Financing made easy - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Justus Knights from Roofle. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a long-term professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips from Roofer's Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth and we are here today talking about new technologies, and I mean cutting-edge technologies, that are also really bringing in everything that we need. Financing, working with the homeowners, all the great stuff that really makes selling in the home, but also just overall business work so well. We have the experts from Roofle here and I'd love to introduce Justus Knights to the show. Welcome.

Justus Knights: Thank you, Heidi. Thank you. I'm happy to be here and happy to talk about a product and a sales process that I absolutely love.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it too. I love new technology and I love it when it solves problems like you were all doing over there at Roofle. It's awesome. Let's start out with some introductions. Can you tell us about yourself and about Roofle?

Justus Knights: Yeah, absolutely. I came up in construction. I came up in the trades, family of tradespeople. All of my siblings are still involved in it as well as my father and I got very interested in it and I've been a part of it. But I also got very passionate about traveling and about being able to do remote work, so I switched into finance for a short period of time. I got involved in contractor financing. As a contractor, I used a couple of different finance tools and I saw it as a really nice way to blend my experience and also move into a career direction that I was interested in. And then after about a year of that, I found Roofle and it just seemed like a perfect fit. It was a way to stay even closer to contractors, obviously still using a lot of my finance background. But doing something I'm even a little bit more passionate about, and putting powerful tools into the hands of people like myself and my family and making their lives easier. That's what I'm here to do and that's what I'm excited about.

Roofle for those who have not heard about it, is a cutting edge technology, providing first and foremost, instant quotes, the fastest possible quote you could get on a roof done online. And then on top of that, we offer financing, we offer integrations with detailed measurements. We offer integrations with Beacon PRO Plus for material orderings, and we of course have our finance branch, Contractor Loan PRO, which is what we're here to talk about today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I mean, it really is cutting edge.

Justus Knights: Yes, it is.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: What you're doing and bringing e-commerce model to the roofing industry that we haven't had before. And I love what you have going on with the financing part of it, which is just so critical. Let's start with a little bit of inspiration. I always like to get a little bit of the backstory. What inspired Roofle to develop the ability to help contractors find financing? What inspired it? And then tell us a little bit about that journey.

Justus Knights: Absolutely. First and foremost, Roofle has set out to revolutionize the roofing industry, by streamlining the entire sales process. And then of course, there's nothing more integral to the sales process, than actually transacting on that sale. The way that the world is moving with financing becoming so much more integral part of all of our transactions, from the newer services like Klarna and Afterpay, where you can go into a regular store at a mall and you can pay for whatever you're purchasing in four payments or six payments or what have you, all the way to traditional bank loans, that we're all familiar with.

Consumers primarily are looking for options, so the motivation on Roofle's side was to provide options. Everything else on our platform, we wanted to make it easy, simple, streamlined. With an email address or a phone number, you can go ahead and get your customer approved for financing within about two to five minutes. There's no risk to their credit, there's no stipulations on their side and once they're approved, you can transact on that line of credit immediately. It's just as if it was cash. Like everything else, we wanted this to be as straightforward as possible, and we believe that that is what we've accomplished here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, that's impressive and is so nice, especially with interest rates. What we're seeing right now. We're starting to see a need for that financing again. I think there's nothing like seeing it. And this special edition of Roofing Road Trips is actually on YouTube and on the podcast. If you're listening to it on one of the podcast channels and want to watch this, just go to our YouTube channel and you can see this. And we're going to have Justus do a little bit of a demo, so that we can kind of see what it's all about and go through everything. He'll be talking his way through it while you're listening on the podcast, but if you want to see it just hit YouTube. So Justus, go ahead and let's do that demo.

