Heidi and Vickie Show- Thinking About the Future- PODCAST TRANSCRIPTIONS

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of The Heidi and Vickie Show. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast here. 

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Heidi and Vickie Show, available on all streaming platforms and the Roofer's Coffee Shop website. Now, let's listen to Heidi and Vickie.

Heidi: Hello, and welcome to the Heidi and Vickie Show. We are here, Saturday morning, and I am so happy to be with Vickie talking about the week we just had, and a little bit better week, but this is kind of our way from RoofersCoffeeShop of sharing some of our thoughts. Good morning, Vickie.

Vickie: Sharing our thoughts, but really, does anybody care what we think? I prefer to say that we're sharing what we learned.

Heidi: Okay.

Vickie: People might care what you think. I don't know.

Heidi: I think we do end up sharing our thoughts because that's just kind of who we are, but you're right. We'll start with what we've learned.

Vickie: Yeah, I have an opinion people on ... People at random will ask, "What do you think of this?" And I will answer them whether I know nothing about what they're talking about. If you want an answer, you asked me. So, yes, I was very encouraged by this week because it wasn't, well, because it wasn't the prior two weeks, but it seems to be the dust feel like, just to me, from what we hear, settle a little bit. I was encouraged by listening to the, NRCA had a town hall meeting that they did over the phone. You listen to it too and I'm looking to learn those little pearls. The interesting little bits of information. And usually I'm not a participator. So it was really fun how they did it because you registered and then they called you. So it was all over the phone. And I think maybe that was a superior way since they had so many people, there's not enough bandwidth to do it like regular webinars anymore. So I thought that was super smart.

Heidi: Yeah. Especially since they had such high numbers. I mean really, we heard everything from a thousand to 3,000 but it was obviously kind of the talk of the town, talk of the industry this week for sure.

Vickie: Yeah, it was good. So I thought it was interesting to hear from Nick Sabino, he talked about needing supplies and hand sanitizers and how he is improvising, but he talked about how he's taken the employees' temperatures, he's putting them one per vehicle and making somebody else drive to the project. And so I wanted to know more about how he is improvising. He did mention that he's buying sanitizer in bulk and mixing his own with a recipe and putting them in spray bottles and supplying everybody. I thought that was kind of ingenious. And then he mentioned a shout out for all customer tops products, this is a chemical company, they switched to making hand sanitizers. Not to veer off the subject of the town hall, but Duralast is doing something like that too we can talk about later. But it was really nice to hear from them what they were doing and then a man named Tom Shanahan went on and he talked about worker's comp coverage and things like that. It was very interesting.

Heidi: Yeah, he's with the NRCA.

Vickie: And then Trent talked.

Heidi: Yeah, our friend Trent.

Vickie: Yeah, Trent talked and so he has amazing things available if you go to his website. Both of them do. NRCA has an enormous amount of links and information. So does Trent. And then Mark Graham went on with the NRCA and he had a couple things I really wanted to talk about, which I thought were genius that I actually told a friend of mine that installs windows and has a permitting process. So Mark Graham talked that he was quite encouraging that seems that the roofing industry is working pretty well. So we've had some cancellations but it's not ruining everybody's business right now. Mark Graham talked about not being able to get permits because the city halls were all down and doing a virtual so we can communicate with city hall on the phone and do a virtual job inspection. And so we take our iPad or whatever that we are using. And I just thought that was brilliant. And I actually told my friend and they hadn't thought of that. So it's a brilliant way to keep working because we've got to pay attention to what trades aren't working. So that was something, and the other thing they said, super important, super important, over document. What he meant by that was go overboard. Use your cameras, your videos, because if something happens later, when this flux period of a homeowner thinking you didn't do what you did or whatever just over document or a building owner. And that was two good tips that I thought were important.

