Jackson Johns - Young Professionals at WRE - Join the Conversation - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Jackson Johns from National Roofing Company. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro/Outro: 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 Roofers Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth and we are talking about something that I think is totally cool, and that's the next generation. Maybe not just the next generation, but the generation after that too. And we are celebrating young professionals at this year's Western Roofing Expo. So we brought in the young professional expert, Jackson Johns of National Roofing out of New Mexico, and we're going to talk about what's going to happen in Western States. Hello Jackson.

Jackson Johns: Hi, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'm so happy to have you here today.

Jackson Johns: Likewise.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's been a journey to get here. We had a couple technical issues, so I want to say thank you and I'm really excited to talk about this. This is going to be such a great event, but let's start out with introductions. Why don't you, if you can introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your roofing company.

Jackson Johns: My name is Jackson Johns. I am with National Roofing Company out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We're not quite 50 years old, but we're getting close, and we do it all. I'm in commercial residential service, do some waterproofing, full service shop. It's a wild ride every day.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. You know what, roofing right now is a wild ride. Everybody I talk to, very busy.

Jackson Johns: Yeah, never a dull day in this industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And with all of that going on, you also donate your time as a board member for Western States and also the leader along with some of your compatriots of the Young Professionals. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're doing with Western States Roofing Contractors Association and how Young Professionals came about?

Jackson Johns: So the Young Professionals, Young Roofing Professionals, the YRP was I think initially... Every roofing company has this existential threat of where are we going to get new blood? Where are we going to get younger people? How do we get them involved? How do we convince them that they want to be on the rooftop and not in an air-conditioned office? And I think that the committee for a while there was a bit of a group therapy session for the children of board members and then, which not that that's not important, mental health being what it is in this industry... But we suddenly had, I think we hit that critical mass of young roofing with the emphasis on professionals and had that professionalism to be like, "Hey guys, well it's really nice to chat with you. We could just do this at the bar later. Why don't we really try and develop a deliverables and have something that will appeal to people."

And while Western States puts out these amazing technical documents and legal bulletins and all of this business related stuff, those are all tend to be somewhat older media formats for good reason. But we saw this opportunity that we could do a podcast, we could start to do deliverables in a different format, stuff that might be a little more fun and punched up and appeal to people who, the younger generation that work-life balance. Part of the implication of that is we should have fun at work. Work should be, sometimes we should take a minute to tell jokes, have a couple of laughs. And so we started putting out a podcast. It has been a bit of a wild ride since that my two co-hosts, Shane runs a business out of California and Rachel has a prominent role in a supplier. And so we all have very little time, but when we can, we like to get together and discuss industry issues, discuss problems that we're having, interview some people, mostly just provide a good hang.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I've been on your podcast. It's awesome. I've felt very honored to be on that. And I think it's such a great, well, obviously I'm a little prejudice because here we are on a podcast, but I just think it's such a great medium to get your message out, especially to the younger generations. But Gen X, we're listening to podcasts too, so I think it's across the board.

Jackson Johns: And my father, who is a boomer, asks me about these podcast things that he's heard of and you got to point him in the right direction.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You just have to help us find it on our phones. It's the only thing you really have to do.

Jackson Johns: Yeah, my father has a really interesting relationship with technology where he's like, "Do you remember the Motorola Razor? That was the last phone I liked. Can I get one of those?" And I'm like, "Oh boy." And then he was like, "Even that was too complex, bring back the StarTAC."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Where's my BlackBerry?

Jackson Johns: Yeah, even the BlackBerrys, there's too many buttons. Just I need two things, text and call.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Too much. Well, I love it. And one of the things I've seen that has really changed with Young Roofing professional groups is, no disrespect to anyone out there, but it seemed like a lot of them were, it was like a bunch of older people saying, "Oh, this is what you should do." To the next generations. And I love what you all do is you're very much, you let us sit in, you let me sit in, I get to listen to the meetings. But you're running it. It's your initiatives and you're really moving forward. So it becomes very welcoming. It becomes very modern. It makes sense to me from what I see. So in that vein of talking about that, one of the things in the last meetings you created, you wanted to do an event at the Western Roofing Expo.

Jackson Johns: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So talk about why, how it was created, and then let's go into what it is.

