integrity when nobody's watching, building teams that do quality work the right way, and the quiet discipline behind a business people actually trust.

Daniel and Lyndol get into the stuff most business owners skip: why self-care and scheduling aren't soft — they're survival, how time blocking protects the work that actually matters, and the real cost of letting social media run your day instead of the other way around. They dig into giving back, showing up for your community, and the personal responsibility that comes with any platform you build. Turns out doing good work and doing good are the same job.

If you've ever wondered how the best operators stay grounded while everyone around them burns out — this one's for you.

📲 Need windows? Schedule a consultation with Lyndol — text CLARITY to 214-225-1922 or visit woodruffwindows.com.

This episode of Clarity Changes Everything is brought to you by our sponsor partners:

🪟 WOODRUFF WINDOWS — North Texas's #1 window replacement company. Text CLARITY to 214-225-1922 | woodruffwindows.com

🏚️ COOK DFW — Roofing & general contracting you can trust. 833-COOKDFW | cookdfw.com

📦 TEXAS DELTA MOVING — White-glove moving and junk removal with fully vetted employees, so you always know exactly who's in your home. texasdeltamoving.com

#ServantLeadership #Integrity #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #Roofing #CollinCounty #GraysonCounty #CommunityFirst #TimeBlocking #WorkLifeBalance #DFW #CookDFW #WoodruffWindows #ClarityChangesEverything

Transcript

0:02

Hey, I'm Linda Woodruff and welcome to the Clarity Changes Everything podcast. People are like, wait, are you still windows and you're doing a podcast? Yes, I am, because clarity changes everything. Not just in your house with your windows, but in the chaotic culture, when you find clarity, your whole life changes. So I wanted to bring in some cool people. Let's talk to them. Grab some coffee. Let's do this. Cool. All right. Well, hey, welcome back to Clarity Changes Everything. I'm uh Lindell Woodruff, the host. We got Daniel Cook in the house with us today. Uh, he's the owner and founder of Cook DFW, and they are a founding partner sponsor of Clarity Changes Everything. We appreciate you guys jumping on board and helping me kind of grow this idea and concept and uh you know, really talk about some things that aren't really talked about a lot, which is how dangerous our uh our culture can be, um, as far as people getting sucked down different rabbit holes, how to stay focused in our life, you know, uh truly what matters, which is the things I heard uh a podcast the other day, they were talking about tend to the part of the garden that you can touch. Right? It seems like so many people are spread thin all the time and thinking about nine million different things all the time with this constant bombard of information, and it's very, very toxic. Um, so as a business owner and as a community leader, I mean you guys are involved in a lot of different nonprofits, a lot of different uh things in the community that matter and give back, um, and different networking groups and charity golf tournaments. It's every time we're on the phone, you're always doing something different and something cool. How do you how do you manage all that? Like to stay focused on um keeping the main thing the main thing, right? And still be able to figure out how to balance all that other stuff. It's an illusion. Is it it's all a facade. It's just it's a smoke and mirrors, man. Uh no, I mean, uh we we we've done a lot of classes on time management, how to organize your life better. Uh there's only 24 hours in a day, nobody gets more than that. And so you have to then say, well, six to seven hours is important to my sleep for my health, because if you're not healthy and you're not mentally clear, you're no good to anybody. Right. Um, and especially to your own business. I mean, if you're not at the lead of the ship, showing the direction of the company and and and and asking people, hey, let's go here, let's go over here. A lot of times people aren't going to find their own direction. So, as the owner of the company, you got to be healthy, you got to have mental clarity. Uh, you need to be precise with your decisions, um, you need to have a clear focus on the direction that the company needs to go. And then from there, you have to divide up that other 16 hours of the day. And like you mentioned, I mean, business planning, um, lead generation, um, community access. You know, we probably go to, like you mentioned, three to four hours, five hours a week on community relations, um, rotary, chamber functions, um, volunteer times for different organizations inside the community. Uh, we're gonna be doing um a walk this weekend uh or next weekend uh for a for a kid in Anna that has um a bad form of bone cancer. Uh so that's on a Saturday morning and the Friday afternoon before that. I I volunteered to go pick up two golf carts from a local golf course so the organizers of the walk could have some golf carts. So um, and then you know, we just did a bed drive uh where we went and uh put some beds together for Sleep in Heavenly Peace, another organization in Anna that helps kids get beds that necessarily don't have one in their community. Um, Rotary, we meet at least twice a month, so sometimes three times a month. So those charitable things are important because that is your community. You need to give back as much as you can. Right. The business, and I've always been a firm believer of this: if you're a good person, if you do what you say you're gonna do, if you provide a great quality product, and then if you are known to be a great person in the community, people want to do business with you. Right. It's inevitable. You you I don't know how many businesses have ever failed that if they have a great person or a great team, they do good things, they give back to their community, and they just simply do what they're supposed to do, fail. I don't I don't know of any really. It doesn't, it doesn't happen. I mean, because unless they're doing it for the give, like the uh the return, right? There's a universal principle involved in that, right? You know, you hear uh givers gain, right? Givers gain unless they want to. Right, yeah, right? It's kind of like the principle, there's a biblical principle behind that. And it's basically the guy that prances to the front of the room with the offering, waving it around, look what I'm giving, right? The little tingle he gets from doing that is the only reward. Yeah, right. Um, so it's it's really it has to start from within, right? And and doing it for the right reasons and giving back and not advertising it and showcasing it really. Um, I mean, there are some ways that you can do like cause marketing is important because if you are involved in a charitable thing in the community, you want the community to know because you're reaching out to that community to help and be involved. It's not like a thing of this is what we're doing, look at us. It's like, hey, come and join us on this mission. Um, you said how many beds did you guys just get to put together? So uh this particular bed drop we did, our group did nine beds. Oh, that's cool. Six and one house. Wow. Six and one house. So there's a house in Anna, they had several children. Um, we did uh two rooms of two each and then two separate rooms with one each. Wow. Um it's a great organization, it's gotten a lot of uh national attention. Um, a couple of guys got invested in it that are well uh known in the in the content you know world and everything, and they started advertising for them and Lowe's is a main partner with them. That's cool. So they have uh separate chapters all around America Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Great organization. We volunteer just because, like you just said, it's the right thing to do, right? I try to get some of the guys that come out with me. Uh Keith and Trevor came out with me this last week, you know. Before that, Keith and and and other Keith came out. Um, and it really is. I mean, it's not like it's I just got talked, I just talked to um Jim about this. And he's like, it's not about the money necessarily that we need sometimes. We just need the help, we just need the labor. And it's harder almost, and I and I hate saying that it's almost harder to get people to help you than to give you money. It really is. And I and I and I and it should be the opposite, right? You would think it wouldn't. Everybody's protected of their money because yeah, they're like, oh, I don't have enough money, right? But but you have some time you could probably spare. Right. Right? And it's like pulling teeth sometimes to get people to come and donate an hour, two hours of their time. Yeah, because people think of it as time is money. But we're talking this is on a Sunday afternoon, you know? Yeah, this is on a Saturday afternoon, right? These are things, and and it's like I think of it, yeah, time is money. And I tell my guys all the time, if you're if you're not focused on what you need to be doing at the at during your day, then you're wasting time, you're wasting money. But I think on things like charitable, I think you need to have a clear focus that this is this is more, it's worth more than it's you though. It's more than about you, it's about what you're doing to someone else's life. Right. So, and that's what I think, like you mentioned, it's not about what we a lot of people don't even know what we do in the community. I will say that. Yeah. And and I and I've been on a, and you kind of touched on that. I've been on a I've been on a very careful path about do I want to post that we're doing all these things? Do I want to talk about all these things and make it look like we're just doing it because we want to get noticed? Right. So I don't post half of what we actually do. Most people don't even know I'm involved as as many things as I'm involved with. Yeah. So, but I think that's just a personal decision I've made. Right. You know, I think that in my heart, in my mind, I think that uh you don't become successful because you're just a special person, right? Right. You have to be successful because of the full package of your of your makeup, your family, you what you do for the community, how you entertain, how you interact with other people. Um, it's it's not a take, it's not a take society. And especially in the towns that we service. We don't service used metro areas, you know, we're not in downtown Dallas, we're not in downtown Fort Worth, we're in small communities still, you know, relatively. Everybody still knows each other, of course. We go to the same churches, right? You know, we go to the same grocery stores, we go to the same restaurants, we go to the same gas stations, yeah. You know, it's not like if you do a shady transaction, nobody's gonna see you again. Right, of course. No, that's not the way it is. Yeah, it's like it's like the the the small town high school rumors, right? You couldn't get away with anything in the yeah, the small town high school. Everybody knew the next one. Everybody knows more than you think they know, yeah. So and now it's amplified by like 50,000 times because everyone's on next door, everyone's on Facebook, everyone's on Instagram. So it wasn't it wasn't like you do something shady and then the secret has to get passed from ear to ear throughout the community over a period of time. It's like now you do it and all of a sudden the whole community knows the next day, yeah. You know, so uh we live in a very interesting time where I mean you have to you gotta be right and do right anyway, but now more so than ever, and I see some of these Facebook pages, man, like the DFW subcontractor Facebook page. I that place is just drama central. Yeah I mean, you see people outing people on there every single day. If they don't get a call back for two days, and see there's a there's a fine line with it too. Like, what do we know is fully uh legit and what's not because I see sometimes someone post, I've been calling this guy for two days and he won't answer, he stiffed me. Don't do business, they're posting their pictures of these people, and I'm like, good gosh, man, well that comes into a perfect situation here though, Lindell, is that where do you waste your time? Right. Like we talked about that right. Well, we started here is you have 24 hours in a day. If you're trying to get a job done or if you're trying to perform a task, you need to be organized at knowing how that task needs to get done. Right. I and I'm not saying I'm not discrediting anybody on this uh on those forms, okay? I just think that if you're in business and you're starting a job, you need to have something lined up prior before you start the job, right? Yeah, you need to have a set person that you're gonna go to work with. And if you don't know everything, how to do something on that job that you're bidding for, that's probably not a good idea, right? And and then that's where we get in these positions where we get called in after somebody else started a job, right? And then that's another whole lecture is that you know, homeowners got to be aware of who they're having work on their homes. It's the most important thing. But I mean, as a personal thing, before I taught, before I start any project, I know exactly who's gonna be where, I know exactly who's in charge of what, we know exactly where the materials are coming from, we know when the material drop is going to occur. Sometimes we don't even start a project before the materials arrive because we don't want that hiccup later in the project. Right. There's nothing, there's no worse feeling than starting a project, you're halfway through it, and all of a sudden you're like, oh crap, where's this at? And you find out it's another four or five days out. Yes. You know, but I mean, time in everything you do in your life, personal, volunteer, religious business, all has a bucket that you have to have a reasonable amount of time save for each one of those things, even working out time. Yeah. And I we just went to a presentation held by a lady named Dana. She focuses on how do you maximize your day. And if it's not scheduled, it doesn't exist. It needs to be scheduled. You need to have a schedule. You cannot willy-nilly set your life and run a business without having set set items that you know are dedicated for. And you need to be realized when you have too much packed into maybe a certain day or a certain week. And you need to reorganize because then it's going to throw you off of your sleep patterns. It's going to throw you off not being able to work out, it's going to throw you off not being able to attend your kids' basketball game. Right. And you also have to have a work balanced life. And I'm and I'm guilty of this. I overwork myself because I want to be so successful. And I realize it, and it's hard to say, time out. Right. I just can't do these other three meetings this week. I've got to put them to next week. And I try to have serious conversations with people. And sometimes people are very understanding of that. They're like, Yes, I understand. I have the same situation. I'm fine with waiting a couple more days until we can meet next week. Sometimes people get angry. They're like, you know, the business isn't important to you. You can't look at it this day. I'm very sorry. No. And I totally understand you want that job done or you want to have