Antis Roofing - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Charles Antis of Antis Roofing & Waterproofing. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello, I'm Alex Tolle with RoofersCoffeeShop and I am here for our February Roofer of the Month podcast. We are so excited to celebrate Antis Roofing, and I have himself here, Charles Antis. How are you, Charles?

Charles Antis: I'm so good, and I'm excited to be here today. Thank you, Alex, for inviting us and for giving us this great honor of being Roofer of the Month.

Alex Tolle: Yes, I know. It's so exciting.

Charles Antis: [inaudible 00:00:34].

Alex Tolle: Good bragging rights. So already did introductions, but tell us about yourself, about your company. You guys do a lot of great work, so brag about all the amazing work that you guys do.

Charles Antis: Well, I love to brag on my team. That's why I was showing you the... Flip the switch so you guys see you guys, Bobby and Cori in the booth over there. I have the most amazing team. Look at their smiles. Okay, get it back on me. Okay. So I just show up and they do amazing things and I'll get to it. But I'll first point out, I'm the founder and I call myself the chief people awakener here at Antis Roofing & Waterproofing. And I say that because I should always be telling those essential stories, whether I'm speaking to my employees or to the community or to the roofing industry, the stories that really matter that bring us together or why am I wasting your time telling you anything? And so-

Alex Tolle: Right.

Charles Antis: ... that's why I call myself the chief people awakener and that's why it's an honor for me to have this roofing company. We are the trade that keeps families safe and dry. I love putting my hands like this. These are the same hands that I used to hide in my pockets because I was afraid people would see my busted nails or the urethane inside embedded in them. I was ashamed, and today I go, "Wow, why was I ashamed? We are the providers of shelter." And my team feels that. We sell to the homeowners association market in Southern California. We likely are the most prolific provider of shelter in that space for existing homeowners that vote on their roofing as a whole. From San Fernando Valley, LA, Orange County down to San Diego, that's an area we really love to keep families safe and dry in. But there's something that really makes us powerful as a company, as a culture, as a family, as a brand, as a representative of roofing is the fact that we talk about and we do that same thing that roofers do across the country, we're struck with the condition.

We can't let a family have a leaky roof just because they don't have the money to pay. And you all have felt it. All those roofers listening and you or your foreman, if you haven't done it, I guarantee you, you're a foreman on a job, you go out there and the boss calls, "There's no money here, man. We got to get out of here." And then when you hang up and you think he's gone, Pedro, before he leaves because of the kindness of his heart, he patches that roof so maybe that family won't have that mold in their home anymore. And I think that's what makes my team special is we celebrate that. We celebrate when a man says, "Hey, Charles, we were working on this condo and 301B over there and there's this woman and her husband has cancer. And she's got a leaky deck and we're not doing deck work there. I'm wondering if I show up on Saturday to donate the labor to install a new deck, will Antis donate the material? What do you say to that? You're like, "Yes!"

Alex Tolle: Of course. That's amazing.

Charles Antis: And so that's what happens and that's what's happening now, and so I will brag on my team. We not only provide roofs, all of the last roofs for Habitat for Humanity over the last 14 years, 99 families.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Charles Antis: But we also provide the Ronald McDonald House roofs, but we also hold blood drives. We've had 154 blood drives since COVID, and now our blood drives are needed more than ever with threats around us, including the LA fire. And right now, my team and this is all my team, the blood drives was not my idea. I didn't know what to do during COVID, but my COO, who's on the board of American Red Cross, because we believe in service, she said, "We can't get blood. We need blood. We have a big hall. Can we clear it out? Can we do blood drives?" And I just paused, pinched and said yes. That's all I did. I have to pinch myself sometimes because I'm scared, but all I do is say yes to my team.

And right now, Cori out there that you saw in the booth, Cori was very, very active orchestrating this, bringing food to LA to help not only the firemen, the policemen and the National Guard and those that are the frontline heroes, but those families that were displaced or had lost their homes. And so we have been up the last three weekends. We're going up again on Sunday. Last Sunday, I wasn't here. I was out of town with my family. My team delivered 4,000 meals up to these families, and they're doing it with the group of Orange County chefs that just have to give back.