Heidi: You know, I really like those tips too because in our coffee conversations this week on Thursday morning, Thea Dudley, who was our guest, basically said the same thing. She says, everybody's all helpful and everything during the crisis, but after the crisis it gets not so friendly. So you need to have really good documentation. So that's the same thing Mark was saying, is it may seem all okay now, but make sure you have your bases covered.

Vickie: Right. And there's a couple things that we need to know, maybe work-wise, but personal-wise, I learned two things this week which may or may not be true. Number one, if you take three months to not pay your mortgage, which is no problem, you can call up and go, "I can't pay my mortgage. Can I have three months?" And they go, "Sure." But at the end of three months you have to pay all three months. So say your mortgage is 1,000 bucks a month, at the end three months you owe them $3,000. So they're not putting those payments off until the end. So we need to make sure with our landlords and all that stuff that that's the case. And the other thing is they're not turning off the credit bureau reporting. So did Thea talk about that? I was listening.

Heidi: She did not.

Vickie: Okay.

Heidi: Yeah. No she did not talk about the fact that credit reporting is still going to be happening and that that's going to be a ticket on your credit score.

Vickie: Yeah. So maybe you can tell the creditor or the person that's looking at your credit. "Well, I had my little furlough of making the payments," and that's understandable, but as far as I know, it's still reporting. So it's nice that we could do that if there were sticking your missing payments onto the end of them all. And I also heard that they would prorate it and make you pay extra over the next three months, but that would be $1,500 a month. So those are things that we need to know ahead of time before we make those decisions. And-

Heidi: Well, and what's interesting is on Ken Kelly, one of the things I learned this week too, Ken Kelly out of Florida, he's a roofing contractor, was trying to apply for the SBA loans. And he said that, because everybody's kind of saying, "Oh, it's a grant now. It's a loan, but it turns into a grant," but there's a lot of restrictions on it turning into a grant. And one of those restrictions is you have to make less money this year during this time, I think 50% less than last year. Don't quote me on that, but he was really doing some good research and sharing that. And for a lot of contractors, they might take the loan and then think it's going to be free and they're still working. Roofing contractors are still making money and then they find out, yeah, it's a loan. It's not going to be turned into a grant. So I think there's a lot of those things out there. They're saying, "Oh here we are helping. We're helping," but you need to read the fine print.

Vickie: Yeah. But yeah, it is a little hard to understand, especially if you're only supposed to be able to get the loan if you're keeping people employed and it's making payroll, so a roofing contractor, they already have the job and they can do the job, so it's really, we need help when we start missing income later. I think that's when the dust really settles and this is all over with and we all are looking at each other going, "Is the building owner or homeowner going to spend money?" And so I'm glad everybody's still working now and I hope everybody stays safe but this is going to have repercussions.

Heidi: I think one of the things is, it's kind of hard too is with all this going on and you see what's happening in New York and it just breaks your heart, and on the other side of it you need to be really pragmatic talking about finances, talking about how to protect your businesses, your families. And so you feel a little ... Because one of the things I really believe in and that you and I have talked about before is follow the money. So if you have a business out there, where is the money? Is it, the money right now is online. There's a lot of homeowners sitting in their homes thinking, "I wish we could fix that," and they may be doing more home repair. There's a lot of companies that are doing really well. And so it's hard to think of it that way when you see all this tragedy. But I've really had to kind of work through that this week. Like, okay, [inaudible 00:10:12] pragmatic. How do we do this? You know, I'm a longterm strategy thinker anyway, so I'm like, "Okay, where are we going to be in six months?" How do we do this? How do we stay ahead?"

Vickie: Yeah.

Heidi: Contractors need to kind of do the same thing.

Vickie: Yeah. And you need to help me because my philosophy, my mantra is spend, spend, God will send.

Heidi: Yeah, I know.

Vickie: Another reason we make a good team. Well [crosstalk 00:10:43] but my own. So back to the town hall. Dwayne Muser came on. What a nice man. I've met him before. And he's a government relations, I believe at NRCA.

