EPISODE 3 - NO TWO ROADS - NEIL ROOK of RAVEN ROOFING

In our third episode we couldn't be more excited to bring on our first guest! 

He 'sthe founder of Raven Roofing and a successful business owner, Neil Rook. He is also none other than Brent's Dad!

Neil shares about his journey starting Raven Roofing from nothing, shares some wisdom along the way, and provides some insight that would be valuable to any business owner. 

So sit back, relax, and maybe take some notes... because Neil is a gem with some good wisdom to share.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So yeah, I think I warned you about that, saying realtors work evenings. Yeah. They don't work in the morning. Yeah. That I'm convinced of. Welcome to the No Two Roads podcast with Darren Muffer and Brent Ruff.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of No Two Roads. What is No Two Roads? Is it a podcast that Brent and I are putting on? Entrepreneurs, business owners, we want to learn from them how they've grown in their business, and we're really excited about today.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

So like and subscribe. Definitely. Follow. We are Realtors in the Fraser Valley. We run the Left Razer Rook Real Estate Group. And today I'm very excited to introduce our first guest, our guinea pig, this man. Not only has he started a company from zero employees from scratch in 1996 to over a hundred employees, he is also my dad. And the first guest we've ever had on the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

And really, he's responsible for making Leffers and Rook happen to a certain extent.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Right. So, Neil, welcome to the show. Hi guys. Hey, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Good to be here. Yeah, there you go. So, Brent, tell me, tell me about what you know broad scale about what your dad has done business wise, and then we'll get into all the questions we have for him.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

All right. So I was yeah, I was really young when Raven Roof, when Raven Roofing started, and that's my dad's company. So it's a roofing company. He's going to tell us all about it today. I was really young when it started. I was seven years old. And so I don't know much about the beginning at all. And I'm excited to kind of hear his story. And then it grew from nothing. And I know we came from a very humble beginning because I also grew up in that. And yeah, dad, you you uh yeah, you started from nothing, you grew it to a massive company. You've recently sold the company. Um, and it was uh pretty incredible to watch your journey. I also worked for him for about eight years, um, maybe, maybe even a little bit more. I was so shortly after I graduated, oh, seven, so yeah, it was about 10 years actually. Uh started in the field, uh, became a ticketed flat roofer. You got my red seal. And then I was in the office and worked for several years with him there. Um, really fond memories of that, learned a ton. And that's kind of my very high level. And then I might have been responsible for ending that.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

But we'll get, I'm sure we'll get to that later. So, Neil, how how did you get how did you get a start in roofing?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

How did I get and start in roofing? Yeah, even before Raven. Before Raven. Well, grew up in Manitoba, um, lived on a farm. My dad was a pig farmer. My mom was stay-at-home, grew vegetables, big garden. Um, as a kid, I had to do chores, slopped pigs, um, worked in the garden.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Um and the pig barns had that smell?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Oh, they had a smell.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

We've shown a few of them. What was uh what was uh Grandma Rook's nickname again? What'd you call her? Scooter. Yeah, grandma? Yeah, well, and what was your dad's name again? Uh Bimbo. Yeah. Scooter and Bimbo. Those are the nicknames I would always hear. Yeah. Those are your nicknames for them? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Yeah. But no, anyhow, yeah, I grew up there. So, you know, age of 12, 13, you were dragged out, you had to do your chores, and that was before school, after school.

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Um, you know, my dad had the pig farm, and during the day he would be helping other farmers, or he'd work in other places. Um yeah, we were not a well-off family, but we always had everything we needed.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Yep. Um how many brothers and sisters?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

I have uh there's six in the family. I got uh two brothers, three sisters.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

And where do you fit in there?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

I'm the second from the end.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Oh, okay. There's big gaps in there.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

There's big gaps. Yeah, and they but you still had to do all the farm chores, so yes, because my older brother was like 12 years older than me, so he had moved out, so it was it was up to me.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

There you go. So you so you're out there on a farm. You moved here then. In how old were you when you moved here?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Right after we were married, I was 24. 24. So I was actually had been working in uh grain terminal in Winnipeg. Yeah. And um I was doing I was the grain grader, so it was a good job, but uh buying position came open, which I applied for and uh was unsuccessful, and they hired someone from outside of the company, and um it kind of it was discouraging, yeah. So I quit. And I thought there has to be something better. So we quit, and then I met up with uh and one of my best friends that I knew, and uh they also moved to BC at the same time we did. So we packed up everything we had, I was just married. Um, I think my wife was pregnant with Brand at the time. Yeah, had no job.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

We came here, had everything in a U-Haul trailer, and uh so there wasn't a huge there wasn't you didn't know what was here yet. Had no clue, yeah. Just getting out of car. So it's almost that immigrant feel where it's like, you know, the Europeans, we're going to Canada and we'll find out what happens there. You're like, I'm moving off the prairies.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

No, I'd been here before, like on holidays and so forth. But and and it appealed to me. Yeah, and I thought, no, this is there's an opportunity here. And if you work hard and you want to work, there's always work.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yeah. So that's that's 19 when are you night? That's like late 80s.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

That was uh January of 89 when we moved here.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

I was born in 89, so four months later.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah, so we actually started uh hanging drywall together, the two of us. Yeah. Um, I'd been in construction before. We didn't know anything about drywall, but we just hey, make it white.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

So the drywall cracks that I see on 1990 age homes, it might be from you when we're going through homes. That could have been.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yeah, it could have been. Okay, so we'll jump, let's jump back to BC. But I just wanted to quickly touch on remember you tell me a story. I thought this was so cool, just for perspective of you growing up in Carmen as a teenager. Um, like we don't like obviously, this is before cell phones, like you're in the you're in the 80s here. And uh I remember you telling me a story about two and two. Can you can you tell the people about two and two?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Yeah, we grew up in a small town, Carmen. So the Carmen covered one square mile. So Friday nights, there was this vacant yard, I guess, in the middle of nowhere. And if we wanted to have some music and have a few beer or have a few drinks, we would say, okay, let's go meet at two and two. That was two miles south and two miles west Carmen. Everybody knew where it was. Yeah, so and we could crank the music there, and uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

It's the best. That's just the best.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

I love small town stories.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

There's movies written about this stuff. I love that story.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Well now, I'll know if I ever go to Carmen, I'm gonna go to two and two at front of the.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

We were young, but we were responsible. I can say that. Yeah, you know, we had a good time, we had lots of fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

And really driving.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

I'm sure some guys met girlfriends there. Yeah, yeah. It was for me, it was uh probably a two-mile drive. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