Justus Knights: Absolutely. And I'll try to give enough commentary so that it makes sense to somebody listening. You can at least tell what we're doing here, even if you're not seeing it. So you'll start for Roof Quote PRO contractors and customers, you'll start here at your dashboard. We have a finance tab down here on the left. You'll come over to that. There is an application process that we don't need to get into right now. You can reach out to our team if you're already a customer, we are more than happy to walk you through that. There's nothing to it. Once you are onboarded to Contractor Loan PRO, you'll have an activity center, where all of your recent loan applications will be housed.\

In order to send a contract or a consumer a new loan application, you would simply click this new loan application button. You will put in an email address or a phone number for them. You will choose which financing package you want to send to that customer, and then you hit send.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Justus Knights: That customer has now received a finance application, that is entirely risk-free. They can fill out this application, it will be a true soft pull on their credit. So no harm to their credit, and they can do the soft pull as many times as they want. Even if they get through the soft pull and they see what you've presented and they say, "I'm not really pleased with any of these finance options, do you have anything else?" You can send them a new finance package and they can go through a new soft pull still with no injury to their credit.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's really important. And I want to talk a little bit more about that. Because I mean, if all of our credit gets hit, and those credit scores are so important.

Justus Knights: And this is a really nice option, especially if you're trying to help somebody out who maybe really needs their roof replace or any other home improvement project. If you do gutters, if you do siding, exteriors, anything like that in addition to roofing, you can finance those as well. And to be able to work with a consumer who maybe something unexpected popped up and they said, "I can't make any of these finance options work. Do you have anything else?" And before we look at that application process, because it is so fast, I did want to show you the amount of finance options that you have available. In your fixed rate options, you have tons.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Justus Knights: Now, not to be overwhelming with it, but you can take your customers from a 2% or 3% interest rate, all the way up to basically credit card interest rates. We have them all available, depending on how you want to present to your specific market. This is a really beautiful part of it is that, you can make it fit to wherever you are. You don't necessarily have to restrict your options to the highest tier of consumers. As far as credit reports go, you can accommodate those middle ground consumers as well. We have a bunch of different options that you can make available, very simple to just click to add it to your package and there it is. Now that option is going to be sent out with everything else we've made.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Justus Knights: Everything just click and go click and remove. There is nothing to it. It is a very straightforward, easy process. You don't need to be a finance guru to be able to make this work. Contractors have a lot going on.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I saw it down there Justus, also same as cash.

Justus Knights: Yes, ma'am.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There's a lot of different, not just interest rates, but there's a lot of different fixed payments, same as cash, zero interest. Let's be honest, I think everybody out there at one point bought appliances or furniture or something on zero interest or same as cash. And so now to be able to do that with roofing through this, and I know people have done it, but this is really easy.

Justus Knights: Exactly. Then something that I like to remind contractors of all the time is, for insurance work, if a consumer needs their roof replaced today, but they are going to have to haggle with their insurance company for a few months, you can provide them with a six month, no payment, no interest loan, same as cash. They can replace their roof this week. They can deal with their insurance company. When the insurance company pays out, they can pay down this loan with zero interest to themselves.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Justus Knights: It is really a win-win. The contractor gets paid this week when they finish the job, consumer gets their roof done and then when the insurance pays out, that becomes a zero-interest loan to the consumer, which is, very important for everybody, especially in the economy that we're seeing right now. Without further ado, Heidi, I'd like to show what the consumer application process looks like.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Let's see it.

Justus Knights: All right. And when we're done with that, I'll show what the transaction process looks like as well. Your consumer will receive an email from our finance branch. Welcome to your loan invitation. It will let them know they're just going to provide some details about themselves, their contact information, participate in a soft pull and then they'll choose their loan offer and then they will proceed to a hard pull. It lets everyone know, from the jump, we're very transparent, it is a completely risk-free process. It'll give them some more reminders here. They will confirm the privacy policy and e-signature disclosure, and then they will go in and tell how much money they want to borrow.

We're just going to say $10,000, for easy math. I'm going to put in my phone number, so that I can confirm my identity. On the next step, we'll put in a six digit code that just got texted to my cell phone.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We've all done this before. We know how this works.

Justus Knights: Precisely. These six digit codes are everywhere. And then I have some dummy information, because, I'm obviously not actually applying for this.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Perfect. Putting in there, name, your address, all basic things.

Justus Knights: Precisely. All very basic things. I'm going to pull up our test data so I make sure that I don't get anything mixed up here, and make sure that we get this right and we can give a proper explanation of everything that is happening. And so, really, really simple process across the board. It is just going to be, and I'm trying to talk while I'm typing, of course, so it slows me down. But it is all very basic information for your consumer. So far, they've just given contact information, how much they'd like to borrow, and their address. We'll pull them through to the next step. We're going to ask for their annual income. Our test subject has $72,000 of annual income. We're going to give them a test social security number.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Don't grab any of this anybody.

