Designing your business and climbing mountains

By Dani Sheehan.

Don’t just throw out numbers and hope you can grow your business – take the steps to design a business that aligns with how you want to live your life. 

For many contractors, the roofing industry operates on a cycle of one-time transactions – find a customer, install a roof, get paid and move on to the next project. But Cody Kline, CEO and managing partner of CommercialRoofer.com, a mastermind group of nearly 400 commercial roofing professionals, believes that this approach leaves too much on the table. Instead of chasing the next project, he wants to help roofers build businesses that foster long-term customer relationships through service and maintenance. At ServiceCon 2025, he’ll show you how to do exactly that. 

Cody sees the conference as a vital platform to revive what he calls a lost art – the time-tested business model of maintaining and nurturing customer accounts rather than moving from project to project. “For the modern-day roofing company, 99% of the industry is chasing insurance claims or working on a one-time transaction model,” he explains. “The tried-and-true, old-school roofer mentality, however, is, ‘Let’s get these customers and keep these accounts, and if they don’t need a replacement, let’s nurture the roof until they do.” 

ServiceCon 2025 serves two critical functions: it provides seasoned roofing professionals with a stage to share their expertise, and it gives newer industry professionals a roadmap for building sustainable commercial roofing businesses. Cody’s presentation will be a masterclass in designing a roofing company with purpose and direction – one that aligns not only with your business goals but also with your personal aspirations. 

What does climbing Mount Everest have to do with running a roofing company? According to Cody, more than you might think. He will be drawing on personal experiences from climbing glaciers and scaling mountains to illustrate key lessons in resilience, strategy and calculated growth. 

“I want to be like a lifeline for the roofing industry that brings in business education that most roofers don’t have,” Cody says. “Most roofers start out because of grit and determination, the need to make money or because they’ve been burned by companies in the past. I want to bring insights from other industries, other cultures and real business education from the tech sector to help roofers optimize and refine their businesses.” 

One of the biggest takeaways? That the struggles within a business are often reflections of personal challenges. “Most of your business issues are just your personal issues resurfacing through the business,” he shares. “To be a successful leader, you need to look at the business side of things, but you also need to examine your relationships, your body, your health and fitness and your spirituality – whatever that means to you.” 

Don’t just build a roofing business – design it. Register for ServiceCon 2025 today and take the first step toward growing the life you want.