this meeting, but I just can't do it. And that's very hard for me. And that's something I'm really working on. Is it's okay to say no sometimes. Yeah. And it's one of the most valuable skills to have. That's my biggest weakness too, is over saying yes. Yeah. Saying yes to everything, wanting the people please, don't want anybody mad at me, don't want to, don't want to deal with the the repercussions of drama. And then here's so here's what I've learned. And it's taken me a long time to learn this. And I think having a kid has been a huge help, you know, having a toddler. Um, I've learned a lot from that little kid, is truly understanding what areas actually matter. And if it doesn't fall into the category of what is important in my life, I'm not giving you a yes or no. Like it, I'm not even allowing that stuff to seep in anymore. You know what I mean? And get distracted by everything and oh, this project and oh, this thing sounds cool. Let's let's figure out what that's all about. No, no, no, no, no. Getting super clear, and that's what this show really is about is figuring out ways to identify what is important in your individual life and creating uh a structure around that so you can maintain sanity because if if if we're constantly just letting everything in, it has a massive effect on our mentality, and it's almost impossible to stay structured and focused. Um and so that's one thing that I'm really passionate about now is uh creating a life based on what matters and not allowing anything else in. Because every single time I do it, every single time I say yes to something that doesn't have to do with um either my personal health or my daughter or business and taking care of customers, anytime I start to step outside of that stuff, it always goes down in flames. Well, I mean, like we've been talking about, I think you have to have if if going on social media and going down the forums is important to you, separate 30 minutes a day and do that. If that's your entertainment, because we all need some type of entertainment, right? Yeah, sometimes entertainment is reading a book. That's a self that's a self-healing time for some people, right? Outside of working out. You know, some people want to go do yoga for an hour, some people want to go ride their bike for an hour, some people want to go rollerblade for an hour. I love playing golf once a week. That's my kind of time to get away from it. So you play once a week? I try, yeah. You know, life gets in the way, right? But that's one thing I try to dedicate. I like to get once a week to go out for four and a half hours and kind of get away from everything. Don't answer my phone, kind of focus on my game and and and just have a good time for that little bit of time, right? But I think that's important. So if social media is something that you like to involve with and you like to go look at other people's pages and content creators stuff, yeah, hey, more power to you, man. I'm not negative about that, right? I think it just needs to have a scheduled amount of time, and you got to be dedicated at holding yourself accountable, right? Because if you don't have a very I'm trying to say this politically correct, if you don't hold yourself accountable, no one else is. Right. And so at the end of the day, you can't blame someone else if your business isn't doing well. At the end of the day, you can't blame yourself if you have staff that doesn't know what they're doing because you maybe haven't dedicated enough time to make those things happen and a priority. So I think that's important. So when we went to that last conference with that lady, um, Dana, and I and I forgive myself, I can't remember her last name, but she excellent speaker, excellent time manager. That's whole focus. She had a quadrant seam, uh pie graph, not a pie graph, but a quadrant box graph. And it was urgent and important, important, not urgent, not important, not urgent. And then it was urgent but not important. And then you have to divide up your day on those quadrants. And then you also have to learn how to delegate certain things that aren't important to necessarily you to perform. It may be important in it to get done, but it's not urgent for you to do. For you to get done, right? And so this is how you surround yourself and you use people in your life and your business and your spouse and say, Hey, can you handle this side of this for me? Or or can you hand you call your office and say, Hey, I need you to take care of this. Because as the owner and the operator and the and the and the person that has the vision of where the company needs to go, your time is the absolute most important. You can't, you cannot underestimate how much your time separates from your staffs and how the business flourishes better when you're in charge of a lot of things versus delegating things. Delegating is the most important thing, man. Because we we can get sucked into doing 10, 15, 20 an hour stuff for half the day. Yeah, you know. Um, because there's this kind of sense of uh if it if it's gonna get done right, I have to do it. Right. And that's not necessarily the case. I mean, especially if you've got a a team of people. Um, we need to I I I heard it said at a seminar one time instead of holding people accountable, hold people capable. Like if you have people on your team, trust that they know what they're doing. Yeah, like you brought them on for a reason. Right'd you hire anybody if you're not gonna let them do their job? Exactly, a hundred percent. And then uh Howard Partridge is another uh another guy that who's an author, and I've been to a lot of his conferences, I paid close attention to a lot of the stuff that he does. Um, and his whole, I think we talked about this before we pressed record, uh, the performance results description instead of a job role, right? Instead of a job description, uh what they uh focus on is creating performance results descriptions. So if you have a specific lane in your business, if you do the few things that you're supposed to be doing, what does the performance look like? Like what results are those things gonna generate? So then we work on creating uh an outline for them to do that we know they're performing if these results are hit, as opposed to just this is your job description, but based on performance. I always thought that was pretty cool. But he's got a lot of he's got a lot of books and speaks a lot on that. There's so many good authors, there's so many good coaches out there, and that's another thing I will say. If you don't have a business coach, you might be missing out. Yeah, because I think sometimes you get blinders on yourself because maybe you do get behind, or maybe you're you think that this is working, or this is something that I've done for 20 years. Why do I need a change? Sometimes it's having a secondary pair of eyes that is a true third party, not someone in your business. Someone in your business may not tell you the truth. Right. I think it's a wise investment to have a business coach, a life coach. And it doesn't have to be like all the time. I'm not saying, you know, they have to be on your speed dial. Right. I'm saying, you know, dedicate yourself. Maybe it's once a month, maybe it's every other week, 30 minutes, an hour. Just talk to them and say, hey, this is what I'm struggling with. What are your thoughts? What are your suggestions? And probably because that's their profession, they might have pretty good information. Right. They might have something that you never even thought of because they talk to clients every day and they've got ideas from other people that are successful business owners or in the same position you are. Maybe they're struggling with time management and they got