Justus Knights: Oh, this is a fake person. It's okay.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, exactly.

Justus Knights: If somebody ran this through our system, we would know immediately that, "Oh, somebody's using our test data."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: All right.

Justus Knights: All right. Income, social security number, date of birth, they'll create a pin, in case they do want to come back and complete this step later. And they will continue here. They're going to review all of this information, and they're going to view my offers. Now this is the really cool part, Heidi. This is not our dummy platform acting fast. This is real time. As fast as their internet can refresh, they will get their loan offer.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Justus Knights: It's taken just a second, and bam, here we are. And not just a single loan offer, they will be presented with a handful of options. They'll be able to see, as same as cash, they will see 12 months of zero payments, whatsoever. And after that, they see their 39,842 for a 48-month term. If they go and look at a different one, we've got a fixed rate option or two here available to them. We have a 599 APR, which, if you're paying attention to the financial market right now, a 599 APR is about two points lower than most mortgages are coming through right now. They'll see that they have their promotional period of five months, that is the period in which they can transact on this line of credit. And after that, their payments are 250 a month, for 55 months.

Your customer is always going to be presented with all of the details that they would need. If they want the fine print, they can get that as well and they can get all of the details on this loan option. We're going to say, "I'm going to take advantage of this 599 APR for five years because that is unbelievable right now. And I'm going to continue." It is going to pause your customer right here. And it's going to make sure that they are confirming they want to make a hard pull upon their credit. It even pauses, it won't let them move forward for a second, to prompt them to really read this page and make sure that they are aware of what's going on. Again, transparency from start to finish.

We're going to apply and again, as fast as their internet can refresh, they will go ahead and get a finalized for that loan. And one thing I do want to highlight here is that, we are 100% accurate, from our soft pull to our hard pull. You'll never run into a period unless there is a technical glitch. You'll never run into an actual financial issue of a soft pull approval, that does not translate to a hard pull approval. And here we are, my internet's running a little slow, but here it is. We are going to accept these terms and we'll accept the loan agreement. And again, the internet will just have to refresh, while this goes through. And my Wi-Fi is running just a little bit slow today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, Justus while we're watching this, because actually it's much faster than mine, just so you know. But I'm curious, with the contractors who have been using this in the field, what are you hearing?

Justus Knights: Oh. There are two sides to what we hear in the field is, A, an owner or operator or a leader of a company, will get this tool, and they are super excited about it, and they get it set up, they get signed up and they get trained. And then the next step is getting those sales reps trained.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes.

Justus Knights: Because as we all know, sales reps live on their credibility and their confidence. If a sales rep is not confident about a product, they're not going to bring it up. Because a lack of confidence, translates to a lack of sales. The most vital part of this, is getting it in the hands of sales reps and showing them exactly how simple this process is. That is the biggest step that we're getting. And once we teach a sales rep how simple this is, we pretty much always see. If they are a company that pushes financing, we'll pretty much always see usage within the first month. Once you teach a sales rep-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I mean, I think there's probably a number of salespeople watching this right now.

Justus Knights: And it's really so straightforward because, your company has the options that they've made available to your customers. You don't need to be a financial professional. All of the information will be transparently presented to your customers. And once the sales rep sees this consumer process, and granted, I took about five minutes at it because, I'm walking through and talking about it the entire way.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Justus Knights: When a consumer is just doing this, again, you can do it on your cell phone. When a consumer is just doing this on their cell phone, with no distractions, you're just filling in your personal information. And blast right through it. You can get through it in less than a minute, and be presented with your loan options. And then the sales rep doesn't need to know about APR, the sales rep doesn't need to be an expert on this stuff because it's all presented to the customer.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's right there.

Justus Knights: And then the last thing that will happen here, that customer will then be prompted to set up their account as soon as they have been approved. They will come to a password page, they'll set up their account. This is what will allow them to track their loan, make payments on their loan, and set up all of their payment details so that they're good to go. We are going to stop here, because no need for us to go and create this password and build this. And I do want to show two last things. Your customer will get a congratulation letter. And again, this will give them all of the details about their loan. It will also provide them with a PDF of their loan agreement. Transparency, start to finish. They'll have all of this information, contact information if they need help, they need any kind of guidance or support.