There's a group of 16 of them, and Robert Duvall is the one who started this, but he also is friends with Wing Lam. And Wing Lam is the taco guy that the roofing industry knows that the roofing and shingle... The shingles and taco guy, the taco guy, the shingle guy get together. Well, we're together again just like we were during the California Love Drop, again during COVID when we were bringing meals to the people that were providing blood to the frontline heroes. And so I'm proud of my team now and I applaud them because right now, today I got a memo late last night or early the morning, it's all the same to me, that Sunday night's drop is not going to be in the regular drop. It's going to be an evening drop and oh, it's reminding me of COVID when we would do the hospital evening drops. Cori, what is that? Get close to the microphone and explain why we're doing an evening drop on Sunday up to LA.

Cori: We're not just delivering meals to the mission in Skid Row, we're serving meals as well.

Charles Antis: Oh, wow. Okay.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Charles Antis: Thank you for reminding me that we're also taking care of families that are otherwise affected by what's going on, 'cause I think this is it. Once we realized and we celebrated the fact that we're struck with that condition that we can't let a family have a leaky roof without having the money to pay, then we celebrate opportunities like this. When people look to the community and go, "What we can do now," it doesn't have to be roofing, it can be blood, it can be food. But when you're listening to your people and you're showing up in the community, then everything feels like it matters. We say something in Antis Roofing, we say this thing that every nail matters. And that's true when you think about the good that we do. But let's talk about the roofing that we install. The average roof that Antis installs on a homeowner association has 200,000 parts-

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Charles Antis: ... 200,000 parts. And so many times when we go to look for a roof leak on a 7 or 12-year-old roof, it's that nail that was driven in too far through that. So every nail going in perfect matters, and that's why we donate the roofs for Habitat for Humanity because it pays for itself. Even though those roofs over the last 14 years are worth over $2 million, Antis Roofing holds a retention rate twice the national retention rate. Where the national retention rate is something like 46%, which means over half of the employees of any giving roofing company will leave during that year to work somewhere else, at Antis Roofing, we've tracked a 90% retention rate.

And so that really matters when you think about quality. When that guy up on the roof, when that technician or that male or female up on the roof, I shouldn't say that, I have to be careful, we have both, when we go up on the roof, there's a finesse that goes into every part to that roof, because it is so important to our people who know why we exist, keeping families safe and dry. I'm sorry, I'm just running and running my mouth.

Alex Tolle: No, it's great. This is so great. You guys do so much for your community. Really, it's incredible. And everybody should be taking notes on even if they just do one of those things, it's amazing. So the fact that you guys are doing all of it is just beyond words. I love to hear it.

Charles Antis: I got to tell roofing companies, I used to have told you 10 years ago, I didn't know. I would say, "Hey, I'm figuring this corporate social responsibility out. And if you really want to be respected inside and outside your company, then donate roofs because you're a roofing company." And I would say it makes sense why we donate the roofs for Habitat because we believe that every family deserves a safe dry home, which is part of how roofers feel and so do the people at Habitat. But man, I've learned a lot since then. I'm sorry, I'm going to get back to the questions. I keep spinning, and I want to get back to your questions.

Alex Tolle: You're good. This is all great. I love it. So you talked about it a little bit, but what type of services do you guys provide?

Charles Antis: Okay. Well, that's a great question. So we provide roofing services. So obviously we re-roof condos. And if you would look at all of our sales over the year, over half of our sales are going to be in replacing roofing because roofing components wear out. And not all roofs go 30 years or so they're supposed to, and we often replace them beforehand. But there's where the opportunity is, because I think what we do is we keep families safe and dry. And if we don't need them to spend a million dollars for 100-unit condo re-roof, if we could get them safe and dry another five or 10 years for $100,000, wow, what a bargain it is. And I want every contractor to understand it's also, it's a great value and it's great value for you. What happens is the homeowner, instead of spending whatever that cost would be to get 30 more years, he spends a third of that cost for the next 10.