this and they they use this action or this game plan to handle that. So I think a life coach, I think a business coach, I think those are truly valuable assets that you can utilize. But also, I think at the end of the day, you have to make a firm decision of how much do you want to do? A lot of people don't have if you go up to a business owner and say, How successful do you want to be? When are you going to be considered a success? What's the answer? Right. When when you get to one million dollars annual sales, when you get to two three million dollars annual in sales, or maybe it's not sales. When I make three transactions a week on average, maybe it's different transaction amounts. Or you're successful once you don't have to actually try to market anymore. You're mark your your marketing is marketing for itself, right? Right. Um, I mean that that's a big question you have to ask yourself as a business owner. Right. What does success look like? What parameters do I want to hit? What metrics do I need to hit? Well, I mean, yeah, you got to get clear on what that stuff looks like. Otherwise, you're just shooting from the hip and and there's no clear anything. Challenge yourself. Yeah. And you know, uh aside from the the life coach thing is great, business coach thing thing is great, you know, once a month. And I think what's also important is if that person, if it if it's a different person, uh someone. To help you to hold yourself accountable to the information that you get coached on because you can get information all day long, but if you don't apply it and create a structure around that information, it just goes in one ear and out the other, like, oh, that sounds great. But you got okay, so if this is what we're gonna focus on, maybe maybe we break it down by quarter, right? Understanding like this quarter we're gonna focus on this, and then we get a little bit of information from them. So make a couple little tweaks and then work on just that for three months, as opposed to one of the things that I've always struggled with is wanting to change everything all at the same time. Yeah, you can't do that. No, like oh, okay, like uh I've got stacks of notebooks at home, and thankfully I've gotten better at this, but it's funny, I wanted to keep them as reminders. I've got stacks of notebooks in the top of my closet, and I could thumb through them in every 10 pages, there's a new routine written down. Like, okay, I'm gonna wake up this day, I'm gonna read this book, I'm gonna meditate, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna eat breakfast, I'm gonna go to the gym. And it's like every two months, just recreating the routine and writing it all out, and nothing ever gets done. Um, so little by little, I think that's a very important um different uh I can't even think of the word I'm trying to think of right now. Um, a very important factor of that though is little pieces at a time. That's how we eat an elephant, right? Especially if you're someone of my background, you know, most of my life has been very irresponsible. Um and just going a million miles an hour with no uh with no no woe, you know, just straight giddy up, right? Um, so I I have you know, and then Everly came along. So I've had to slow down and go, now wait a minute, I I I have to restructure some things. And I I think just making little changes here and there can start to culminate into life change. But you can't just change everything at one time. Well, what do they say? Habits. Um, if you try to change a habit or implement a habit into your life, it takes almost what is it? 21 days. 21 days. 21 days, I think. I've heard it put differently. So I mean, but think about that. I mean, that's a very good thing. We're taught to brush our teeth every morning when we wake up. We we were taught that as a kid. And it took your mom or your dad pestering the crap out of you, and finally you figured it out. Like, if I don't do this, I'm gonna get asked if I did it, right? Right. Or, you know, how you did your, you know, bath, you know, did you know before you start taking a shower, you know, how'd you clean your body? You know, how do you wash your hands? It's all these life habits, it took a while to get ingrained into you. Right now, as an adult, if you have to change something that you haven't been doing, it's gonna take a while and it's gonna have to be a purposely designed change. And you highlight on two good things. You can't do too much at once, and you have to be deliberate in what you actually do. Right. So if you say, I'm gonna read a book every morning for 15 minutes when I get up, that needs to be on your schedule. That needs to be blocked off. Yep. That's non-negotiable. Yep. That needs to be on that schedule. You if you say I'm gonna wake up every morning at 6 a.m., I'm gonna use a bathroom, brush my teeth, get a cup of coffee, and at 6:30, I'm gonna read a book for 15 minutes. That needs to be your schedule, non-negotiable. Non-negotiable. At 6 45, you need to then go to your next thing. At 7 or 7 30, it needs you have to be scheduled. You have to be, and then you do that for 21 days or a month, then you've mastered that. Right. You've implemented it, you're successful. Look and see what happiness or see what kind of different results that's brought into your life. Then say, what's something else I can implement in my life? And then you have little goals, and then that's what you talked earlier is that once you've do those couple things and it makes something better, now you've got a clear focus. Now you're saying, okay, I've accomplished doing those things. I don't have to have a stack full of notebooks anymore. It's very comical. But I mean, you know how many people I know that like that, probably? Yeah. There's every business owner, every person that wants to be successful. Yeah, that you know, we I can't tell you how many seminars I've gone to, you know, about being a better person, being a better time organized, being a better leader, being a better uh human being in in general. I mean, there's always all these people that think they can teach you how to be better at something, right? Yeah, but like you just said though earlier, is like if you don't implement it, what the heck are you even doing it for? Why even go to the class? I mean, you know, I think it's I think everything deserves a desire. If it's important, it needs to be scheduled. Right. Because if you just want to do it because it's good to do right now, or you you just went to the class, I mean, it's not gonna happen. Right. So, I mean, I I can tell you that's what I've learned in the last the older I've gotten, the more I've gotten clear on that. Yeah, is that you know, like you said, we all were free and we all had a good time and we all grew up and just go, go, go, make money, uh, figure it out as it comes. But I think there's comes a level of responsibility. And I think it really changed for me because I stopped looking at my success as individual. It wasn't about me after a while, it was about all the people that depended on me for the business to be successful. If my if if if if cook DFW goes down tomorrow, it's gonna affect 11 other people. Right. Well, and actually more than that, because they got kids and there's a trickle down effect, but that's my point it's not about me and my success anymore. Right, it's about all the people that use Cook DFW to feed their families, right? About to be successful in their own right. Right. I think as an owner, once you get to that level, you don't have an option but to be successful. You don't want that weight on your shoulders of saying, crap, I'm gonna have to let go of three employees and they're gonna be in hard times, you know. Yeah, I think that was a