I would love for someone to reach out at some point if they watch this and be like, I know two and two. Tell us a story. That would be awesome. Yeah, okay, but back back to BC. So you're here, you got your your land drywall, um, you know, you're having a kid, you're starting a family. What like how long did you drywall, and then what'd you do after that?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

So I probably drywalled for maybe a year. I mean, I knew it wasn't a career choice, that's for sure. And were you working for somebody else, or are you guys? Oh, we were we were subcontractor.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Um, so we happened to be on a job where there's another commercial roof for working at the same time. And I I knew the foreman of that company, so we got to talking to him, and through him, I met the owner, and I was interested in what they were doing. So I approached him and asked him for work. Um, he said, sure, I'll give you a job. At that time, my other the guy was uh working with drywall and he also wanted to get out, so he took a totally different career path. He went back to school and yeah, um is now back in Winnipeg.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

But it was kind of happenstance then to start into the roofing.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Yes, right? That was a fluke.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Yeah, that was really a fluke. Um what did you like when you were younger and you were a kid, what did you think you wanted to do when you were older?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

I had no idea, but I did know I didn't want to work for someone all my life. I wanted to be independent. Yeah, that I knew.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

I had no idea what from an early age or when you're like later teens?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

No, probably almost right after school, after I finished school.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

I thought, you know, you're on uh you're on a fixed salary or fixed wages. You can't really say I didn't like the idea of an eight to five job every day. I needed more.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah. So then you get into to uh roofing. What was that company then? When you first started getting into roofing? Uh what which company? Yeah, like you didn't you didn't start a name company. Yeah, okay. No, no, that's good. So you you get you're starting at a at a uh roofing company.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

You work there for how many years before you're like, okay, I'm gonna well basically I started on the roof, right, as a field guy, and after a couple weeks, the owner expressed that he didn't like the office work that much. So I said, Well, I don't mind doing your estimating and so forth. I had taken estimating courses way back. Yeah, um, I said, Well, give me a shot. So yeah, after two weeks I was in the office and I was doing his estimating and uh project managing and um how big was the company at that time? I don't really remember. Um there might have been 15 roofers or so at the time, but it wasn't big. Yeah, it was when um single ply roofing first came out, which is opposed to tar and gravel.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Um you say it was a flute, but you asked the right questions.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

I did, and I got the right response. Yeah. So I did that for approximately four years, um built up uh a lot of relations. Yeah. Um because the owner wasn't wasn't really dealing with um the clients that much. It was me, it was all through me. And then um it came to a point where it became apparent to me it was gonna become a family business. Um so I thought that's that's not really gonna work for me either. So at that point I had been talking to another person who later became a partner of mine and who also wanted to was interested in doing a startup, and um he had a lot more roofing knowledge than than I did, but I had the clients, I had the contacts.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

So um we ventured out on our own. You roofed for a couple months at this point? Two weeks. That's my roofing career. How come I had to be on the roof for so long before I got an office job? What's going on here? You took the wrong steps. Yeah, you didn't ask the right questions. I did not ask the right questions. You know, actually, those those four or five years on the roof definitely helped shape for who I am today. So I don't I don't regret it at all. I mean, you did a lot of you know drywall and other jobs before you were doing stuff you know in the office too.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

But so that you met with this other individual, yeah. That many decisions, yeah. So that decision to to make that jump, like that probably was weeks or months to be like, okay, before we actually go do this. Like, was that scary or was that exciting?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

That was a lip of faith. It was scary, but exciting. Yeah, it was very scary because we had no idea what the response was gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Yeah, what about like financial backing and help? Because I don't we didn't have a lot of money. You didn't have a lot of money at like at the time, so it was a huge risk, too.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

I actually ended up in, I don't know if you know this, but borrowing some money from my father-in-law to start, and we negotiated terms with a supplier where we didn't have to pay for equipment or supplies for three months without interest. Um, it was a guy that I had become good friends with over the years, and um he had faith in us, and really without his backing, I don't think we could have done it, quite honestly.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

That's amazing. So, and I want to give people a bit of context who don't know. Like, this isn't your average residential, you know, shingle, small roofing stuff. This is flat roof. So picture your, you know, your Home Depots, your small commercial complexes that you see. Um, I was on a I was on arenas roofing for you. I was all over Anisus Island. There's nothing but huge industrial warehouses there. This is flat roofing, it's commercial, it's industrial. So when you're gonna start a business and you have to order materials, you're in the hundreds of thousands.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Well, we didn't start out that big. Okay. We started with smaller buildings. And that um we didn't have a crew when we started.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Yeah, that's what was my next question. Did you subcontract it out or did you right away like you hired?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

We hired one guy, and then let's put it this way, we borrowed some roofers.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

That's well put. And where was where was your uh there was no there was no non-compete.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Well, there were people I knew from the other company and said, hey, we got this, and can you come and help us for a day? Yeah, yeah, there you go. So they I guess they might have phoned in sick.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

I somehow it's you still don't know. You were getting roots on. So what like what I'm hearing from this is like when you think of an idea, there's always the like I shouldn't do it because of this, I shouldn't do it because of that. I'm sure you went all through all those, but it was just like we're gonna get through all the like when you guys were meeting together, what was discussed? And and do was the pitfalls discussed, or is it just like let's go, like let's just do this?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

We didn't really see any pitfalls. I mean, actually, we thought we were a good combination because I had contacts, I had clients already. He had the know-how, yeah, how to do it. Um just work hard.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

I mean was he on the roof?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yes, he was on the roof, and I actually did too for a little while then to start. Um be on the roof and do estimating in the evening.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah. Um so early on, did you feel like you were out of your element or or making promises you weren't sure you could back up, or did you not have any of that? Like, like were you saying yes to things where it's like, okay, we can say yes, we got it.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Not sure you can actually no, because when we started, we didn't have that much work to start. So we could easily do the work that was available. And then slowly it evolved over time. I would go and I mean I had a client list, yeah. I went and visited them, and there were there were a number of guys that said, look at I I don't even know who the owner of the other company was. I only dealt with you. So um all you had to do was do a job and do it well, and yeah, you had to repeat business from them.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Like anything else, hustle, do it well, get in front of people, they'll refer you, they'll come back to you. And that's one thing that I noticed at Raven, like coming in later to estimate project managers, is we had a good brand and a reputation, easy to stand behind to get work. You still had to go get it, you still have to work hard to get it, but you had the brand to back you.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