Jackson Johns: Well, in addition to wanting to do a deliverable, I don't think we did it last year, but the year before last, we had an open forum class and it had some really interesting conversations. And personally I learned a lot. And it was a gentleman who said that he felt that the rules had, the social rules had changed. And I was like... Well, I didn't take that as gracefully as I really should have. And then Shane was like, "Think about it for a second. From his perspective, they absolutely did." And I was like, "Well, look, dude, it's not like we have a convention where we get all the millennials together to decide on what wokeness means this year." And then I was like, "Actually, this is really useful. And part of it's just like, let's have a conversation." And then we last year tried to have a bit more of a social event, and it's very difficult in Vegas to want to compete with the nonstop party that is Vegas.

And so we decided that this year it'd be significantly more constructive to go back to this round table format and to have... Really invite younger people in to have conversations with them. I happen to have the enormous privilege of getting to run the company. And so my perspective is from that high level executive seat. And I've noticed that there are a lot of questions that I wind up answering again and again, or there's a lot of questions that people have that tend to go unanswered. And then when we figure out the answer and we all have to over the course of the career, we tend to keep that answer a secret. We're embarrassed to say it out loud. And so part of it is like, why don't we just drag that out in the open and say, "All right, here's a place where there's no dumb questions. And if you're... Ask the ones that are going to make us a bit uncomfortable."

Why don't we say the quiet part out loud about how you advance in this industry? What is your boss really looking for? How do you assess talent? How are we assessing talent? How do you assess your own talent? How do you project a career path? Have to have something... Take a moment where we can be vulnerable with each other and honest with each other. And that's what we're hoping to put together. There's a presentation that goes along with it, but it's more guided conversation. And I think the real value is not going to come from us, the presenters, so much as the other audience members getting to share their own experiences and getting to say, "You know what? I had that same problem, but this is how I resolved it." And really starting to build that, I guess, Young Roofing Professionals brain trust in the industry and start to develop a... Giving opportunities for younger people to develop their own networks.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. You have a very clever, you are very clever anyway. You and Rachel and Shane just crack me up and you're always making things fun, but you have a great name for the round table. What is that?

Jackson Johns: It is, Well, I Guess this is Growing Up, which is a reference to the 1990s Blink 182 hit, Dammit. And I guess it's the sheer number of times where stuff happens in your professional life and you eventually just go, "Well, I guess this is growing up. I guess that's what this feels like." As well as it is interesting because I think I just dated myself to all the Gen Z kids there, where now I am the out of touch old guy and they're like, "What's Blink 182?"

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, that, and you run a company, so you're going to have to make up for that probably when you get there.

Jackson Johns: Yeah. Suddenly I'll be like, "Why do I feel like my pants are so high wasted?"

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, I have to tell you, I think it's inspirational. I think it's inspirational that your generational company, that you are running the company and that you can share this with other, whether it's millennials, Gen Zs, or Gen Xers like me. I mean, I think it's really important to have those conversations from different sides of the table. And so it brings a lot, and especially when you think about, you and Shane are with roofing companies, Rachel is with a manufacturer, Malarkey, and then you have all these... I mean, I know Megan and Alex from Roofers Coffee Shop are going to be there. Here they come from... You have some folks from publishing. It seems to me that you're going to have a lot of really unique individuals at this event who are going to be able to talk about career path, about succession, taking over businesses, growing in the businesses. I mean, there's just so much to talk about. It makes me excited on topics. So I'd like you to just talk about that a little bit about that journey during this event of the discussion.

Jackson Johns: Well, it's funny that you mentioned that because I wind up helping people who are not in the roofing industry specifically with similar challenges of how, multi-generational in particular, of working with family is tough and establishing boundaries is hard. And it takes, I would be really, really impressed with anybody who just figured that out without having anybody else share with them some hints and tips and other things to do it. But we're going to talk. The first thing, if you are planning on coming to the show, the first thing we're going to talk about is mistakes that we made. And yeah, I will share a significant one that I made and as painful as it was, I'm proud of it now. But part of that is just you break the ice when you're vulnerable with people. Vulnerability builds trust as well as one of the points I want to get across really early is people who own their mistakes grow. And admitting your mistakes also makes people like you. And you wouldn't think that, but that's it.

And then getting into some of the things that, some uncomfortable admissions about how businesses operate, making some distinctions on hard skills and soft skills, making distinctions on hard power and soft power inside an organization. And trying to help people discover something that I've learned, is that people do their best and generate wealth when they get to focus on what they're best at. And so some of it is actually trying to get people to be like, "All right, what's your superpower? Let's own that. How can we use that and how can you use that?" And that's certainly, I think going to be helpful, as well as admit some of the things that I think we all uncomfortably, we all acknowledge a bit uncomfortably, we just don't necessarily acknowledge it out loud about how businesses operate, how this industry can operate at times.