Heidi: I think he always puts things in a very easy way to understand, kind of layman terms almost. Yeah.

Vickie: So his stuff was a little more technical, but he literally is solid trying to figure out, he's going, "Okay, the SBA has a new thing, it's rolling out. We're waiting for it any minute," and he goes, right in the middle of the call, he goes, "Here it is. This is what they're saying." So he totally knows up to the minute. He understands about expanded unemployment provisions, tax provision and how a lot of these benefits are not cash in hand. They're going to give you a tax credit at the end of the year. Now I know transit talked on that before. I kind of need help now, not on my taxes. So that's a thing that everybody else needs to be aware of.

Heidi: It's kind of like what you're saying, the Family First Initiative, because that can really affect roofing contractors is if employees can say, "I need to stay home. I need to stay home with my family," and if they can't work from home, that starts taking labor away from the company too. And so you want your employees safe, but you want to keep the business going. A lot of big things are there.

Vickie: Yeah. Yep. We all are going to learn a lot. Look, I believe we've done a good job trying to get the word out of all the different resources there are out there. Because there are, besides Trent and the NRCA, there are a lot of companies that we have posted that have information. I want to mention something I got last night that I forwarded to you. It was from Suprema. Did you see that email?

Heidi: I did. It was awesome.

Vickie: All the email said was, oh, let me see if I still have it. It was just so cute. It just says, "Hi, we're thinking about you," and he sent it to everybody and I went, "I hope you're safe,"

Heidi: Yeah, it says, "We just want to say hello and check on you." I [inaudible 00:13:18] that.

Vickie: Remind you. And then we're thinking [inaudible 00:13:22] It was so sweet. That was kind of a nice thing. So shout out to Suprema.

Heidi: Yeah, I love working with them. They're on the site and they really truly believe in the coffee shop and we've just had such a good time working with them. And to get this note just was like, aw. Yeah, I loved it.

Vickie: And they didn't send it to us. They sent it to their entire email list, so contractors all around. And that's why I thought it was such a nice thing to do on a Friday night.

Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. Moving forward and all of that.

Vickie: This week we've promoted our podcast page with all the podcasts that we have and I feel more than ever that podcasts are the way of the future. I know we've said that a couple of times, but I was telling you about going to a radio station. I got the opportunity to tour the radio stations and meet all the people on a new station in LA and it was super fascinating. And one of the things they said, that radio will be obsolete in the next few years because everybody's going to podcasts. And also satellite, he said they were rich because the station in LA, they owned one of the biggest radio towers in the country. So that was where their fortune was. They were worth millions and millions because they could everybody with this radio tower and then satellite came in and wiped him out and so now they're not rich anymore. They got bought up and so they do podcasts and that's how everybody's going to be listening. And so if we can get people to listen to us or anybody, I think that puts us ahead of the curve again. You really tell technology. And so I went on and figured out how to subscribe to one. The one I picked was iHeart Radio because this particular radio stations, all the LA ones are part of that. And then I listened to the Ron Burgundy podcast instead of listening to ours. And I loved it. And I love doing it and it's easy once you figure out how. And then I subscribed to the Apple one, which I already love, and if we do that, then they pop up on our screen and then we know when somebody that we're following puts a new one in. So we had Megan this week, Megan Ellsworth, our podcast producer, do little videos on how to do it because I know a lot of people that don't listen to podcasts and are not sure how. So it's not a big deal, it's just not part of what we normally do. But once you do it and it's so convenient when you go on your walk, I set my little podcast up and then I listened to whatever you've done, you know the latest podcasts you do. I listen to those on my walk.

Heidi: Oh, awesome.

Vickie: So yeah, it's very interesting. It's kind of rude when I walk with my husband. No, I'm just kidding. [crosstalk 00:16:31] No, he's just telling me all his normal stuff. The problem is he used to tell me about golf and so there's no golf anymore. When I came in the house from work last night, he was watching, he was watching golf and I'm so used to it and he said, "I'm so bored, I'm watching a rerun of golf." Golf is already pretty boring. To watch a rerun of it, that's pretty bad. But I digress.