But you also had clients that would come back to you and say, look, it you might not be the little bid, but do you want to take another look at this? Yeah, because we'd like to use you.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Now, whether they were telling you the truth all the time. I know.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Deciphering through the BS and like them trying to shave five grand off your little bit or actually give you the shot at the job is everything, right? And that ties also into something we I want business owners to know. Like, follow up. If you're sending quotes in the construction industry or you're giving analysis on a house, you know, in real estate or whatever you're in, follow up. Squeaky wheel gets the green.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Oh, it is so important. I I mean, you know me, I stress that all the time. Yeah, follow up. You guys put in a quote two weeks ago. Where are you sitting? How have you done? What are you doing? If you didn't get the job, what were the other numbers like so you could know where the competition was and where you had to be? It's so important.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

So those early days, like you said, you had your you had got your connections already. If you wanted to grow and go after a new job, are you just going to site? Are you driving by buildings? I mean, like, who's the project manager here? Like, how did you go after new business? Or was it slow organic growth with who you already knew?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

For the most part, it was slow organic, but we also um got all the builder meet ports of all the uh garments that were issued. Um, and we would follow them up, whether it be phoning the architect, see who the builder is, or um, you know, is it construction management? Is it uh going out to GC? Is it um and then find out who the name is in call them? And you could say, hey, I did this and this job, and you know, we'd like to we'd like the opportunity to be able to price this for you or quote it for you.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Yeah, you can get your foot in the door that way. How was your um how was your start for the office? Like where did you guys where'd you guys work out of?

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Oh, the start?

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Out of the basement and a garage. Our shop was the garage, our office was basement.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Where'd you put uh tools and uh materials? We didn't have much at that time.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Okay. And we didn't do that long, and then later we ended up um in Langley, and we were still in the basement as the office, but there was this old refurbished chicken barn that we made into a shop, and that's what we used for quite a while.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

I used to get paid, I forget what, to go in this refurbished chicken barn and sort screws. So in roofing, you got all these different types of sizes of screws. And at the end of a job, there's the guys, every time they have extra shoes, just chuck it all back in the screw bucket. And these buckets are like a foot by a foot, and they're just full of all different sizes of screws. So there's all these shelves in this chicken barn. I'd show up with Neil on a Saturday morning, he'd he'd probably go into the office and get some work done. And I I don't even know what you paid me, probably not enough.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Oh, I I think sufficient. Didn't we pay you by the screw?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

I think it was. And you had to sort the screws to all the different sizes of the buckets and like put it on the shelf so that you could continue using it. Is that still a viable job? Is that that didn't become a thing anymore?

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Your sister did that too, you know, for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Yeah. So that that wasn't happening in the later years, though, was it?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Um, you know, when you're when you start paying a dollar a screw, um, and that's what they were, when they're mixed up, they're useless. So, you know, if you could sort a thousand screws and get them in the right buckets, it was well worth it for us. You probably were underpaid.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Yeah, yeah. It was alright though. I remember just going there. It's one of the first jobs I ever had. Just yeah, turn on some music and there you go.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

A job no one ever thought would sort it somebody else to understand.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Yeah, because they come anywhere from like, you know, an inch and a quarter might be for you know when you're putting on the like the material at the end, or you you can get up to like what eight, 10, 12-inch screws. Oh, you can get 18 inch. Going, yeah, going through layers of insulation and whatever they all just kind of get combined and sort of.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

I want to back up just a hair. When you started your business, the conversation you would have with your wife, like, do you remember what that was? And if if if was she like super pumped? Was it like because Brent talks about with with with his wife? Like, it's the okay, I know I'm gonna have to work hard, might miss some dinners. Like, do you remember excitement from her?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Was there you know what I will give her so much credit? Um, when I suggested we move to BC and she was pregnant and we had no work, she supported it 100%. Yeah, when I decided I was gonna start on my own, she supported it 100%. Awesome. There was, I don't know, she had this confidence in me, and I don't know whether that was why or how I earned it because I didn't ask for it, but yeah, um but that probably helped you have more confidence in it, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

She was always supportive, yeah, never questioned it.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

She's a great supporter.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

That's one thing she never did. She never got involved in the business, never questioned how we did things or why we did things. Um in that respect, um, no, I had a free range.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Trusted recall, supported.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah, and I remember like one of the things I've I've talked about in our last couple episodes here was making sure you and your wife are on the same page when you're starting a business. You ingrained that in me. You're like, once I decided real estate, you're like, if you're gonna do this, if unless you're gonna give it a hundred percent and go, and that's like work and it's gonna take evenings and whatever to get it going, she better be on the same page. I was there's no point in even doing this.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

So yeah, I think I warned you about that saying realtors work evenings. Yeah, they don't work in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Yeah, that I'm

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Convinced of but business builds. Yes, we do. But no, the evenings you're out, and yeah, and that's the nice part. I I you know got to be at home, usually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

So even at the start, it was you could make it your eight to five, nine to five. Like you could set your hours how you wanted enough of.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

When you start, you put you go all in. So sometimes it was till nine o'clock. It depends what you're doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

So let's let's let's go to like scaling. So now we know you you moved to Langley, you're working out of kind of a basement office, a refurbished chicken barn, the business is organically growing. Like what were the like the next key steps going from like one to ten to fifty people?

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Well, when you started Raven, 94 then? 95. So the early 90s were a bit of a rough time, right? And then things picked up a little bit kind of when you started. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Um everyone told us it was slow when we started. It was a bad time to start. But um we seemed to find work. Like we were steady working after a year. We were steady working, and it came to a point to get out of the chicken barn. We had to look more professional. We were a commercial roofing company, right? You need an office, you need a you need a sign on the front. So then we ended up renting uh warehouse space in whether it's Langley or Surya's on production way. Yeah. But um and that was actually the first commercial space we had where we could actually say, Hey, I think we're on the right track.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

3,000, was it 6,000? I forgot.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

I think it was around 6,000 square feet altogether. And this is how many years in? This would have been probably five years in, yeah, four years in, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Yeah, yeah. At this point, did you know like you'd made it, like this was gonna be a lasting thing, and you were confident?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Oh, I was confident, but I never ever felt like, oh, I've made it. This is it. Yeah, never ever felt that.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

And in those first five years, did you feel like that growth was like way more than you expected, or was just slow growth to get to that point?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

It was way more than I expected. I think we were probably growing by at least 20% a year.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Wow, maybe 25% a year. Yeah, because not only did you have your regular clients, but you're also picking up new ones. So five years in, how many employees are you at maybe 30, 35?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

That's a lot of growth. Because all of a sudden your job's your job's changing. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

You're managing people, you're yeah, and at that point we hired more office staff too.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Yeah. Yeah. So okay, so now we're so now we're at 2,000 and you got an office space. Yeah, you're in there for how long?