separation point, and that's when we got to that point of starting to hire a lot more people, that's really what I focused on more than ever. Yeah, it's not about what I get out of it, it's about what I can give other people. Yeah. So, I mean, that's that's a good segue. Let's talk a little bit about Cook DFW. Um, so you you guys have a super stellar reputation in you know, north part of Collin County into Grayson County. Uh, do you guys do anything down in Dallas? Only on referrals. Only on referrals mostly. We don't market down there. We, you know, our like you said, we're focused pretty much from George Bush north. Um we do a I mean that's probably 85-90% of our business. Okay. Is 85 to 90 percent you'd say roofs, or is other stuff starting to take over? Oh gosh, Lendell, man. I mean, we started with roofs and we started with gutters, of course. That was, you know, uh in the very beginning. Um, and we just, I mean, we've been blessed, man. We got some great partnerships with some fantastic workers, um, subs, project managers. Um, and it's not easy to do. So, but somehow we got really fortunate to really get some great people that's been with us for several years. I mean, two of the project managers have been with us since day one. Um, a couple of more have been with us almost four and a half, five years almost. A couple of our uh, you know, sub laborers or our, you know, like our fence guy's been with us three and a half years, our interior guy's been with us five and a half years. So along the way, we just developed a lot of great relationships with everybody that we use. And then from there, it became a word of mouth just you know, snowfall of you know, just of people saying, Oh, you can do this, you can do that, and then their neighbors found out we can do this, and you know, and and as the market is changing, you have to diversify as a business owner. Yeah, you have to you can't focus on roofs, you can't focus on one or two items unless they're very niche. When I say that, windows, windows, right? Yeah, but even as a window, you know, expert, no, you could get into solar screens, right? I'm just saying, but that's an option. People like that cosmetic kind of thing. I know I know they don't do any benefit for you, especially when you get quality windows, right? I tell you what, my my dad did solar screens for quite some time, and the uh the the cost benefit, it there, there uh there's a lot to that kind of world. It's just not worth it, man. Yeah, uh, from a business perspective. Now, I'm not talking about from the I don't really like them because they darken the home. And you know, there's a lot of mental health benefits related to natural light. So we made the decision to get rid of the solar screens and just focus on whole home window replacement because of all the benefits. But um, yeah, I mean, there's they're just very tedious to work with, uh, you know, and it's it's just kind of a pain. So it doesn't make it easy to clean the windows either. No, not at all, man. Okay, but that's another thing. So if you sell, maybe you could have a secondary business of a window cleaning company. Uh maybe we just actually got a a window cleaning partner. Um that I the office put together a cool strategic partnership. So we're doing like some discount um codes. I mean, it's all new. I got the coupons in my bag, but um, yeah, I think we're offering um a f a free cleaning, you know. Um, you get one, I think you get one, a free cleaning, and then there's like an ongoing discount for window cleaning going forward with that. Yeah, and then all their customers as well. There's they get like a discount on windows. But but the whole object, I mean, that's how we kind of envision that our company, you know, is that it started with great quality roofs, great quality gutters, great fences, you know, then we got interiors, then we started doing kitchen remodels, we started doing bathroom remodels, we started doing full home remodels and flooring, and it's stressful. It definitely is not for every contractor, and that's why a lot of contractors don't do what we actually are capable of doing because there's so much more game planning organization that has to occur, and you're so much more hands-on, also. A lot of contractors get spoiled by quality subs that they use, and they just come in to collect the check or sell the job. Somebody else does all the work. But when you get to our level, you have to be on top of every single thing that's going on. You have to make sure the materials are ordered, you have to make sure that the job was was, you know, pitched correctly. You have to make sure you have a precise game plan on what we're demoing, how we're doing this, what length the vanity is going to be, what how big the shower is gonna be, what tile, what level, you know, what height do you want the top? I mean, there's so many more things that you have to be in charge of. Yeah. What kind of texture do you want? You know, uh, what kind of corners do you want on your sheetrock? You know, do you want rounded? Do you want square? What size baseboard do you want? You know, yeah, there's a door. I mean, this is more in depth than most people would ever want to get. Yeah. And so, you know, but the good thing is when you get that organized on the interior, guess what? You can be on the outside now. Now our roofs are 10 times more crisp. We've trained all of our staff to say, hey, that flashing's not right. That needs a kick out, that drip edge needs to be cut back, that needs to have a two-inch exposure, that shingle's not right. Your level of crispness fully engages on your overall, every project you touch. Okay, because you're approaching it from that same detailed perspective and not just pull and slap and you know what a lot of these other there's so many roofing outfits that are just. It's crazy. Thousands of roofing companies. And I can tell you, I mean, we I just went and did inspection on a roof for a client. A call client called me up, had a really bad experience with another contractor, um, wasn't local, was from out of the city. Um, not gonna name the name, nobody would know him anyway. Um, but he calls me out. They says, Hey, I got A, B, C, D. And he was smart enough. This homeowner was actually educated. He called a home inspector out. He said, Hey, I just had repairs done in my house. Can you please inspect them? So he's spending more money than he has to just to double check this contract because he said, I just didn't have a good feeling. Right. And we've talked about this before. If you don't have a good feeling, if your gut's telling you something, more than likely, it's probably right. Probably. Pay attention to those insides now. So the inspector gets up on this guy's roof, and and these and these contractors, ridge vent, I don't know if you know what they're, you know, ridge vent basically, real quick, is uh it goes along the peak of where your two slopes meet on your ridge, and that's your ventilation instead of boxes or domes or something like that for your attic space, basically. Okay. Well, they make ridge vent in two different widths. They make it in 12 inch and they make it in nine inch, and that's the base that the vent actually covers the decking with. And then the shingles go on top of that ridge vent to cover the holes. Okay. This particular contractor used 12-inch base vent with 10-inch shingles. Well, when you do that, you leave an inch on both sides of the ridge vent exposed. Right, right. When you leave it exposed, water can get inside there. He should have used a nine-inch base with the 10-inch ridge shingles. So he used the wrong color, he used the wrong size ridge vent base. They left a whole bunch of exposed nails, they left some shingles