And a lot of this is sort of general business stuff as opposed to being really specifically roofing related. But I think the roofing industry kind of has more of these challenges than not. I think a large portion of the future owners of roofing companies are like me, they're born into it. And there is a weird thing where I had just started, I'd been working here for three weeks and was like, "How do you not know how to do this incredibly complicated detail?" And I was like, "You do realize that this information's not genetic right? I wasn't born knowing it. Neither was my father."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We have to learn it just like everybody else.

Jackson Johns: Yeah, and so I think I have a tendency towards improvisation. So I think one of the things I'm really looking forward to is I will be surprised where this conversation will go at some point. I'm really, there's no spoilers for legitimate surprise, but part of it is to give people space to develop their own networks, ask some awkward questions and get some hopefully less awkward answers.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think it's brilliant. What you just said, discovering people's superpowers, helping people, because in all honesty, growing up in business, I'm not going to put this just on roofing, although I do see it quite a bit, but through my career growing up that way, I had people who loved to tell me what I couldn't do, a lot. Instead of what I could do and what they saw that I was good at. And so I think having that conversation and having that peer support of other people out there to be like, "Yeah, you're really good at that, but you might want to stay away from that. Sales isn't your thing, or it is whatever it may be."

And I really see this event as being that start, I mean by doing the round table, people will make friends who they can then call and they can text or call, sorry, showing my age. They can text and I think it'll be really good for them. And so that kind of leads me to my next question of, associations are constantly doing membership drives. We need more professionals involved always. So as you're looking at this, as young professionals are listening to this or not so young professionals or roofing professionals are listening to this, why is membership in Western States and particularly getting involved with groups like Young Roofing Professionals, why is it so important for roofing companies? Why is it important for your roofing company?

Jackson Johns: I would say it's important for two reasons. One is that the Western States Roofing Contractors Association in particular has an enormous amount of informational power. It has, due to the quality of its technical bulletins, it has bailed me out in a multimillion dollar lawsuit when I was able to show a technical bulletin that said, no, the roofer did everything correct. So that's another design problem. The concrete moisture migration issue, if anybody has suffered through that particular, there's no polite word to call it. And then so there's the technical side, there's the legal side. I have gotten some fantastic advice from Mr. Cotney who's one of the brightest minds in our industry, and I think everybody should try and be, you should try and be on a first name basis with Trent if you can be.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, he's amazing.

Jackson Johns: Yes, he is. There's that piece of the informational power that that organization brings. And just that end, if they were like, "We're making your dues, we're adding a zero on the end of your dues." I'd be like, "This is still worth it." Then there's the referential power, the social power of knowing people all over. And so during the 21, 22, everybody had material supply issues that we're all trying to work around. So sometimes you'd start picking up materials that you hadn't worked with before, but they were available. I saved myself a lot of money on equipment purchases by finding people through Western States who had already started installing a whole lot more of it than I had who were like, "Oh, no, buy this pump. Not that one." And you're like, "Well, that's good." Because there was about a $20,000 difference there that you just saved me.

So I have found that, and it's really interesting is, all the manufacturers have representatives and as a contractor, and of course I have a contractor Centric Worldview, have representatives, but they are trying to sell you something. The best way, I think, to vet stuff, and the most useful thing I found is to actually go out and talk to another contractor who will tell you, "This is really easy to install or this is not, or this is what you've got to be aware of. This is where you're going to get your foot caught. You may hear to do this, don't. You may not hear to do this, but you really should."

And so having that really broad network and you slowly develop people who have way more experience in certain areas than you'll ever even get the opportunity to develop, because every marketplace is different. So New Mexico does not have a whole lot of steep slope roofing. And so that's one area where I know my own education is not where I would like it to be. But I, fortunately through Western States, I know people who are a whole lot smarter about it than I am, so when I have questions, I can immediately go and be like, "All right, we're going to go find somebody who knows what they're doing here and save me some time, money and headache."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, and I think to your point earlier and to this, what I look at it is that when you have younger people who have just started in their career, they don't always get to network. They don't always get to go to the shows. They don't always get to start building that social circle. And I think it's so critical that they do, because first of all, you're more likely to stay in an industry when you have friends, and you're also going to learn so much. You learn those connections, who to talk to, how to formulate information from your peer groups. And so Jackson, as contractors are listening to this, maybe some business owners who are more boomer or Gen X, why should they be making the commitment, the financial commitment to bring their younger roofing professionals to event like this? And not just the, Well, I Guess this is Growing Up event Roundtable, but also to the trade show overall and getting them involved on the board level. Why is that so important?