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Uh when did we move out? Uh thinking around we were probably there four or five years.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

So so Neil told us earlier he doesn't know anything about real estate. But obviously, he knew that this was what the business needed, and then you slowly grew out of that office, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:15

So it was getting too small for sure.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

So why did you start the search? Just because it was too small, you're like, oh, we can probably afford something.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

No, we we needed a bigger space. We weren't sure whether it was to lease bigger space or whatever, but we found the building in Campbell Heights. Um, seemed like a reasonable price. Prices were going up. Um, it was vacant, it was just a shell, and so we put an offer in and we got that building. So all of a sudden we go from 6,000 square feet to around 24,000 square feet.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Big deal.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

But we had to do all the TI work.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

And you purchased it or you're leasing something.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

We purchased that.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Yeah. So that what you're doing. That was a leap of faith.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

That was probably the biggest one. Because now all of a sudden you have a big mortgage, um, you know, and you have to cover it.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

But I remember you storing insulation in there for convoy or something.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yes, we did, because we couldn't use it. So our supplier asked if he could use part of the warehouse for insulation storage. Because at that time they were having trouble bringing in insulation.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yeah. So you built that 24,000 square feet. How much did you think you needed at that time? Half of it?

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Um, we used all the office, but probably half. Yeah, good, but a big half.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

So at a roofing warehouse, you have like your your whole roofing section, but with commercial roofing, there's also a whole metal section. So there's a metal break to bend the metal that goes on the exterior of all the buildings. So you have a break, you have employees in the shop that are shearing these flat sheets, they're cutting them and then they're bending them to whatever that profile is, and then they're storing them until they go to the job. So you need square footage for that. Yeah. And then extra insulation and trucks and other employees.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And and you bought that building what year then? Ish.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

I think uh see, that's when I had gotten a new partner already. He came on in 2007. I mean, I'm gonna say 2007.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

So can I ask you a question about that? Like you're you had a new partner there in 2007, but what what happened with the the first one? Like when did when did you have to and why did you have to do that?

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Get a new partner? Yeah. Because it exists the the first partner I had, we had a major falling out. We didn't see eye to eye on anything anymore. I had a certain focus, he had a focus. Um yeah, without getting into the nitty-gritties, it it just didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

So, how did you how did that kind of I guess break up, for lack of better words? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Well, at the time we were also partners in a branch office in Regina, where we had uh taken on two partners. So um he would he was a little older than me, so for him, he bought the Saskatchewan branch from me, and I took over the BC branch. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

So you guys tried to replicate Raven in Regina?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yes, that was the idea. We were helping some guys go there, and it's actually it was a very profitable um okay business there, but yeah. So but we couldn't work together anymore. It was either high, he had to go or I had to go. It was not gonna work.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

I remember you telling me about a shotgun clause in business with a partner, right? Yeah, it's essentially if you ever if you ever tell someone you want to buy them out for a number, you have to be prepared that they could flip it on you and buy you that same number, right? That's exactly how it works. Yeah, and did that happen in that situation?

SPEAKER_00 28:52

No, we came to an agreement.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

Yeah, but that's a really good clause. Maybe, maybe there's someone out there wondering how to have a clause with a partner that does that keeps everyone honest and fair. That's a yeah, you can't lowball them. No, you can't because they'll flip it on you like that. Yeah, which is interesting. Okay, so you you guys come to an agreement, you go your separate ways, now you own it on your own. That's true. So why bring in another partner?

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Well, because as you know, there was a guy working there that we had hired who was very, very good. Um, he would not have stayed on and worked for a wage.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Um and you saw some of the things.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

I did not want to be competition with him because that's what it would have ended up. Yeah. Yeah. And he is an awesome human being. We came to an agreement that he I would sell him 50% because he wanted 50-50, and I was okay with 50-50. Yeah. Um, him and I had worked together for probably six years already at that point, so I knew him well.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

I'm curious how he came up with the money to buy at that point, coming off as a because he was like a he was a foreman, right? He was a roofer.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, he was a foreman. He had made some investments, and how he did it is that's a personal personal thing that's good for him.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

But he came up with money and would you so you had a part you had a partner in your drywall business, and then you're working with somebody else, yeah, but then you had a partner pretty quick at the your start of your roofing business. Yep. That didn't work out, but then you quickly got another partner. Yep. Do you see the benefits of having a partner? Because some people are s wouldn't they don't want to want to ever have a partner. I see the benefit of it. Did you always want to kind of have a partner, something someone to bounce things off of? And if so, why? Or was it just the way it worked?

SPEAKER_00 30:42

I didn't necessarily need a partner, but I also didn't want to lose this guy. Yeah, and I didn't want to be his competition. Yeah, because he was good, he still is good. Yeah, um, so for me, and knowing him for six years and you know, his standards, the way he lived, everything like that. I mean, it was a win-win for both of us. Yeah, and we were also got along well. I can also say though that we never ever hung out together. Yeah, like he didn't come to my place weekends, I didn't go to his place. He had his friends, I had my friends. I mean, it was a business relationship through and through.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Well, you guys also got along really well through that, right? Yeah, and you guys are very different people. Um, me and Darrow talked about that. Like, we're opposites. You and him are very different, and like having worked for both of you for as long as I did, there's different things I could glean from you. Well, especially because we have the family relationship, which can present challenges at times, but to also have him with a different perspective and a different look sometimes on business was super beneficial, and probably then if it's not just for me, then for all the rest of your employees too, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Oh, yeah, definitely. But there again, he was the roofer, like he's another ticketed roofer, and um, you know, had worked his way up through through the previous company he had worked for, and there again, he was at a dead end.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Yeah. Um, so you you he had an opportunity with you. But did would you say you guys had similar values? Because what I tell people is me and Brent or we're very different personality, but similar values.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yes, we had similar values. Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, he he's he he's a great guy through and through.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Yeah. So would you say that's so how long were you on your own before you made that decision?

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Uh, probably two years. Okay. It wasn't that long.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Okay. Did you enjoy not having a partner for those two years, or were you like, I'm looking to honestly, I was more comfortable having a partner.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Um, especially when you go away, let's say if you want a holiday or you want a break or whatever. Someone has the best interests of the company at heart.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

Yeah. Oh, we feel that in a massive way in real estate, too.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Right. And then so you could go away and you could relax. Yeah. You didn't have to worry about your cell phone, you didn't have to worry about calls. You you could actually have a holiday and spend time with family or um whatever you were doing. Yeah, no, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Do you remember what you bought that first warehouse for? Where you'd be comfortable sharing that?