So the homeowner association saves money. The environment really saves. That's something we don't talk about a lot. But my gosh, if we track the roofing that we're not putting in the landfills by doing what we call these special ops project and the special ops project at Antis is we go in and say, "Hey, we can get 10 more years out of this roof if you do this and it's going to save the environment." And what we have to do is your leaks are not occurring in the field areas of the roof. They're occurring in all the chimneys. You'll notice all your leaks. You've had 100 leaks, 98 of them have come at chimney. So why are we replacing all this good roofing when I can guarantee you can get 10 more years and I can warranty that? But I can replace what's bad and keep the rest. And we call that special ops. We used to call it black ops, but it sounded dark, so we call it special ops.

And I love doing special ops because what happens is not only does the environment save, not only do the homeowners save money, but to your bottom line, if you measured the value of that $150,000 rehab versus that million-dollar re-roof, what the risk is and what the time is, you make so much more money on the maintenance. And so why are we trying to sell that stadium re-roof with our picture on top of it. And why aren't we selling more maintenance where it's a win-win-win? And so I love selling re-roofs. Again, it's more than half of what we sell. I love putting on a roof that I know is going to keep them protected for 40 years. But I love even more going up on a roof and saying, seeing this family in distress, their castle's being invaded. And I go up there and I know where the problem is and I fix it sometimes for free, that is a powerful feeling. And I sleep better at night, so do my employees and so do all the people that I mentioned in that scenario.

Alex Tolle: Yes. That's amazing. And for a homeowner, like you said earlier, getting a new roof can be a daunting thing because of the cost of it. I just got a new roof last year and it was a little scary, 'cause we're like wow, that's a lot of money to put into the house and we don't even get to really see it. But we do get the benefits of obviously the peace of mind of knowing that we have a good roof.

Charles Antis: It's a big project. It's the biggest most invasive project most homeowners ever have. Unless you do a remodel, that's way worse.

Alex Tolle: But being able to extend the life of the roof for the environment, keeping that stuff out of the landfill is amazing. Even if it's just for a few more years and giving the homeowner maybe a few more years to save up for when they do really need to get a new roof, I think that's really important.

Charles Antis: That makes me feel good. That's how I built the brand. I didn't know in the beginning I couldn't compete. I didn't have a kettle. I couldn't sell the big re-roofs, but I became a master of leak repair, almost like quietly considered myself a leak whisperer. I didn't say that, but I did say this, "Give me the leak that no one else can solve and let me fix it for free." That was my swagger way of saying I'm confident. Even if I was scared, 'cause I was scared. I was scared that I wouldn't be able to solve it. I knew my whole reputation was writing on every job, and that was why I put everything into it.
I think when you have that big desire, I think that's a big key component. When I'm looking for employees or I'm meeting a young entrepreneur and I'm wondering if he's going to make it or not, I can tell by that big desire if they have it. They can make tons of mistakes. My nephew, when I hired him, he's my VP of growth here at Antis. We couldn't do anything about him. I hired him, man. He made all kinds of mistakes out loud. Literally, the first summer he worked here driving the boss's trucks on job sites, he accidentally raked off the passenger mirror on a mailbox.

Alex Tolle: Oh, no.

Charles Antis: He re-roofed the wrong house. He lost the ladder on the freeway I think twice. But there was something about the loudness of his mistakes that I saw his big intention. I saw how much it bothered him and I did. I confronted him on every one 'cause I didn't know any better back then, but the big desire. And then you look at him now and you wonder why he's one of the greatest salesmen I've ever seen, and it's that big desire. And I see the same in young people. And I think I had that looking back now, not knowing 'cause I thought I was going to fail. Literally, every night, I wondered if the business would be there when my eyes woke up in daylight. But that big desire, I think, shows up and it also shows up in goodness in your community and in your people. If you want to do good by your people, then tell them that.