that weren't fully um um attached. Um, they left some, you know, various things as far as um scrapes and mars on the brand new shingles and everything because they weren't walking correctly. Um, but then on top of that, you know, they they um they didn't paint the house properly. They had overspray on several of the things. They broke the brick when they were trying to replace one of the windows. Oh, yeah, of course. Did some sheetrock damage inside the house. They tried to replace carpet because a storm was so bad that it blew the windows out and caused water to go inside. So it soaked the carpet and ruined the padding. So insurance company said, Yeah, I'll replace the carpet. They left a big old seam all the way straight down this guy's room. Oh my gosh. This was in Anna? Yeah. From the last one. So this guy now, I think we estimated all the things he needs. It's almost $18,000 to fix his home properly. Oh my gosh. But this is that that when we start this conversation, that this contractor was over their head. They weren't used to having that level of precision and follow-up and making sure that they knew how to do everything on that on that particular claim, right? So, and I tell everybody all the time that you know, you shop different ways. A lot of people shop with price, a lot of people shop with convenience, a lot of people shop with quality. Which one are you? Right. And you got to be careful because it's gonna haunt you if you pick the wrong one. Yeah, and I'm having that same conversation uh with a buddy of mine right now. There is a window replacement company that's a national franchise. They're usually the cheapest. I'm not gonna say any names. Sure. There, there's a reason why they are the cheapest. And um, my this particular friend of mine, the condition of his home, uh, you know, the home's about 30 years old, 30, 35 years old. And you know there's been a lot of shifting and settling. So when I first went over there to analyze everything and document and take pictures and look at the condition of all the openings and see what we were up against, there was a lot of in a lot of work on the inside that needed to be addressed in order to make sure that this window replacement project goes smoothly and they don't have any problems. And it was probably about 40% higher in price than my usual estimate. Okay. So this was a couple months ago, whenever I first met with him. And uh it took him a while to get back to me. And just a couple days ago, he calls, he said, Well, I had this other company come out, and this is the price that they quoted me. And I said, Well, who was it? And he told me the name, and I was like, Brother, I promise you you don't want to do that. Um and I I reiterated again there's some some things wrong with your openings, man. If you don't do this the right way and you don't spend the proper amount of money right now to get this done properly, you're gonna have more problems and it's gonna cost you more money, especially if you hire that company, because they don't have ex they don't use experts, they use like the cheapest labor possible, they just pull the window out and put the new one in and try to caulk it as best they can and call it a day. And it's some of the things that I've seen people have to pay for after that, it's astronomical. And uh, he's like, Well, do you have like a less expensive window? I really need you to get it closer to like five percent within this price. I was like, bro, there is no way. There's no like I would even after taking all of the add-ons out of the estimate that I put together for him, even after taking everything out, I was still 25% higher than this uh McDonald's of Windows company, right? Um, and I'm almost to the point where if I'm not doing if we're not gonna do a whole bunch of this extra sheetrock stuff and like windowsill stuff and like things that need to get addressed, if I have to take that out just to bring the price down, I almost tell want to tell him I'm not I'm not even gonna do it. Like I'm that confident, like these are things that you need to look at. And uh, you know, this this guy's a very uh he's a he's an affluent gentleman, you know. And I'm I'm I gotta have another conversation with him, but like it's those types of things, like people look at things totally differently. If you think if you're getting your windows replaced, they think I'm just getting some new windows. No, there's other things to look at, and that's where really where we're different. Like the guys that do our work, man, they're experts, and and we we're we're gonna do it right. Like with us, it may be a little higher, it may be more expensive, but there's no risk. Yeah. I mean, some of these other companies, there's no accountability on who they use, there's no accountability around the labor or the management or the scheduling or any of that stuff. Um, so uh I was with a customer a couple days ago and she was reading me a bunch of next door stuff because she that's how she found us was she made a post on next door. And that company, which I was just talking about, she was there was a lot of posts in this next door feed. And I said, Will you screenshot that to me and send that to me so I can send that to my buddy, like see what different people are saying? Um, because you truly want to make sure that who you're hiring, the people that are doing the work, know what's going on. Well, you you brought up some great topics, man, and that happens every day. And if you're in a home service business, yes, you're every day. Again, it it it three people, three different ways they look at stuff. Yep. I will tell you this sometimes I think you're on to it, I think you're going down the right road. I've had to tell several clients, and especially when you get to a certain point as a contractor, there's red flags as a contractor. If you take on jobs that you know you shouldn't take on, you better listen to your gut, too. Yes, a hundred percent. And everything inside of me is telling me, don't touch it. Right. And I think that's liberating for a contractor to be at a point in his career and in then their job where you don't have to take on everything where you can literally tell a client, I'm not the best guy for your job. And that and they look at you, and the and they seriously will. The customer takes a step back when you say something like, what? And you're like, I don't think I need to be doing your job. I I don't think what you're looking for and what I provide are close enough that we're gonna be able to do business together. Right. And and and this is like they just get blown away when you say that. And I'm saying I'm doing you a favor, I really am. Yeah because I think when we're gonna get in this job, I'm probably gonna get to a point where I don't think it's being done correctly, then I'm gonna take it upon myself to to spend more money. I'm gonna end up taking more time, more labor on this job. We're gonna incur the cost just because I don't want to leave it at a point where I can't accept it. Right. Because I don't want to leave shoddy workmanship behind. I don't want to do that deal where I'm okay with it being just okay to get by because it's my name on it, you know, and that's important enough to me. And me too. Absolutely. I'm not the I'm not the guy that you know you're never gonna see again. I'm the guy that's out in the community. I'm not just yeah, I mean, and and I think that's important to be able to do that. And I don't think a lot of contractors necessarily remember that sometimes. No, because some you know, so many contractors, it it's it's hard to really get to a place of a steady enough flow of business to where you can pick and choose what you say yes to and what you say no no to. Um, it