SPEAKER_00 33:21

It was roughly three million dollars.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

And how how much land was it?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Um I want to think about two-thirds of an acre.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Two-thirds of an acre, 20,000 square feet. Yeah. Campbell Heights for three million bucks. Yeah. You heard that here first, people. That's crazy. It's crazy how much felt changed. It's super risky, yeah. Well, of course it did. Like that's the same amount of money. Like, so, and that was what year again?

SPEAKER_01 33:47

2008.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Yeah, somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

So that's right around there. There was a bit of a like the market was not the market had a blip down. So I don't know if it was there. Like it was really shaky for a while.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

It was a vacant building that had been for sale for a while, and it was just the shell. Yeah, like there was no interior work done. We had to do the like all the TIs.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Yeah. And for those that don't know TIs, it's tenant improvement. So you get a shell, you just have to bear well, you gotta run, you gotta run your electrical, you gotta run your lighting, you gotta do your drywall, build up your offices, and you can budget another hundred bucks a square foot for that.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

And did you feel like you could justify that purchase of where your business is at, or did you feel like it was risky and we're like, we still need to grow to justify this purchase after the fact?

SPEAKER_00 34:30

I mean, we thought it was risky, but we also could justify it. Yeah. And as it turns out, it's probably one of the best moves we ever made because it allowed us to be more organized, gave us the space we needed. Vehicles wouldn't get broken into at night anymore all of a sudden, because we used to park our vehicles outside.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

And like I've heard people say in the past, leasing makes more sense because you don't know, um, depending on what the market is, if you're gonna grow or not grow. And let's say you have 5,000 square feet and you grow, then you you didn't buy something that was five, some 5,000 square feet, you have to sell it. So a lot of times people say, just lease what you need and then grow that way. But you're you're saying there's a lot of other benefits to owning.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

How about also just lighting a fire on you? Because totally you just went from 6,000 square feet to 20,000. You're like, oh shit, we gotta fill this space, might as well grow the business.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

No, it wasn't like that. It just made us we had more office space, we hired more people, we were starting to get more and more work at the time, we were getting more clients, uh, we were doing bigger projects.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

It yeah, and little did you know that Campbell Heights Industrial was gonna explode eventually too.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

At that time, was it a strategic location of a purchase? Did it feel that way to you?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Oh, it was a great location for us because it allowed us access to like Highway 99, Highway 99 to the city, to Richmond, um, easy access into Surrey, easy access into um Abbotsford, Chilliwack. Um, great location.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Most of the work was out more west, right? Richmond, Delta, Surrey. That's where most of it is.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

So, what I like to hear from you, or what I'm hearing from you, is is really it was a slow and steady progression. It was because when people think starting a business, it's like I gotta start a business. And and they probably think it's gonna be a whole lot more than it is instead of a slow progression. Like you can build a successful big business slowly, right? You're the value that you added to your business over time, over the what is that, 25 years, right? You can get to to a part where you have a good, strong, valuable business.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

Was was buying that building probably one of the riskiest decisions you ever made?

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Um no, the risky riskiest uh decision was probably starting a company.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

At that point, we were already we were all in.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

So I think a lot of people could feel that that starting is sometimes the riskiest decision. So, you know, tied to a question like that, what is I might be putting you on the spot a bit. What's something that like you wish, was there anything that really hung you up that you wish you implemented earlier? Like someone listening this that's trying to scale a business could maybe understand? Is there anything that was like, I really wish I did that sooner?

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Boy, you're putting me on the spot. I I can tell you that I'm very thankful that we did not try to explode the business. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Early on, yeah, or at any time.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

At any time that we went. We were always capable of handling what we what we got. We were able to increase um the staff as needed. We didn't go from 50 or 20 to 50 in one step. It was a slow progression, right? You had seven or eight people a year, so it uh it flowed very well. And for us, uh my partner and I, our biggest thing is um cash flow is huge for us. I mean, yeah, we didn't want to be cash strapped, yeah, and we never were. Um if we if we couldn't afford it, we didn't do it. Yeah, we waited till we could afford something, and that's a great simple, practical and it allowed us by paying invoices on time um and even early to negotiate better terms where you can get a discount by paying 15 days early. If you can get 2% off by paying 15 days early, like compute it. 2% in 15 days, you know, that's 4% a month. You go 12. I mean, that's a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Yeah, especially with the amount of roofs you end up doing and how much material you're ordering.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

And we were able to negotiate rebates because we were good clients. No one phoned us because we paid too late, yeah. Yeah, right. So it puts you in an excellent position to negotiate with your suppliers, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

But if they're like, we have no problems with this roofing company, we want them buying our product. Yeah, what can we do for you? You kind of flip the script a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

And at the end of the year, all you know, rebates, um discounts, that goes straight to the bottom line. Yeah, because it's not something you estimated for.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

And putting you ahead of so many other companies that aren't getting that.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

So and you're just really so you're looking at cash flow, but you're also just being a little bit ahead of the game and proactive. Yeah, it's being proactive, right? And intentional. So because you could have just been like, oh, these are the terms that they want us to pay, we'll just pay it then.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

But there's too many companies that we heard of that, you know, we're cash strapped and we're paying bills late, and then they get cut off, and then it's you know, cash and delivery, which they don't have. Yeah. I mean, in the construction industry, if I start a job, let's say today is April 1st, right, or 2nd, I'm not sure. But anything I do today, we won't see any money till June 1st.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Right? Because you invoice at the end of the month 30 days later. So you're carrying 60 days worth. So all your suppliers don't want to wait 60 days. Yeah. So it's so important to have the money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Especially when you get the economies of scale, then being that organized would allow you to take on some really big projects. Like we did some cool stuff. Like when I was on the roof, we got it at the Prosperity Center, like the we did the arena and whole bunch of silver arenas. And then it got into high-rises, you're on Home Depots. I know when I was quoting for you, we got a 400,000 square foot warehouse. Still remember that job was insane. It was like, like put that in perspective, it was it was over 10 acres of building. This this thing. It was and that's what roof.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

What is the quote on that? Like, how do you look at that on a square foot system?