Heidi: But I have to say, we used to be the same golf family and, and now Tim, as many of you hopefully listening to this have met, Tim has totally gone to AXS, A-X-S. I don't know if you have that channel, but it's all rock and roll. So now it's all rock and roll in our house all day long. That's it. That's it. No more sports.

Vickie: Is it videos or behind the scenes?

Heidi: Behind the scenes, documentaries, different celebrities. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I'll send you the thing, but it kind of made me think about that because you know, for Tim, this kind of goes back, honestly, we're getting back on topic, but it kind of goes back to that, what are you interested in? And I've had a couple people who have said, "We really, really appreciate the Roofing Road Trips, the Heidi and Vickie Show," the podcast that we're doing because we're just talking with experts in the history. We're talking about real things, but we try to make it fun. And I just wasn't really sure about the whole podcast thing either. And we started what, about 18 months ago, maybe not even that long. And I think we've really gotten a lot better and we finally, I think, have got it organized. It's not easy bringing new technologies into your business. And to some of the younger folks out there, they're probably going "Right, whatever," but this has not been an easy thing. But I really feel like we're at a point now, Vickie, that I'm really proud to be talking about it on our podcast and I hope we get more people subscribing and following us and reviewing, because I think we're only getting better. And you're right, this is the future.

Vickie: Yeah, it's more natural. When we did start this, and we had a couple halts, trying to figure it out, but it's naturally evolving. Like the Coffee Conversations webinar, you do it in a webinar format, but it's question and answers. So it's live, I don't know what to call that format, meeting? Live meeting or something? And then we're going to turn those into podcast so people can listen to that. See, we get the people that are driving places and the books on tape people, they've been listening for a long time that we haven't paid attention and roofing people, have no one to talk ... So I learned this from the forum and the reason why the forum used to be so popular is because a roofer said once, he sits down with all his relatives at a picnic bench and he has nothing to talk to them about. And so when you have like-minded people, which we are roofing industry, like minded people, that's our thing, that we want to talk about things. And you know how well this skill saw worked for you or the quality of nails that we're getting, or what do you do when you get pig valley? What is a pig valley? And so I've noticed that, you tell people what you do and they go, "Oh, that's interesting," but they don't care. But we can talk work with each other, we can talk work with our roofing buddies and so that's why the podcast is so interesting for our people. Instead of listening to Ron Burgundy, dammit, you should be listening to something roofing related.

Heidi: Well I think it's funny because you're right, when you talk to friends and family and people outside the industry and they say, "Well what do you do?" And you tell them, and then of course when it's us, we don't put the roofs on. We actually have a website that talks about putting roofs on and that talks about the industry and is meant for the contractors. I mean there's total glaze over on most people when you go down that road, but until they need a roof. Until they need a roof and then you are the first phone call.

Vickie: Oh, every time.

Heidi: "Who do you recommend? What should we do?"

Vickie: I recommend you call your local distributor. That's what I do, because they know who's paying their bills. So this is how I go about it. So they go, "Why your local distributor?" Because they know who's paying their bills and if the guy's paid his bills, he's dependable. Number one, I don't know about the quality of his work, but if he's paying his bills, his quality of work can't be that bad if he stays in business. You know what I mean? And pays his ... That's my backwards thinking on that. But there is something to that. They know who's a fly by night and who's not. The guy that just shows up and buys material and pays cash for it and splits. We might not want to recommend them.

Heidi: And then kind of takes us into, I know I talked a little bit about it early on in the podcast, but a little bit about Thea on, at our Coffee Conversations on Thursday morning, and one of the things I loved about that, which will also be a podcast along with being a video on our site on the coffee shop. But the thing I loved about it is that she really talked about contractors and what they need to do with their credit and with their collections. And I just love ... She's just like you. She just says a straight, man. Right out there.