This is how I started my HR. I didn't know any better. I just said, "Guys, if I'm ever doing anything that feels unfair, then please let me know." I had to say it even though I didn't think I had enough, "But tell me and I promise I'll make it right." And out of that, developed these amazing policies. If you broke a tool and you were using the job, Antis would pay for it. It made sense, like, well, I should pay for it. Using your tool on the job site, and it broke, so it's common sense. And then all of sudden, the guy's driving to a job site and his truck broke down. Boss says, "My truck broke down, you going to pay for it?" Like, "Well, that's not my truck." But you were using your truck as a tool.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Charles Antis: "Wow, maybe I should pay for it." So we came up with policies. On certain types of car issues, we would pay the whole thing. On certain types, we'd pay half. But we always had a fair policy constantly saying, "Hey, if it's not fair, tell us." And eventually it turned into this probably about 10 years ago, we say this. And I say it on the inside and outside of their company. It is our job as managers, as leaders at Antis to err on the side of generosity in all of our decisions, in all of our transactions with all of our strakeholders, stakeholders, not strakeholders.

It's our job to err on the side of generosity in any decision. And if you think that way, it's amazing and it takes a while to believe it. Some days I say it, and honestly there's fear some days taking over. But I go back to that it's my job to err on the side of generosity in every transaction and in every breath. And if I can do that, my life is happy, their lives are happy and also we're abundantly... Our bottom line is healthy as any roofing company around.

Alex Tolle: Well, and I think that speaks to you talking about your retention rates of your employees is you show your employees how much you care about them and you're willing to invest your time and your money into your employees. And employees who have worked for a company that cares about them, they're going to want to stick around.

Charles Antis: I know today that my employees do know I care. There was a long time I wondered. But I know I'm looking at them, I know that they know I care and that means so much to me.

Alex Tolle: Good.

Charles Antis: That's the best aid and sleep ever. What your family thinks of you, what your wife and kids, obviously, what your company thinks of you, what's more important than that? Nothing.

Alex Tolle: Exactly. Totally agree. So it leads into the next question, which is something special that your company celebrates? It seems like it might be your team.

Charles Antis: Well, it is. It's about the team, so I'll lead up to it. I think for us to really deserve the culture recognition we get, it's really when it reached our Latin American employees. Because they were living in a different economy of things, most of them immigrants or first generation, things weren't so easy for them. Me being an immigrant from Oregon, them being an immigrant from mostly from there was a much darker, difficult time they had in getting here and so I think listening to their stories. And so I'll start with the story of when I took them one by one to my house and made them breakfast. I did an exercise with them, this is like 15 years ago, called Peaks and Valleys. It's an exercise that plots people's values. "What are your values?" "Oh, I don't know." You just got honesty.

And if you go to the low parts and high parts of your memories and you say what was there at the high parts, what was missing at the low parts, those are what you value most. And so I did this exercise with all of the technicians in the field, most of them with a translator. And I heard this one story, a couple stories over and over again. One of the stories is everyone, seeing a lobo was lucky if they ever saw a lobo. Maybe one out of six guys do, because lobos were no longer in high numbers, less than 100 wild in Mexico. And if you saw one on your ranch, it was good luck. They was like, "Wow, I heard that same story." If they had a bowl or not, it was a big deal. And if they had a bowl, it always tore down a wall or a fence, so same stories. Then there's this story. I first heard it from Pedro Vasquez.

This is when I really learned how to speak with honor and respect to men. He said, "Charles, when I was a young boy, my father would wake me in the morning at 3:00 AM and he would say, 'Hey, Pedro, will you come work with me on the ranch today before you go to school?'" Knowing he only has a few years of education. And then his father would hold his stare while Pedro would look back and nod and say, "Yes, father." And there would be this mutual, almost grabbing by the shoulders and then they would work. And there was something about hearing that story more than once that really taught us how to listen and really bring the culture of the Latin American employees to here. We did it first as an exercise, but then it became who we are. And if you want to know a unique thing that we do at Antis about the employees, it's an annual tradition called Aguinaldo and it's a Mexican word.