SPEAKER_02 40:57

100% varies on every roof system. So you could go anywhere from like two to three bucks a square foot all the way to like.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

You don't want to go to two bucks a square foot.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

So okay, but I'm saying on a on a on some of these giant warehouses, you were we were slapping on 80 to 100,000 square feet of roof in a day. Yeah, we were. So you could go really, really fast. It was mostly materials, the labor was fast, depending on the roof system. And you had another roof system where you can only do 3,000 square feet a day. Yeah. So it totally it totally depended. But that roof was crazy. But yeah, it's a lot of material that you're floating for a couple months at a time.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Yeah. So with that, like what in the roofing industry, what type of uh margin are you looking for on a job?

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Um, see, uh, that's a whole different moment. I would do a budget at the beginning of the year, right? Um, based on historicals. Um, I would say, okay, this was our volume this year. We're gonna increase 10%. This our volume last year we used so many man hours. So this year I got to increase that maybe by 10%.

SPEAKER_03 41:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

I know what my overhead is because those are fixed costs. So I know how much I have to earn per man hour just to cover overhead. Yeah, right. So profitability was based on, let's say I needed, I'll just throw a number out there $25 per man hour just to cover overhead. So I would tell the guys, look at if you're not getting 35 to 40, we don't want to.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Um, it wasn't so much profit on the end of the job, it was what I could what we could make per man hour to cover it. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

So it's actually like a genius way to think about business that a lot of people, again, if you're listening and thinking about your business, to start with, like you only have X amount of man hours a year, so therefore, after you already have to make this, there wasn't a lot of people, I don't think, looking at it like that. So it wasn't a percent margin. And the quoting reflects that.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

No, because percent can be so if it takes you six months to do a job and you make 20%, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

It's not a good job. Gotcha. You want it, you want to find jobs that you can quickly roll over and you're looking at the man hours because that's yeah. Because you only have so many in a year.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Yeah, yeah. I mean, for us, the material is a fixed cost. Yeah, that's the easy part. The man hours and the budgeting. I mean, you know you need so many man hours that it's this much money to cover the overhead. So you're gonna at least break even.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Yeah, I like that. And I remember playing like in all the estimators, you guys had built out an estimating program for us. So you plug in like all like all the different types of materials and everything you needed, and then how many man hours you thought would be on that job, and then you would play around with that, was your only window of like how many man hours judge if all the rest of the data is right, how many dollars per man hour can we make on this job? And then if you get squeezed by one of these GCs that calls you up and says, hey, you're 5% high or whatever, and you're trying to decipher if that's true or not, well, if if I'm already at, you know, just above like the lowest man hours. They can be those are some that you might be like, no, I can't touch this.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

So if you're saying it was $25 per man hour, you would be looking for a job that gave you 40.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

For instance. Yeah. Cool. I I would have never thought that you'd look at it that way, but there you go. Now that like I just would think profit margin, right? But I like it. You're probably simplified it.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

And I would do the budget and I would I would tell the guys, they say, look, this is our cost for the year. So if you're not getting this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

So you you started small, five people after a few years, up to a hundred. Where was the hardest time to grow? And what were some of the biggest like challenges in that growth?

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Uh the well, the easiest time to grow was, I guess, just before the COVID years, because it was crazy busy. Yeah. Um the challenges were being able to get the right personnel in the field. Yeah. Hiring good guys, good people became became hard. Became very hard.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

I was I was hiring for a while. This is after several years in the office. And I remember like you trusted you were hiring? I don't know why. But no, we so I you'd put out an ad and you would have, you know, let's say 20 people respond, and then you'd set up that they are all going to come to the office. 10 would show up, and then you run through orientation with these 10 guys. And then after, and then they they're supposed to show up another two days later for roofing, and like two or three would show up on the roof, and then after a week, one would stay.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

And this is your cycle. You were forever hiring, it would never stop. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

That was the hardest part.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

I'm like, what are the requirements for hiring a roof for you're like two feet in a hard one?

SPEAKER_00 45:52

It wasn't like the wing hard being and it wasn't like the wages were bad.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

No, yeah, it's just crazy times. There's a lot of people that that's where you see, too, where you know, all this unemployment stuff and people complaining about there's no work and I need a job. And it's like, well, there's a lot of jobs out there that want you, you just don't want to do the job.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Yeah, and as you grow, you need pro processes and uh policies and all that. So were you good at delegating to each person what their role was, or was that a challenge? Did you like did you feel like you were doing a lot of the work that you shouldn't have been doing and instead of managing, or was that just again another slow progression as you guys grew?

SPEAKER_00 46:29

That was a slow progression. I mean, as we grew, I would be, I would have to delegate more certain things. I mean, near the end, um I really had nothing with the day-to-day roofing operations. I was I was doing the financial end, the you know, the accounting, working with accounts receivable, accounts payables, um, budgets, taking care of insurance, um, you know, all those things, um, wages, looking at the estimating programs, making sure we were on track, um, reviewing jobs, um, where we're at.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Make sure the estimators didn't screw up, walk through the final job.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Yeah, yeah, uh, yeah, review estimates. I did uh I did that.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

Yeah, because there was a lot, there's a lot like sometimes you're sending out jobs like in the millions. Like nice to run it by the loss first.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Yeah, that was more my job in the end. The day-to-day where guys were working and dispatching. Um, I wasn't doing that at all anymore.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Yeah, yeah. So you uh you outgrew that other building too. Let's start like let's take that next step into your real estate journey. Where what'd you do after that?

SPEAKER_00 47:36

After that, um we we were looking on the I guess it was the the other side of Campbell Heights, um, around thir twenty no I guess 34th Avenue in there. There was there were lots for sale, so we ended up purchasing two acres there and building a new warehouse there.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

So did you sold your other one and then moved into this one?

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Um we had sold it, so yeah. That was a fast turnaround.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

Yeah. Um what was the price per acre in Camel Heights at the time? What year was it? I'm gonna take I want to take a guess of this.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

When did we 2000 and I want to say 17 or 18?