is a very liberating feeling to be able to do that. And because I really want to help this guy, like you know, he's he's a friend of mine. I really want to do the job for him. Um, but I'm not gonna just keep bringing the price down if that's all you're looking at. I mean, we can we can't do it. We talk to clients all the time, and every time we come out to one that wants estimates, we always go, okay, what kind of estimate do you want? Right. Let's set the bank, let's set the baseline right now. Right. Are you looking for the cheapest, most just quickest product you can get on your own? Yeah, I just need to get, okay, we're not your guys. Right. And they look at you again like, what do you mean? Like, we don't have cheap products, we don't do cheap labor. I pay my guys well above market because I expect more out of them and they give it to me. Yep. I don't buy returns or mislabeled materials. I don't buy seconds. Right. I buy quality, warrantable materials that I can leave on a product knowing they're gonna do what they're supposed to do. Um, you know, and I say, you know, an estimate a lot of times, and I find this especially with um, you know, houses that just need to get something to sell, or uh I just need to get it to stop the leak. It's always a race down to the bottom. Yeah. It's always a race to the bottom. They call out three or four subcontractors, and it's usually like they say, Well, so and so did it for this. And then that guy said, Well, I'll do it for five hours less. And then the next person they come out and then kids. I'll do $500 less. So what's the part of this $10,000, which was probably too less in the first place, and now is it $7,500? And that guy's probably just going to do the cheapest, fastest thing to get out of there and make $7,500. And then the homeowner's gonna get a problem in six months. And then guess what? The repair's gonna cost him another three or four thousand dollars. So now he's gonna probably be sending more than he he he could have in the first place. So I don't know. I just have to be real honest, and homeowners have to be honest with themselves. If it's too good to be true, if there's that much of a gap between your estimate and the other company's estimate, okay, something's wrong. Yeah, something is wrong. Get a third opinion, right? Tell it. Tell them I told homeowners before, you need another opinion, probably. Yeah. And I and I and that's another thing. They look at you like, what are you talking about? I'm like, obviously, between me and this company, you're getting this much difference, okay? You think they're apples to apples. I know they're not. I know they're not, but I want you to get a third opinion. Get a third opinion, call someone else out here. Yeah, and then and and it's 50-50 from there. Yeah. Sometimes it's like, all right, you were right. But this other company was still fifteen hundred dollars or less than you. I go, well, okay, let's look and see what they're actually give me the details. Yeah. Because they they've they've they've made sure that they've totally have proven that the really cheap company is wrong. Right. So now it's between two somewhat qualified companies that are competing. Now let's get down to the nuts and bolts. Let's look at all the materials they're using, let's look at the warranties they're providing, let's look at who's in charge of the warranties. A lot of times they'll say, Oh, yeah, it's got a warranty. Well, the warranty may be with the manufacture of the material, but who installed it may not have a warranty. Exactly. Um, and then what does that warranty mean? Is it transferable to a new homeowner? Right. When you get to sell your home, do those warranties transfer? A lot of times they don't. No, they don't. I mean, a lot of times they don't. In the windows, of course they do, right? That is a cool thing. And our roof they did. That is a cool thing about you know, a transferable warranty, but it really rises and falls on who is doing the actual work in the house. Yeah. What's their skill level? What's the accountability behind them? What's the system like? What's the what's the callback like? You know, what if something does go wrong? How is it handled? You know, those are the things that people the homeowners really want to be asking for. And I see you're wearing your podcast uh hat. I just noticed that you're wearing it. And I saw I watched uh the episode. Thanks for having me on. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was a good time. It was a good time, man. Um I'm I'm I'm blanking. Why am I blanking? Um the the gentleman that hosted it. Dan O'Malley. Yeah, Dan O'Malley. I don't know why I was blanking on his name. Great guy, man. That was a lot of fun. And to be able to uh very laser focused lay out some details about Windows and specs and uh really highlight you know the importance of of what we do. And so that was a lot of fun. No, Dan does a great job. Um it's it's a pleasure having Dan do our monitoring and our editing and doing our hosting of it. Dan, uh, if people don't know Dan O'Malley, he was with uh the Russ Martin show for years. Yeah, so he was he's been on the radio and entertaining for almost 30 years. Yeah, he knows the the ins and outs, he knows a lot of good people. Um, but when me and Dan got together for our podcast, I said, Dan, I meet so many homeowners that have no idea what the hell they're doing with their house. Right. They do, they truly don't. They don't know what to ask. Yeah, okay. They just they're shopping by price, they don't know what else to ask. And that's what the mission of our is it's know your home. We have a YouTube channel. We launched that. It's the whole purpose of that is to educate homeowners. New, old, doesn't matter. Educate homeowners on all kinds of various subjects that you find yourself maybe into. You know, and having you about Windows was was pretty interesting. There's some good information in that episode, man. Thanks, man. I had a lot of fun doing that. A lot of people wouldn't know half of those things. I know they wouldn't. I mean, not a lot of education around it. Well, because you get again, uh there's so many salesmen out there, right? They sell, they sell, they sell, they don't deliver results necessarily. Right. So the products that you're delivering obviously are much more different. Yeah, and and and to have that ammunition is pretty. I would love to have somebody that's educated have people come out to the house and then calling out some of those people that are doing low bids. Yeah, that'd be fun to watch. Oh man, that would be fun. So, but I mean, so yeah, so undercover reality show. Like, no, no, that's what I'm saying. That was serious. And I've I've seen those, I've seen those things they do on HVAC companies. Yeah, they they they unplug like one thing off of it and they see how many how many true companies will come in and diagnose it correctly, yeah, and not to oversell them. And it's like 80% of the companies are like, you need a whole new unit. Yeah, it's eighteen thousand dollars. And it's like, and then you know 20% of the companies come down and go, Hey, it looked like something came disconnected. I don't know what's wrong. That would be Roy Cook. You know, that would be Roy Cook. Yes, so that's the type of people they are, man. But I think there should be more stings. I think you know, there should be more opportunities to call out the bad actors. Yeah, especially in home improvement, man. It's I mean it is so thinny. I feel bad for the home buyers. I do too, man. I do, and that's another reason why we made the podcast was hey, let's educate homeowners, let's let them ask questions that they need to know in their day-to-day homeownership. Let's let them know what big ticket items are going to cost potentially. Let's let them know how to protect their investment more. You know, you need your HVAC, you know, maintenance once a year, at least. You know, it gets hot, it's running non-stop here in Texas. Yeah, if you want it to last 15, 18 years instead of six, you probably need to make sure you're doing all your maintenance. Get your windows replaced first. Well, there you go. And that will drastically decrease the house drastically. What do you I think we mentioned this? You said 15, 20 years old is where the number is usually. Well, uh, usually around 18 to 20. 