Jackson Johns: All organizations are made up of people, and in fact, they're just, you could say that all organizations are just, it's just an information processing algorithm. It's a series of instructions of how you take information from point A to point B, and there's either a product or service that is generated. We just happen to use that information to keep water out of buildings. But it is the quality of people, it is the quality, the people really are the tools that the business uses to get its needs met. And far more than software or any other piece of equipment, it is the quality of people that you have inside your organization is going to determine how successful you are. Either if you have unethical people, you're going to wind up with an unethical organization. If you have incompetent people, you'll wind up with an incompetent organization. And progress demands investment.

If you are not investing in areas that you want to see progress, you just won't. And that's just... I hope I'm not breaking that news to anybody, but it feels silly to say, but if you're anticipating that you're a business owner, and my father had to pass the business down to me, and I'm sure that that was absolutely terrifying for him because he's like, "Yeah, I remember having to yell at you when you were three in the yard throwing rocks at trucks." And yeah, that's true, but I got my head on straight now I think maybe. And so it's mostly these are the investments that you, I think companies have to make in their people in order for them to take that next step. And I think it tends to pay off rapidly. In my own experience, I try and invest a lot in my people.

And sometimes it can be incredibly frustrating because you can have, you invest a lot of time and money in some money and they walk. But at the same time, if we all were investing time and money and energy into people and somebody walked out, the next person may have had the same sort of investment made in them, and they're just a higher quality candidate. And so in much the same sense that a rising tide lifts all boats, you do improve the industry as a whole when you make these investments wherever the person winds up. We all, I think those of us who are on the really high professional end of contractor, the group that we tend to dislike the most is people... It's like, "Two chucks in a truck." And that's the thing that we find the most offensive. And so if you actually went out of your way to try and educate people, you would just be avoiding that problem in the future.

Even if they wind up at your competitor, they're probably going to just want to do something smarter. And speaking personally, I've always found that when I get in it... It's not really fun to compete against people who are worse at something than you. If your kid's playing soccer, it's not much fun to jump on the field with them, knock them all over, score 10 goals and... Just make [inaudible 00:24:32].

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It just doesn't work, yeah.

Jackson Johns: But if you get to play with people who might actually be better than you, you improve and learn a lot. So as your businesses are going to, if you want to move your business and improve it forwards, it starts first and foremost, are you investing in your people? Are you bringing them? And these trade shows, and I have been to a lot of them. I really do think that the Western Roofing Expo is probably, strikes that best balance of fun and professionalism.

The people who are there are there to learn. And as opposed to, I have been to some shows where it's just like, "Guys, this is just a party and I'm not really, it's fun, sure." But I kind of wish that maybe I'd done something a little more productive with my time, where I've never felt that way about the WRE. Every time I have gone to the Western Roofing Expo, I actually have to take the next day off when I get back so that I don't come in and just start being like, "Guys, we're going to change this and this and this. You have a new title. We're building a whole new department." And they actually... You do have to have that day after Western Roofing Expo syndrome to avoid. But that's a good thing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I need to incorporate that. I think my team would really like it if I would take a day off when I get back because I'm always so jazzed and I'm like, "We got to do this. I got all these ideas." Yeah, so I'm right there with you. I totally understand. Okay, so let's just circle back. We know why they should go and how important it is. So let's talk just about the format, because we forgot to mention that there is some, you said it perfect. It's a perfect balance between fun and professionalism and education and everything else. So you guys have added some fun in to the event. So let's talk just... It's going to be on the trade show floor. Maybe just walk people through where it's going to be and what's going to happen. And the fun part.

Jackson Johns: So we're on the trade show floor, so a bit larger because we hope to have a bit different format as opposed to... We're hoping that it is a literal round table and a series of them. So you'll probably spend more time talking to the other people you're sitting with than you will listening to me, I hope. And then we are at the 10:15 slot on Monday, which is the last day of the show. And so everybody will have access. Everybody who's over 21 years of age will have access to a Bloody Mary with their choice of garnishes. We do have some sponsors for this, who we have kindly decided to take those sponsorship dollars and turn them into Bloody Mary's for our participants-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it.