Vickie: Well, people don't realize that in a relationship with the credit manager, it's not adversarial. It turns into be, because they got to collect their money. But she and some other men, people, not men, but people I have met that do credit, want to work with you. If you work with them up front, you're going to take this job and you might be overextended and you're going to do it, work with them in advance. They help you set it up. They help you get paid. They are super. They're really your friends. And that came across with Thea, and that's such a smart thing to do. They're not there to torment you. They're there actually to protect you if you have a good relationship with them. Protect you and everybody's money.

Heidi: Yeah. And they'll help you be proactive. So don't wait until you're in trouble. That's what I love. She said, "Don't wait until you're in trouble to reach out."

Vickie: Yeah. Do it in advance.

Heidi: Build those relationships. Yeah.

Vickie: Let them know what you're doing. Have them help you.

Heidi: So Vickie, I wanted to bring one thing up that, because usually you always have a great list here, but I have one thing that you said yesterday and I just think it's great. It goes along with the survey that we're doing. What can we do to help survey that you just launched upon the site yesterday and I was hoping you could talk about that survey a little bit and I really want, because I love the fact that you put a question in there like, when do you to hear from us? How do you want to hear from us? What can we do to help? So maybe share a little bit about the questions that are on there, your thinking and how important it is. We really need to hear from the contractors.

Vickie: Well the thing is that's the age old question, is how can we help you? But if you tell us, the way that our business works is that we can figure it out. We are moving and dynamic all the time. If you need this, we can put a page up, we could gather the resources, but unless you tell us what you need. So that's why, yeah. Well what do you need? How can we help? You are sitting at home thinking, "Well I would have liked to be in the webinar but that's not a good time for me." When is a good time for you? Tell us. Tell us how you want to get your information. If you don't want an email, do you want to be updated by a different method? So if you tell us, we can do it. We can put it together. Well you know, I can't send you $1 million but I could give you some information or connect you and create a way to connect you with fellow people that can help you. So that's what the Reverse Coffee Shop has always been about. A communication tool. So that's why the survey is. Just a small way. Just tell us what you need. Because we can invent what we think you need and then put it out there. But that's just not helpful if that's something you don't want. So if you tell us how you want to learn, how you want to get your information, what you want to see more of. Just think, well we don't want all this training stuff. We only want to know how to do this. Well we'll put it up there. And also ironically, so what I'm offering as a gift to fill this out, because some people like incentives and it might get some people to pay attention more to fill out the survey. But we have those things called bandanas. It's not a bandana because it's connected all the way around so you can pull it up over your head, you can wear it as a calf. It's really kind of a unique thing. I had made a bunch of those for the IRE and so I've ordered a bunch and so, well I'll send you one, and my husbands were wearing them to the grocery store and he keeps giving them to the neighbor, the whole neighborhood now has Roofers Coffee Shop. He gave it to the cable guy yesterday. So everybody now has a scarf, which we should have had all along. So see, if you take five minutes to fill that out, you get a free scarf. And I ordered a little kit. They've shipped already. They should be here today. A little kit that can store some handy wipes. It's like a little first aid kit that you could carabiner, carabiner, which one is it, Heidi?

Heidi: Carabiner.

Vickie: Carabiner it on your tool belt or somewhere so you don't lose it. So see, two little things that we want to help. But thank you for mentioning the survey. It's really important to me. I think there's just a couple of quick questions in there. There's only 11 questions in there, yes or no, so that's easy.