18. Yeah, if your house is over 20 years old, man, and you've got the original aluminum builder grade window that's starting to fog, and you have the means, replace your windows. It will totally change everything about your house. I've seen it. It'll be more comfortable, it'll be quieter, it'll be even temperatures, the HVAC won't run all the time. It's gonna lower the bills. I mean, it's literally a completely different house. It is. So if you start to if you look up uh Woodsruff Windows on Google on our Google reviews and start reading through some of those reviews, the things that people say, I mean, these paragraphs, some of these reviews, people are blown away because there's not a lot of education around the window, but when they do it, not even the same house. No, it's not. I I have personally seen it, I personally felt the difference. Uh obviously, we've done business for years together. You've you've done a ton of windows for my clients, and um, I've I've been back into their homes and it's blazing outside. They got west facing sun. They, you know, the windows before them were either fogged up, looked ugly, whatever. Um, or they were having some energy concerns. Um, and we put those new windows in there, and man, I'm telling you, it's it is it is scientifically amazing. It really is how much heat was transferring in that house prior to those new windows, and how the new windows and that glass is able to withstand that and not allow that to transfer into the home. Yeah, and continuously too. But that's my point. It's like it's astounding. It's it's it's not even I don't think people understand until you actually can see it with your own eyes. It's almost like you should do a test window in people's homes. Yeah. And say, I'm gonna give you a window for 30 days. Give me your west facing window. I did that. Uh quick quick story before we wrap up because we got Carrie, uh, your wife is coming. Carrie's on the way to do her episode next. I'm excited about that. It's gonna be fun to talk about real estate and some other stuff. But uh to that point, one of my buddies that I grew up playing middle school football with, he lives out in Flower Mound. Um, we ended up doing his whole house, but he he was one of the skeptics, right? About is it really gonna make that big of a difference? But he had a home office, and he's a science nerd, right? He had a home office that had thermal curtains, it had shutters, he had a wall unit in there, and it was still just bacon, right? He said, Okay, this is what we're we'll do. We're gonna start with these two windows in my office, and if it truly does what you say, then I'll write you a check for the whole house. And I was like, You're on, dude, done. So he he pulled out the thermal imagery gun, you know. Uh and so day of install, and this was the heat of the summer, maybe three years ago, we had a baking summer like three years ago, and it was in July. And he took his thermal imagery uh image gun out and took a whole bunch of photos uh before and after, and what it was like with the with the curtains and stuff up, and what it was like whenever the windows were out of the opening, and then what it was like as soon as the windows went in that opening. And I mean, it was literally when he was pointing the camera at it with the thermal thermal curtains and all that stuff, it was still reading like 115 degrees through the curtains. Wow, right? As soon as the windows went in, and it was like maybe 112 degrees outside, as soon as the windows went went in, within like 30 minutes, it was reading 80 directly at the window. And then in the next couple days, it lowered to 76. Yeah, and he didn't need his wall unit anymore, he didn't need his curtains anymore, he didn't need the shutters anymore. He was able to enjoy the view of the backyard because it was right by the pool. Yeah, it had total clear view of the pool, and he just sat there in total comfort and he was blown away. And he called me like three days later, he's like, dude, okay, come on. Do the house, please. Come do the whole house. And then about a month later, he called me back after doing the house, and he's like, Oh, well, I ran a timestamp on everything, and my unit ran 76 hours less than it did last month. Think about that. And just doing the windows, yeah. No, it's amazing, man. It really is. Great products. I mean, I I endorse you as much as I can. Obviously, uh, we've been doing business for what six six years. Yeah, six years and uh never had a complaint, never had one client ever come back and say, you know what? I'm I'm I'm disappointed that you let that guy do my windows. Yeah. So yeah, well, we have made a couple of mistakes. There have been some mistakes. One of mine, I mismeasured, I misordered one of the windows by two inches. And that client, he totally understood. He we went through the motions, we handled it again. Yep, we handled it, we got him taken care of. He was ecstatic. Uh, those are really happy folks there. Um, but yeah, so that's what it's about. Woodruff windows, I can't say enough good things. I'm glad. Um, it's been a great partnership. Yeah, it has. I'm looking for a whole uh looking forward to a whole lot more, man. Now that you know we've got this podcast stuff going on and the networking group that we're doing and figuring out cool ways to continue to help homeowners get connected to quality because that's what it's all about. Is it 833 Cook DFW or 844 Cook DFW? 833 Cook DFW, uh main phone number or cookdfw.com. And then of course you can go to YouTube and just search CookDFW Roofing and you pull up the YouTube channel. But the web the website has everything on it. Cool, awesome. So it's good to have you here, man. I look forward to uh to more fun stuff with Cook DFW. And you guys uh tune in for the next episode. We had to take a few week hiatus. We switched studios, so whenever you see this episode come out, you're gonna you're gonna notice the background's different. There's a new studio here in McKinney that we're gonna be doing some podcasts out of. They have uh four really cool setups in here. Super excited. So we're back. We had to we did his episode three weeks ago, had some audio issues, so now we we're re-recording it, and then we're gonna come back out with this, and then we're gonna be back at it. So you guys have a good one. Take care. Peace out. Clarity Changes Everything. Lindell Woodruff, Daniel Cook, thanks a lot, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. Peace out, guys. Thanks for listening to today's episode of Clarity Changes Everything. If this conversation helped you in any way, it would mean the world if you would subscribe and then make sure you share it with someone that needs to hear it. And if you're here in the DFW Metroplex and you want to talk Windows, all you gotta do is text Clarity to 214-225-1922 to schedule your complimentary in-home consultation with me. If you want updates on the podcast, special offers, and more exciting things coming, just want the news, visit Clarity Changes Everything Podcast dot com and join my email list. Until next time, remember Clarity Changes Everything.