And if you were to go to open a business in Mexico City, you would be required by law to create this Aguinaldo fund. And it's a fund that basically is part of the salary that's saved back until November and given to the families to refreshen them right before the new year, to get the things that they need. And it takes a deeper tradition into the holidays from Thanksgiving to Christmas. And so I thought that was so beautiful we decided to do it. Roofing is feast or famine. If we have no rain this year, then we'll be lucky if we break even, I'll be honest. But if it rains, we make profit. And so what we do is we make profit. We take a portion of that profit, we give it back to the employees right before Christmas in the form of Aguinaldo, which has been as much as a month's salary.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Charles Antis: And in years when we don't have a profit, some years we've taken what little profit we've had, we've put it all into the Aguinaldo and the bonuses and put it back out. So I think when I think of the word Aguinaldo, it's a tradition at Antis that's not ours, but in America we're unique. I've never read or heard or shared with another company that does it here, but we think it adds a deep-bedded respect mutually across all threads within our company because we also get to deeper appreciation for the holidays. And what's important in that time of the year and what is important is to take care of those things we need at home for our families health-wise or comfort-wise, and that's what we treat Aguinaldo for. So I'm very proud of my team for adopting that, for running with it, for developing it even more over the years.

Alex Tolle: I love that. And I think it's important to, when you have people of different backgrounds to really make them feel at home and that their culture and the things that they're used to, you can incorporate that into the business and give back to them.

Charles Antis: I love that, and I agree a 100%.

Alex Tolle: How do you define superior customer service? So what do you do for your customers that really is just, it's standout?

Charles Antis: A more real way to explain it would be we're built to deal with the stresses of an HOA. We know that a property manager's job is really tough. She's got seven condos, she's managing 300 units each. There's a potential of 2100 people calling her at any minute, and sometimes they all do, so I think the most important... The one thing we start with that everyone knows is our job is to make their job easy. So if you're a property manager and you call Antis, you shouldn't have to call for everything. We should communicate within our own selves with our own ERP system. And so I think making the property manager's job easier also extends to the board of trustees for that individual association. There's four or five individuals that we better make their job as a board member easy too, so everything better be laid out.

The warranty better be sound. Customer care and condos means this. This will always happen. At every 100-unit condo, there's going to be at least one or two people that everyone else thinks is crazy. And those people, according to everyone else, are going to cause a lot of trouble to anyone who shows up, including the contractor who creates that super invasive re-roofing project. So that person will raise their hand and demand something almost on every job. And I'm not saying we don't break things, but for everything we break, there's two or three other occurrences we're accused of something, maybe a plant that's irreplaceable that was given to her by her dead aunt and now because it's irreplaceable, they want $2,000, but the plant's not worth $25. So what do you do?

In those situations, it goes back to the principle I said earlier. Our job is to err on the side of generosity with all of our stakeholders. So I've seen myself, and I don't allow myself to loathe it anymore, write a 1,000, a 2,000, a $3,000 check. Even in some cases where you're being taken advantage of much bigger and write that check, it's always better not to take your energy and dump it into fighting for little stuff. It's always better to pay it forward. And if you continue your brand, even if that claim makes that job upside down, you're way better off letting go of that. Take that customer that says everyone that's ever worked there on that complex is a turd. And now you come and you make them happy, write them that check and they go, "I don't really like that guy." Then all of a sudden you've made people pause, you've changed everything. I think I'm always looking, what can we do in this instance to make it better, crazy better than anybody ever experienced?

And I think in an HOA, you have to have that super big heart for customer care. We have a customer service team. We only have 160 employees, but we've probably got seven on the customer care team because we need so much help beyond the sales guy calling everybody. Our sales guy has so much support. He's got so many assistants. He's got other departments that supports all of our salespeople so our salespeople can communicate with the property manager to make their job easier and with the homeowner association representatives so they can all sleep better at night, knowing there's a plan in place to keep all the families safe and dry. So it's a pretty amazing principle that we follow. It's just whatever it takes to make the customer right and make their job easy, and we afford all the resources we can to deliver it, knowing that even if it raises our cost, we'll be better off in the long run.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, I have quite a bit of history in the customer service area and it's definitely... it's not worth wasting your energy arguing with somebody or just getting into it over something silly. Just do what you can to make the customer happy.

Charles Antis: No matter what.

Alex Tolle: No matter what. And it can be hard-

Charles Antis: 'Cause I'm right.

Alex Tolle: Sometimes you're like, "I don't-

Charles Antis: That's just wrong.

Alex Tolle: ... want to cave into it." Exactly.

Charles Antis: But I'm right.

Alex Tolle: But it's so worth it. And there'll be a repeat customer and they're going to appreciate you in the long run for going out of your way to help them out.