SPEAKER_01 48:19

I'm gonna guess I'm gonna be wrong. 450 an acre.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

No, it was around 900. No, no, okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Because it really jumped, it really jumped up, and then it really jumped up again after that.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

It was it was when they released that whole new section.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Yeah, we were self-flexed, I guess, on the on the readings. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

So I want to say a year or two prior, it was half of that, though. Yeah, I know. Because it really popped.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

But a year or two after it was double that again, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:44

Like that land, that land in there, industrial per acre, was going insane. Like, and so people just people know now, like that was 2017-2018. Like, you are, I mean, there's time, it's trading for like six to seven million an acre. Yeah, I I feel like that was only a few, but you're you're you're that it's it's crazy what it did. That far off that anymore. Like, good luck buying in Abbotsford for less than four million acre. Like, it just all industrial land just got squeezed.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

But I'll give our giant our our builder their credit. From start to finish, he had us in in seven and a half months. Yeah, that's impressive. From building permit to amazing on how big is that warehouse? Yeah, uh we then we were up to 35,000. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

And that's where I remember working in the office. Well, I was I was with you in the warehouse before that, and it was a lot smaller, and then going to the new one was like this new fancy. There was tons of space, tons of offices. Big deal. Big deal when you're 25 and working in the office. You get your own fancy office now, you don't have to share anymore. And we're a big move for the company.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Were you busting at the seams at the last one? Like it's we can't grow here.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

No, we looked at it as an opportunity because probably the way prices were going up. Yeah, and we could sell the building we were in for quite a bit more than we had paid for it. Yeah. Um, so no, it was more an op. Were we busting it? We were full for sure. It was nice to have a bigger warehouse again because we were also expanding more into the slope roofing, and that was the metal roofing end, which we hadn't done before.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

So from six from from a garage and a basement to a chicken barn to six thousand square feet to twenty-four to thirty-five thousand. Yeah, that's all.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

And on a couple acres. He he said he didn't know what to tell us about real estate. Yeah, this is perfect. So would you say, like of all the was that that I mean, I I know more about this. I'm pretty obviously pretty close to it, but probably one of the best businesses you ever made was getting into the commercial real estate game.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

Oh, definitely. Yeah, I mean, we could kick ourselves. We should have, you know, we were saying later we should have bought another five acres. Yeah, but there again, we didn't have the money and didn't have the cash, right? And neither one of us wanted to borrow to the extreme.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Yeah. But you talked about it.

SPEAKER_00 50:59

Yeah, we did discuss it and we talked about it, and yeah, and later we said, oh, we should have done it.

SPEAKER_02 51:05

And you've sold the business, but not the real estate.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

We still retain the warehouse, yes.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

Yeah. Which is again, now you can get a lease and still have that passive income.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

So if you could go back to the start and tell younger Neil, is there anything that you would you would be like, I wish you would know this?

SPEAKER_00 51:29

Well, I wish I would have known on the way that real estate was gonna go up in the price. Um don't we all? Uh other than that, yeah, some of the way we used to estimate and stuff like that. Like I didn't um when we first started, we were just you know, here's your job, you market up a certain percentage, and yeah, um, but not really understanding why you're doing it. Yeah. Um when I started budgeting as we got bigger, um, then it became clear why I had to budget, why I had why we needed certain amounts, what kind of projects we were going after, who we were going after, um, which projects we didn't even want to look at. Um it was a learning progression all the way. Yeah, it wasn't something I would say that, oh, I should have done this different or better.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

Yeah. Where'd the name come from? I always wanted to ask you Raven Roofing.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

Raven Roofing, it was um, I know when we started, you have to submit um three names um and get them approved by whoever the authority is. Um we didn't want my first partner's last name. We sure didn't want my last name. Like rook roofing doesn't sound good.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

Doesn't sound bad.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

Yeah, so we wanted something that, yeah, it was kind of it sounded kind of like West Coast-ish and you know.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

Yeah, um and it's stuff, still there today. Yeah, you guys need a roof, well, someone owned by you, but you know, it's uh I always see the trucks driving around.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

Never that crazy, right? Right? You see them, yeah. The brand's out there.

SPEAKER_02 53:14

Yeah. Um, I would ask you, um, we're gonna I'm gonna angle this into more um like questions that other maybe business owners, entrepreneurs could learn here. Um, so what what now that you've been through it all, like what mattered to you most in the end? Was it money, time, legacy? Like what means the most to you now?

SPEAKER_00 53:39

What means the most to me now? The money is always important, let's face it. Every everybody that's in business wants to make money, right? Um I can honestly tell you, over all the years we're in business, not once did we end a year end in the red. That's amazing. Yeah, some tough. Um so so the money's important. Um legacy is also important. I can still talk to suppliers, you know, people that aren't profiting from me anymore, and we can still be good friends. I can still go out and have coffee with some of the clients. Um we built friendships over the years. Um it wasn't just business, yes, it was business, but there was also friendships. Um there's a there was a you know I wanna, you know, I don't want to go out and everybody say, oh, they did a terrible job. It was bad, it was bad. Um, I think we had a good reputation overall, and I'm proud of that. I mean, that's really what we're after.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

And and you guys did. Um what's maybe one of the sacrifices that people don't see that's important to grow in a business?

SPEAKER_00 54:58

You have to put in a lot of time. You have to put in a lot of a business does not grow and succeed by someone clocking in at eight and leaving at 4:30. You can't run it that way. You have to do what it takes, you have to be on call, you have to be able to listen to your employees, you gotta trust your employees, you gotta listen to them, um, treat them well. Um it's not a machine. No, it takes people have emotions, they have feelings, and you've gotta you've gotta listen to that and help them at times if necessary.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

And um Brent made a comment that he remembers growing up that like when you came home that you from his vantage point uh as your son, you were able to kind of leave work at work. When you have 80 to 100 employees, I would see that as stressful. Did did you find that stressful or were and were you able to just leave it at work? Like, was it was there tools or tips that you have people for the most part?

SPEAKER_00 56:00

I can leave it at work, but I mean we had foreman and uh um project managers and that dealt more with the guys at the end than I did.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

Yeah, you always did well um hiding stress if you had it.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

Yeah, I you know, probably my wife's biggest complaint was that when I got home, I didn't want to talk about the day anymore. Yeah, when I got home, I was done. Yeah, you know, good or bad. Tomorrow morning, six o'clock, I'm all in again. But from these hours, I'm off. I do not want to rehash my day. And that was probably her biggest complaint because she's well, what'd you do today? What and what happened? And I said I was saying it was a good day, it was a fine day, everything was good, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

Moving on. Um, there was uh another couple of simple things that that describe your character, and I drove you nuts because I was late for work quite often, especially through my teenage years. I was not the same personality, but what's your saying? Do you remember the saying?

SPEAKER_00 57:01

Um if you're oh, how does the saying go? I was told it so many times.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

Can I can I guess it? Yeah, guess it. Um, if you're on time, you're late. No, if you're early, you're on time.

SPEAKER_00 57:15

Yeah, early is on time. On time is late, and late is unacceptable. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

There it is.