Next, we will come back into our portal and we are going to look at our activity center. And here, Frank Valesky, and we are going to refresh that we have the proper 599 loan that we just approved. Here we are, it's Frank Valesky, with that fixed rate, 0599 means 5.99% interest, on a five-year loan. This is the customer that we just worked with. We are going to click on his name. We'll get a little blurb about who this customer is, and we are going to go ahead and request a 50% down payment on this project.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Easy.

Justus Knights: On signing, we'll take a 50% down payment, on completion, we'll take a 50% final charge. We're going to say consumer deposit, initial charge and we're going to send this request to this customer. And what will happen now, this is the really cool part of it. What happens now is, my phone number is attached to this customer. I just got a text right now in this second, there's been a request of a consumer deposit or initial charge of $6,000 to approve this payment, respond to this text with a six digit code and it provides the six digit code. All they have to do, is type in that six-digit code, hit send and that transaction is complete.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is great. That's easy. Wow.

Justus Knights: Simple. If that happens before 2 PM Eastern time, that transaction will happen the same day to that contractor. But if it happens after 2:15, it will be the following business day. Same day, next day, ACH. We tried to make it, A, as simple as cash and, B, as fast as cash. It's almost there.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You're there. This is impressive. Very impressive. Now did you have any more to show?

Justus Knights: That is the loan process. The one other thing that I did want to show that makes it really, really easy is, if we come in here, and if a customer comes to a contractor's website, if they use the Roofle tool on their website. In fact we can even go here, we can go... We have a dummy website that we use as our demo.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Perfect.

Justus Knights: This is a contractor website. They come to your website and they put in an address. They're going to go here. Your customer's at your website, great, I'm going to see my price. They're going to put in all of their contact information and we're going to give them... To prove that we're not a robot, and we're going to show this price. And the very cool thing here is when you have your financing turned on, not only do you send them a proposal with their cost and with their different products, we'll also tell them, the finance options that they have associated with that product. Rather than just seeing $24,000, "Oh, that's a lot of money, wait, I could get this for $329 a month. Or, I could have zero APR for up to 12 months. Oh well, if I'm going to do an insurance job, I can do that. Or if they do it now, I've got tax season and I have Christmas bonus season coming. Before I would actually have to start paying on this loan, I could knock out a lot of this loan before interest even happens. Or if I have a very good credit score, I could secure a 6% interest rate, which is lower than my mortgage rate for the house I bought earlier this year."

That is the real power of this tool. And then they can also, the consumer, can go and get pre-qualified. Now obviously this is a dummy platform, so, this is all silly, but, the consumer puts in their phone number and they will get an application to apply for financing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Without even having to talk to a salesperson?

Justus Knights: Precisely. Without even having to talk to a salesperson. Now the company that has this built out, will receive a lead in their dashboard that, somebody came in and they're looking for the Owens Corning Duration. Not only that, this customer is pre-approved to finance up to $30,000. You know the product they're interested in; you have all of their contact information and they're serious enough to get pre-approved for financing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's excellent. For those who are not familiar with Roofle, you just saw what it looks like, and this is where contractors can work with Roofle, to have this on their home page. Where homeowners can come in and basically get the measurements, get a quote, get the financing, all right there on your home page. It is a whole new way of looking at things. Justus, what are you seeing? Are you seeing some consumers that just go all the way through and buy?

Justus Knights: Oh, we absolutely are. That is the coolest part about it. See, we are in a time in the world right now that you can buy anything online. You can buy cars online now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Justus Knights: I mean you can buy cars online and have them delivered directly to your house without ever having to go talk to a sleazy car salesman. And not to say that roofing salespeople are sleazy, I've never met a sleazy one.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No.

Justus Knights: But just in that, people are getting used to that. E-commerce is becoming just commerce, at this point. It's becoming the norm, and so, we are seeing people who are working completely that way. They will get an instant quote through their customer. They will have someone on their team reach out to that customer by phone. They will get some clarifying details. They might order an Eagleview or a GAF QuickMeasure to get those detailed measurements, so they can do a takeoff for their material orders, and do that entire process remotely. And it is happening. Specifically, I love to shout out John DeLaurier of DeLaurier Roofing, down in Georgia. He is pioneering that process.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Justus Knights: His team is working through fully remote sales and absolutely crushing it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is great. And it's the future. We all know it.