Charles Antis: I used to fight those property managers when I knew I was right, and I wondered why it didn't end well. And finally it took a lot of years, of probably 15 years or so, having my business be fine. I finally learned just to listen, let them air it out and then to not correct them. Say, "Yes, okay, then this." Yeah.

Alex Tolle: And I definitely worked with a lot of other associates at the previous job and they'd come to me and that, "This person is so upset. They're so wrong. They're doing everything wrong. They're arguing with me." And I would be like, "Let's just fix it for them and let them move on with their lives. We'll move on with ours. Let's not get in our heads and freak out about this and let it ruin our day. Let's just fix it and move on."

Charles Antis: That's what we do. We have a good team here.

Alex Tolle: Yeah. That's awesome.

Charles Antis: One year, I was trying to train them. This is before Cori got here, before these guys were here, right before Cori. You're lucky. But I was so impressed with Zappos customer care, I called Zappos and got permission that I had every team member call, order five pair of shoes and they get to keep one, but they got the experience Zappos customer care. And it really was a good shocker for our system maybe 15 years ago because it was a whole other level. Well, it's cool now is I feel like we even have a better customer care experience than they do. It feels like what we've built genuinely is better because it fits the needs of our particular clients being homeowners inside HOAs in Southern California.

Alex Tolle: And you'll be memorable for that homeowner, that tenant in the condo. They're going to remember your generosity. They're going to remember your kindness, and they're not going to remember you as being a jerk who argued with them after you stomped on their plant.

Charles Antis: That's all I had. When I started my company, I didn't understand marketing yet, but I was very aware that every touch was the only touch I had, so everything was to brush off... If I even turned in a proposal, I was pasting pictures. Before digital, I was pasting pictures so they could see it 'cause even if I didn't get the job, which I didn't in the beginning at least they had that to remember that this guy seemed to know what he was looking at. That was marketing. I didn't know what marketing was, but marketing was every touch I had with the customer and so customer care was my first form of marketing because it became that repeated touch that would allow me to get more work.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, I love it. So in case it's not obvious, in case everybody's not sold already, why should homeowners and building owners work with Antis Roofing?

Charles Antis: Wow. Well, I think the real truth is purpose. When there's purpose at work, when our people know why they show up and that's to keep families safe and dry and they stay here and then they go up on that roof, not a factory, the roofs are not... Two companies putting on the same roof, it's not anywhere similar because it's human beings putting all those people up. So up on that roof where no one's looking in that dangerous edge, man, knowing why we exist really shows up there. And that's why roofs don't last 30 years is because 30% of the nails weren't driven properly or because they put the wrong product down because they weren't really paying attention to what was going to keep the family safe and dry for the next 30 years.

You can't be thinking five years, I'm thinking 30. And I think that's the reason why I suggest if you have a homeowner association, please ask Antis Roofing to come in. You're going to see a difference in every stage of the operation. And when we put your roof down, your roof is going to last 30 years and beyond. If we get down a 40-year warranted roof, it's going to last 40 years. We even have up to 30-year guaranteed total systems warranty roofs we can install, which we never had before. It was something that the roofing industry finally corrected itself on all those faulty warranties. We can give a condo association a 40-year warranty on their flat roofing system, which used to be impossible. And so we hope you give us a chance to bid. I promise you won't be turned away.

Alex Tolle: I'm sold. If I was in Southern California, you would've been my first call.

Charles Antis: Well, our salesmen do a great job. We have an incredible company. Our marketing team does a great job. When you ask me that question, I'm like, "God, I don't know what to say to them." I don't talk to homeowner associations. Aaron was here, our chief growth officer, he'd say, "We're the best. We'll keep you safe and dry." And he would get to the point and he would close. But I'm just like, I want to start talking about the blood drive we're having next week, so that's... I got to be careful now. Got to answer the right questions, but-

Alex Tolle: No, that's okay. Do you want to talk a little bit about the blood drive?

Bobby: She's looking it up. Tomorrow.

Charles Antis: Oh, okay.

Alex Tolle: Nice.

Charles Antis: That one behind it? Well, this one won't make tomorrow's blood drive. That's how often we have them. We'll have another one a couple of weeks behind it.