SPEAKER_00 57:22

Because, and I always said that your time is no less or more important than the guy you're meeting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you have to respect that.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

And even something in our industry now, like sometimes I feel I still feel that pull. It's not like a like if I'm with somebody, it's so hard to end that meeting to go make sure you're on time for the next one, but you should be prioritizing that.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

And it's still a lesson I'm it's it's hard in real estate, but I so what I do is like it's just it's at least communicating it, right? Like having a meeting, I'm running five minutes behind, not just showing up. It's unacceptable.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Yeah, it was the same thing at work. I mean, we'd get schedules to do a job, and sometimes because weather related, you'd be delayed.

SPEAKER_03 58:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:03

Well, you don't just not show up. Yeah, you phone the pre the the client and say, you know, look, we're gonna be a day late, we're gonna be two days late. They may be upset, but at least they know where they're at.

SPEAKER_01 58:15

Communicating.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

They're not thinking at looking at seven o'clock and going, hey, where's there's no crew here, and then getting upset and phoning you at 8:30, hey, where are you guys?

SPEAKER_02 58:23

Yeah. This was this was such a fast and true principle that like I would be on the way to the office and hit travel. I'm driving from Abbotsford every day, East Abbotsford. I'm looking at time, and I of course I'm I was young and dumb, and of course I'm pushing it every morning. Maybe you're up late, maybe you sleep in a bit. But I would literally get to be there at 7.02 because I hit an extra red light or 7.01, and I was not allowed to show up at 7.01, 7.02. I you turn your butt around, you go to Tim Hortons, and you buy donuts for the entire donuts, and then you go back to the office. And now you show up at 7.20. And I'm like, what like it didn't matter, it's the principle of it.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Yep, that was the thing. You're gonna be late, you bring a dozen donuts.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

Before real estate, I worked at an investment company and the stock market opened at 6.30. So like I had to be there at 620 because you had to be ready for when a lot of people think, like, oh, I can show up a little bit later because like I was forced to be on time, or else you're already behind missing phone calls, right?

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Yeah, these things force you to anyway. It was good, simple principles. Like what I've heard a lot from today, and I think that I think this is something that like the world does need to hear is like, you know, you you didn't overspend, you worked hard, you didn't grow the company too fast, you showed up on time, you gave it everything you had.

SPEAKER_01 59:42

These are simple principles, it's not rocket science and slow growth, like you didn't push yourself over leverage. Like, I I say this about our community that we deal with in real estate. When when COVID was crazy, people were just using emotion to buy. Our community didn't really, like it was a lot more tempered. So the crit when the when the market was crazy, we actually did a little fewer deals than some of the top agents, but then when it drops again, we see the value and we're doing more deals, right? Like, don't let emotion get too much in it. By the sounds of it, it's you are very tempered in what you did, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:17

Yeah, I don't have big highs or big lows. Yes, we land a big job, great. Great. Um, but let's hope in the end that we earn something. Um, but I think for me, the biggest thing is I had the the family support from my wife and the kids, and you know, they gave me the free reign and allowed me to do what I needed to do. Yeah, you know, yeah, and that's huge, it's huge.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:43

Yeah, and in turn, I think I think there's a lot of people that I hope glean from this, like just knowledge in business. It's something that empowered me before I started a business, like having a good mentor in you and your business partner over the years um to push us to start this company and where it's gone. And that was super impactful, obviously, in my life, and not everyone gets to grow up with a mentor like that. So I've told you this before, but that was really appreciated. And that's definitely a lot of those simple principles ended up embodying what Leffers and Rook is today.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:17

Yeah, I I can say that you definitely instilled a lot in Brent that I can see that because it comes up. I learned from my dad, or my dad did this, yeah, but it's all in good ways.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

So well, there's one thing I don't appreciate is that the first condo I bought, Brent came with me, and you happened to be the realtor, and yeah, and Brent left.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:36

I thought I did something wrong there for a sec, but um, a couple of thoughts on this. I do remember thinking Neil's not going to be happy with me asking this question. Can I still ask this question? But then I also remember there being a discussion later on when Brent was a realtor about coming back to Raven.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Yeah. You know, there were you always didn't like nepotism. And again, I you learned from this, but so nepotism, for those who don't know the definition, is basically if you give favoritism to your kid. And I always had a chip on my shoulder because I didn't want to be the silver spoon kid either. So I think I was a pretty hard worker. I was a pretty good estimator, but I was always the least paid from all the estimators.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

I know that you were the junior estimator, son.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:20

See, and I was outselling them because the numbers are public, like who sold X million in real estate? And I was outselling everybody, but I saw I was frustrated at that, but it also was like way better positioned for me now if I reflect on it than being the overpaid boss's kid. That's a reputation you can never shake. Yeah. So, what was the conversation when your dad wanted you back? Oh, he was gonna double my salary and offer me a Larriette, but it was too late. I had already tasted being an entrepreneur in business, and yeah, pretty funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

Well, at least it wasn't a GMC. No, it wasn't. Didn't you have problems with your yes? Let's not. Yeah. Well, I think I I hey my questions or answers. This has been good.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:02

Yeah, this has been great. Um, I don't think there's, you know, it maybe is there any advice like like while you have the floor, there's people that are listening to this that are either starting a business or trying to scale a business. Is there any is there one other thing you maybe want to you want to leave them with before we sign off here? Yeah, just be honest.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:23

Just be honest. Treat treat people like you want to be treated. Um treat your employees well. Listen to them. Don't always have to agree with them, but sure listen. And it's very important to try to get to know them on a bit of a personal level. It's nothing with that with wrong with you asking, hey, how's your wife doing? And by name, or how are your kids? Or um knowing because they appreciate that. They really do. It creates a culture, it creates a culture, and uh, I know with us, we always had basically an open door policy, right? And you know that from the office. So if my door was open, anybody could walk in anytime. Uh yes, there were certain times you'd be in a phone call, you'd be in a meeting, you close your door. But um, for the 90% of the time, I would say my doors were open. Uh if people had an issue, they could come and talk.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:19

Well, you and you said treat uh treat others as they want to be treated, it's the golden rule, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

And just you know, yeah. Well, it's been uh it's been fascinating to hear the story from you um from the ground up. Appreciate your time as our first guest in the guinea pig. Um completely different industry than what we do. If you guys like what you heard here, please like, follow, subscribe. If you got questions for Neil, questions about scaling a business, questions about starting, anything, even the roofing industry, um, we'll pass it on to him as well. Um, yeah, thanks for tuning in. Anything else going on there? No.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:58

It's great, right? Appreciate you having having here.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:01

Thanks for having me. Thanks for watching and listening. We'll see you guys next time.