Justus Knights: Yes, it is.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We're in an Amazon age, that's all there is. I'm sure there are some folks out there thinking, who are the lenders? Who are you working with on all this financing? How does that work?

Justus Knights: Yeah. We partnered with Moment Technologies, which is a finance company that's been in the game. They've been doing contractor financing. They've partnered with a couple of different capital investors as their backers. Most notably Cross River Bank and Primus. It's not BB&T, one of the banks that everybody's going to know on the top of their head. They're more of a West Coast banking operation. They are operational in almost all of the country, and we've been with them for close to a year now. And we built their tool directly into our tool. Their tool functions very similarly. We have a very close relationship and it's been a very smooth partnership from the beginning. And most importantly, we found a company that did exactly what we wanted. We found a company that moves at the speed that we are trying to achieve and fits into our sales process. And then we built a tool inside of our entire platform, that does exactly what we need it to do, using their capital investment, essentially.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think it's amazing. I think it's the future and it is perfect. Let's talk about, how can contractors start using this? Give a little bit of, how does it work? How do they get with Roofle and get it onto their homepage and put all this together?

Justus Knights: Absolutely. If you are looking to get Roofle itself, you would simply go to Roofle.com and you can request a demo there. You can schedule a demo at any time that's convenient with you and you will get a demo with one of our salespeople. They'll show you exactly what the tool does, exactly how you can apply it to your business. If it is the right move for your business, you can proceed from there. We have a couple of different pricing options, yearly and monthly. And after that point, if you are interested in Contractor Loan PRO, you would simply go to the finance tab and there will be an option to apply for Contractor Loan PRO. It is not a guaranteed approval because obviously it's a financial institution, and they have to vet whoever they're doing business with. There's a couple of stipulations, time of doing business, amount of business done and all that good stuff.

But it is a very simple, easy process. About a ten-minute application. You need some tax information and your business license information and stuff like that, but it's about a ten-minute application process. From there, you'll get an onboarding, you'll get assigned an account executive, who will help guide you through setting up the rates and the products that you want to present, based on your market. Because as we know, low country, South Carolina where I grew up, is a very different market than inner City Chicago or than Colorado Springs, right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Justus Knights: You'll get a sales representative who is pinpointed to your location. You'll get a regional rep who knows your market, and can help you out with setting up the finance options you'd want to make available. And then, of course, myself, everybody else on the customer success team here at Roofle, we are more than happy to help out with this stuff. I tend to field a lot of finance questions in my day-to-day, as it's my background. So more than happy to help with any of that at any point.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great. I think, this is really something that every contractor should be looking at. You can find all this information on the Roofle Directory, on Roofers Coffee Shop. But just getting to Roofle.com and really going through this, looking at this for 2024, I just think it's critical. It is the future, no matter how you think about, it's going to be the future. And especially with the next generation. I want to leave it with that. As you were watching Justus, this next generation coming up of Millennials and Gen Z's, how they're purchasing, to me, that seems like, what you're describing with Roofle and Contractor Loan PRO, that's where it's going to be.

Justus Knights: Exactly. This is the future. Options are the future, and payment options are a huge part of that. Make sure that you've got them so you don't get left behind.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Exactly. Thank you. Thank you so much for the demonstration. Thank you so much for being with us today and for all this great information. I'm just very excited for you all. And 2024 is going to be a big year for you.

Justus Knights: Yes, it is. Thank you so much for having me, Heidi. It's been a blast.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. It was great. And thank you all for listening. More information that's going to grow your business in the New Year. Please check out the Roofle Directory on Roofers Coffee Shop, where you can get all the information, articles, videos, it's great. Also, check out all of our podcasts under the RLW navigation, under Roofing Road Trips or on your favorite podcast channel or YouTube. Be sure to set the subscribe and set your notifications, so you don't miss a single episode. And also, be sure to ring that bell on YouTube so you can see this video. We will be back again soon. Thank you so much. We will be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Outro: Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi, from the Rooferscoffeeshop.com.