Alex Tolle: Okay.

Charles Antis: We can make sure we post it.

Alex Tolle: Yeah. Do you guys, you share that on your social media, right?

Charles Antis: We do. We sometimes announce them before. Sometimes we'll try to tell what happens. We have the lens, our marketing is, is we try to show it how it's really happening with all its authenticity and vulnerability so it makes it easy for somebody in Florida or Texas to emulate and do the same thing. I think there's this amazing flow in the roofing industry with people that are doing good in the community that are exchanging ideas. And what we're doing is amazing. We only talked about some of it today. Gosh, what we're doing in high school is bringing roofing back. What we're doing in D.C. And the next month going there and marching everybody together, what we're doing, bringing roofing into the colleges. Clemson University, you can major in roofing now.

Alex Tolle: That's amazing. I know.

Charles Antis: It's amazing.

Alex Tolle: I love it. So this might be my favorite question. Why are you an R-Club member, and what are some of your favorite things about RoofersCoffeeShop? I know you and Heidi go way back, so you've been here for a while, but what are your favorite things about it?

Charles Antis: I think roofing is such a beautiful trade. It's just so real. It's that basic need of food and shelter. It's the shelter part that there's a realness to it that when I met Heidi, she was real people. Not only was she real in the way roofer's talk, but she was also real in the way human beings are when they're elevated. She feels it's her job to lift the roofing industry. She feels it's her job to share in community, so we held all that in common. And then as you guys started to develop your brand, I remember it was just like her and Vicki and now there's 30 something of you.

That's what you do. You tell community stories of people coming together uplifting trade and community. And I think that's what I love about RoofersCoffeeShop. We've been able to tell a lot of our stories here, which that's what we've learned the magic is, is talking nationally and locally at the same time. And you'll learn that when you do that, when you find those beautiful national connections that bounce with your local connections, it makes your brand stronger and your culture stronger because there's pride in what we do. And it makes your work better because there's pride in what we do.

Alex Tolle: Absolutely.

Charles Antis: I love what you guys do. I love your energy. When I don't even know one of you, it's like I've already hugged you before. It's like we're drinking Heidi's Kool-Aid. I'll say one more thing about Heidi that's really cool is, I like people that say things in a different way to enlighten our minds. And I have lots of perceptions of God as a lot of people do, but Heidi gave me this perception of God right after I met her. And she said, to me, "God is a forest." And I just like, "Wow, that's beautiful." And it sat with me for six months till the next time I saw her. And I said, "Heidi, you remember when you said that to you God is a forest?" And I go, "Why did you say that?" And Heidi said, "Oh," just like she'd never skipped a beat, she says, "Oh, because in a forest, there's every shape, there's every color, there's every size, even every deformity and yet it's all beautiful." That's what I love about you guys.

Alex Tolle: I love that. I never heard her say that before, so that's awesome.

Charles Antis: Awesome. Well, I might have distorted it, but that was a good version anyways.

Alex Tolle: No. It sounds great. It sounds like something she would probably say, so I love it. Okay. Lastly, what would your walk-up song be?

Charles Antis: Wow. Well, I did look on that one 'cause I just have... I'm thinking, I grew up... I was born in 1962, so give me some Strange Magic or Mr. Blue Sky from Electric Light Orchestra. But lately, I've been obsessed with this walk-up song. It's Rush's number one song, Tom Sawyer.

Today's Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you.

Get by on you.

It's like this rebel. It's made to be a rebel song, but really when I go on stage, it's saying this guy's not a slave to society or company or government. He's saying it like he feels it. That's what the artist was saying when he wrote that, I think and I think that's what I feel when I go on stage. I love that as my walk-up song. It has to be a good stereo to really make it pop, though.

Alex Tolle: All right. Well, Charles, this has been an amazing podcast. We are so excited to celebrate you guys as the February 2025 Roofer of the Month. This is great. We love working with you. We love this relationship. This is amazing. So thank you so much for being here today.

Charles Antis: Thank you, Alex. Thank you, guys. Oh, hey, Heidi. How you doing?

Outro: All right. We'll see you guys on the next one.