Heidi: Well, I think one of the things that you and I've talked about since this started, and I kind of put 1st of March, right? That's really when, 1st of March, somewhere in there. But because of you, we had our coronavirus page up within the first week, we had the forum for the coronavirus up in the first week. And you and I have talked nonstop about the fact that this isn't just about us presenting out. I mean, I think the industry is getting a lot of webinars and they're all great. There's nothing wrong with that. That's awesome. But there's not a whole lot of back and forth engagement going on. Like, what do you think? What's the conversation? And so you and I are pretty dang committed to figuring out how to get that engagement. And so between the Coffee Conversations, and I've gotten some great feedback. People come on there, ask questions. It's not about us, it's about you, it's about the contractors. This survey I think is really important and we'll learn and we'll implement what we get back from that. And then our forums. And then I also have to say our social media because our social media has been super active. Great stuff that you put out on Facebook, all the stuff we put out on LinkedIn. So I think we've got to keep pushing for that on exchange of information, not just one way of getting it out.

Vickie: Yeah. I always think of us as a resource rather than actually ... We take all the information from everywhere and it's one place to find it. But we have this really a good writer who started six months ago. I don't know when you-

Heidi: Lauren.

Vickie: Yeah, Lauren. You had her write some really good articles. She's been doing a lot of research and she's been writing, we've been releasing an article a week of really just well-written good stuff, information. And so that's kind of neat because that's original for us. Lauren has been a really researching, writing some good articles. So that's kind of new for us, and about the coronavirus, what different companies, how they're feeling and so that kind of a good read there if somebody wants to go in and find it.

Heidi: Yeah. And the thing is is that we have been so busy, right? And so Karen Edwards, she is cranking the articles out. She's also doing stuff with RT3 and so that's why we really, I mean this started last summer so I'm kind of tickled with our foresight on this, but Lauren, she is a local, she grew up down the road. Her parents own the local store in our little tiny neighborhood or community and she's amazing. An amazing writer, and I think one of the things that I want to share with contractors out there is that you never know what you have right next to you and when it comes to writers or talent, and that's kind of what happened to us. I've known Lauren the whole time and her mom said, "Hey, do you have any work that she might be interested in?" And then all of a sudden here's this gem and she is out there and talking to building permit people. That's what our most recent article is going to be about the building permits and what's getting slowed down or hung up with the coronavirus. So yeah, I'm really tickled that she's ... I really feel that her and Karen and myself and you, we all are just grabbing and writing and doing as much as we can to get out there in different formats.

Vickie: Yeah. If you go look, you'll see what podcast we have.

Heidi: But please go look. Go look at them, because there's a lot of really great people that we've interviewed and I mean Vickie, as you know, I'm doing two, sometimes three podcasts a week right now. And really up to date information, and then we're doing this one and then we want to get back going with our Stories from the Roof, interviewing more contractors.

Vickie: Oh yeah.

Heidi: And we also have our Coffee Conversations. So a lot of good information.

Vickie: One thing is if you just are not a listener, that's not the way you enjoy things, you'd rather read. We do transcribe everything we do. So you can click a button and read the whole thing at anytime, because I believe in offering people how they want to learn, how you absorb information, what entertains you. So everything we do have is available to read it. But it's really hard. You can't watch a podcast, so that's the only thing. You really don't, because [crosstalk 00:31:44], yeah, the new normal is nobody ... Men are talking, my husband was talking to his brother the other day going, "So when are you going to shave? I haven't shaved. What was the reason you shaved?" Because we're all going to really have a hard time going back to the real world again.

Heidi: I love it. Well, Vickie, we're at the end of our 30 minutes, but I do want to just, before we end today's Heidi and Vickie Show is really encourage everyone to subscribe. So whichever, like Vickie's talking about, whether it's iHeart or Spotify or Apple or Google, wherever you're at, please subscribe so that you get notifications when our next podcasts come up because we're working hard to bring that information to the industry. So I hope everybody has a great Saturday. Vickie, enjoy your Saturday.

Vickie: Okay, I will. Bye.

Heidi: Thank you everybody for joining us for this week's Heidi and Vickie Show. We'll be back next Saturday. Thank you. Bye.

Speaker 1: This has been the Heidi and Vickie Show. Make sure to subscribe to our channel and let us know what you think by writing a review down below. Thanks for listening.