Jackson Johns: So if you like a Bloody Mary and you like some interesting conversation, I think at 10:15 on Monday at the WRE, we'll see you there.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think it's perfect. To me, that's the best. I mean, I can't think of anything better except for maybe being by the pool, but other than that, I think this would be... The conversation really attracts me.

Jackson Johns: We'll try that next year.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Pool?

Jackson Johns: We'll move it from the trade show to the pool. But good note. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, maybe something to think about, although I don't think we want you guys on the trade show floor, so we don't want you to leave. Okay. We talked about the podcast. So real quick, just tell everybody where do they listen, how did they get in tune with this podcast?

Jackson Johns: Our podcast is called The Roof Deck, the Young Roofing Professionals Podcast. I believe there's a podcast of the same name about the Minnesota Twins that I've never bothered to listen to. But yeah, we are The Roof Deck. I know for a fact that we're available on Google Podcasts just because that happens to be my preferred podcasting platform, but I believe we've pushed it out everywhere. We try and do shows as often as we can, but it's a bit difficult. Everybody thinks podcasting is really easy until you discover how not easy it is when the first time you've got that audio editing software up and you're like, 'Yeah, these are lines, I'm sure they mean something."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Talk about superpowers of the next generation. Yeah, we had to learn that same thing. We had to get some really smart people to take on our podcasts and make them sound good and yeah, upload them. There's a lot to it, people have no idea.

Jackson Johns: There's a shocking amount of backend in order to, you want to talk with your friends into a microphone for an hour, and then you discover that it's like, oh no, there's like an hour to two hours of prep time, easy for that. And then there's backend stuff, and then you got to push it out and it takes a whole team to get this going. And of course, we're all kind of volunteers. But we are going through... we should, I think we'll do an episode here shortly that's going to be the preview of the Western Roofing Expo.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, nice.

Jackson Johns: Yeah. I don't think we're going to record anything at this Roundtable event. So if you're not there, you're probably not going to get to enjoy the fruits of our labors. Though we'll probably have some sort of debriefing about the most interesting things that we heard, and we'll leave that deliberately vague to confuse people enough to show up next year.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, hopefully we'll get you on the sound stage afterwards and we can have a little, you can give us a download of how it went.

Jackson Johns: Oh, lovely.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So we'll plan on that, that that'll be great.

Jackson Johns: Awesome.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. How do people sign up for this?

Jackson Johns: If you go to the, westernroofingexpo.com and get signed up. We're One of the events, like I said, we are in the 10:15 slot on Monday, I strongly encourage everybody to go, I've never, there's thousands of people who attend this event every year, I've never heard of anybody who is like, "You know what I got to not do is go to this cool trade show."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Exactly. It's everything. And I want to just second that. I just want to say for everyone out there listening to this, if you're an owner listening to this, not only should you attend, but you should be taking people from your company, from the field, from all generations, from the office. I mean, I'll just another quick plug. There's an awesome Women in Roofing, National Women in Roofing event right before the Young Roofing Professionals. This is the kind of trade show where you should be bringing a number of people from your company because it will pay, the ROI is huge, and I hear that all the time. And so get involved, join and get your young roofing professionals to this event so they can hear what Jackson and all the team have to say, but better yet, make great friends and long-time networking.

Jackson Johns: Exactly.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Exactly. Jackson, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, thank you for what you're doing and to really continuing to make people feel welcomed and part of the roofing industry. It's just so important.

Jackson Johns: Yeah, we are... It's one of my favorite scenes in the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, where Bill Murray explains we're all a pack of strays.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's so true.

Jackson Johns: And that honestly is like this industry's charm for me. Is that, but yeah, come make friends, bring your kids, bring your kids kids at this rate and we'll help them out and help make that transition a little easier for you, I hope

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That'd be great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And I'll see you in Vegas in a month or less or more-

Jackson Johns: Absolutely.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Somewhere in there. And thank you all for listening today. I mean, I'm so excited about this. Please spread the word, let people know this is going on, and if you're happening to listen to this and you're in another part of the country, guess what? Other associations are doing the exact same thing. There are young roofing professionals at FRSA, at Midwest Roofing, at NERCA, NRCA, look to your state association, get the next generation involved. This is what is going to make it happen for all of us in the roofing industry. So please check out all of our podcasts under the read, listen, watch navigation under Roofing Road Trips, or on your favorite podcast channel. Check out. Be sure to subscribe and set the notifications for Roofing Road Trips and also the Roof Deck. Get them both, and we will be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Intro/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.