Jolly Roofing - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Trip Swords and Roger Glaude of Jolly Roofing. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to the hottest podcast in the roofing industry. Get ready to meet the stars of the rooftops, the shingle sensations and the gutter gurus. Each month we'll climb up to the top to shine the spotlight on one remarkable roofer who's nailing it. We'll dive deep into their stories, their triumphs and the secrets behind their sky-high success. Don't miss out on these industry insights, incredible tales of resilience and the passion that keeps these roofers at the top of their game. Tune in, subscribe and follow us on this incredible journey as we crown this month's roofer of the month.

Alex Tolle: Hello, I'm Alex Tolle with rooferscoffeeshop.com and I am here for the March Roofer of the Month Podcast. We are so excited to have Jolly Roofing and Contracting here, celebrate them as our March Roofer of the Month. Roger, Trip, how are you guys?

Roger Glaude: Doing good. How are you doing, Alex?

Trip Swords: Doing well.

Alex Tolle: Good.

Trip Swords: Thank you very much.

Alex Tolle: Of course, we're happy to have you here. So I'll go ahead and let you guys start with some introductions, tell me a little bit about your company. Roger, if you want to start?

Roger Glaude: Yes, I'm Roger Glaude. I've been our controller here for the past two years. I actually started out as assistant controller to Trip and have moved up here in the last couple years. So, I handle a lot of our finance with Jolly Roofing and work hand-in-hand with our GMs and making sure that we are staying on track and on budget for our projects and then we have Trip with me.

Trip Swords: Hey, Alex. Again, my name's Trip Swords. I've been with Jolly Roofing now for probably about 25 years. Been a while.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Trip Swords: My current capacity is that as the CFO. Again, that title's been something fairly recent, especially since Roger's come along and taken the reins as the controller, so it's been a fun time here with him, with Roger here with us. Over the past 25 years, we as a company, we've grown quite a bit. We're a large company, but we also started off as a family company.

Trip Swords: So when I first came along in '99, that very first year we did around 2.9, almost $3 million. One of my claim to fames, I guess, during that period of time was the fact that I single-handedly managed the Y2K epidemic and basically got Jolly Roofing through this completely free of any mass destruction of any of our technology and propelled us to where we are today.

Alex Tolle: Amazing.

Trip Swords: Well, yeah and all that's really a complete lie. But yeah, so we've been here for a while. Mr. Jolly who started our company back in 1968, he was one of eight brothers and sisters. Every one of them in one way or another is actually in the roofing business or was.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Trip Swords: He broke away from the family probably around age 17 or 18, basically started his own company and between '68 and '95, he pretty much ran it himself until he brought in son John. In 1995, John got on with his dad and it became Jolly Roofing and Contracting Company and has pretty much grown us to this year. We did well over $100 million, so we've grown quite a bit and we've done really well.

Alex Tolle: Wow. That's amazing. The legacy there of the family and then just all the growth over your time there, it's really incredible.

Trip Swords: Yeah, it's a pretty neat story.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, and I don't know if you mentioned it, but where are you guys based out of?

Trip Swords: We're actually in Collierville, Tennessee, right outside of Memphis. We do have offices though in Nashville, Denver and then also in Houston, Texas, so we have a pretty substantial footprint and it definitely keeps us moving.

Alex Tolle: Awesome.

Roger Glaude: And a side note too. Trip kind of gets the nickname of the Tom Brady of roofing, so I mean, that just tells you how long he's been around and his knowledge of the industry and all that great stuff.

Trip Swords: To clarify, the reason it says that, because you see this large patriot sign behind us.

Alex Tolle: I was going to point it out.

Trip Swords: [inaudible 00:04:04] this is being Roger's office that we're in right now, him being the reference to Tom Brady, but it's been a minute.

Alex Tolle: All right, I love it. Just in time when we're recording this right before the Super Bowl. I know they're not in it, but the NFL references, I love it.

Alex Tolle: Okay, so at Jolly Roofing, what are some of your services that you provide? What's your specialty?

Roger Glaude: So, we provide commercial work in the industrial sector. So we do a bunch of big boxes that we call it, so we have several large commercial crews throughout the country. We also provide service work, so we do a lot of repairs, maintenance work throughout the entire country in different market segments.

Roger Glaude: Also with that, we have a Roof Secure Program that is from the ground up lets GCs and building owners manage their roofs and do these inspections yearly, so that way they can stay in front of the surprise costs that might come about. So, it's really the Roof Secure is kind of like the start to finish. At Roof Secure, we inspect the roof, then the roof, if it doesn't look right, then it's in the report and we can have the re-roof or the maintenance work done. So, we try to see the life cycle of the roof through with our Roof Secure, add anything.

Trip Swords: Yeah, and we used to do residential, we haven't done that for quite some time. About the time we got out of it, we really went all-in on the maintenance side. If Tabi, Tabi Jolly Agaoglu, who's one of our officers, she's actually a granddaughter of Mr. Jolly who started the company. She's not here with us, but her team single-handedly, really with the maintenance department, just caused a huge expansion. I mean, she pretty much spearheaded that up herself, so we're going to give her a little bit of props.

Trip Swords: Even though she isn't here right now, which makes it a little bit easier to do, we just want to say her team and their push to grow it has really expanded us well over 40 states, have us doing a lot of work in a lot of different places. So it's been very successful, so it's been a big plus.

Alex Tolle: Amazing. With those commercial and industrial roofs, those maintenance programs are so important, because that's such a huge investment for the building owner and having a good maintenance program in place is just peace of mind for that owner.

Roger Glaude: Well, and people don't think about the roof until there's a leak, right?

Alex Tolle: Yeah.

Roger Glaude: So being able to provide stuff to get out in front of that, because we'll go out and we'll fix some leaks and then we'll get some calls back like, "Hey guys, you guys didn't fix our leaks." It's like, "Well, we did. Just the roof's in such bad condition, there's other additional leaks." So, being able to provide that to our customers is invaluable really.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, absolutely. So, can you guys share something special that your company celebrates?

Trip Swords: I mean, there's a few things. I wish I could say that there's one big thing, but I think there's a lot. I mean, we're very fortunate. A lot of people that we have ... now granted, I have been here for 25 years. Again, it's been a while. The amount of people that are here in this even we'll say the office side of it right now that actually work with myself and Roger, a lot of the ladies here, I mean, they've been here 15 years, 14 years, 16 years, two that have been over 10 years.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Trip Swords: I mean, we're very fortunate that a lot of people, they've really bought in to the vision that John and Mr. Jolly Sr. had shared with everyone just decades ago. That's not really just the people in the office either. I mean, we have people in the field right now that have been with us back when they were 18 and 19 and these guys, they're in their mid-40s. They've stayed with us, they've helped grow, they've served in all different types of capacity. I mean, it's been a big, big plus for us.

Trip Swords: The buy-in part of that I think also is the relationship. Much like what Roger said a moment ago with roofing, it's to understand that partnership. Not just with the general contractor if you're on a large commercial project, but we also want to have that relationship with the owner. If we're working straight with the owner, I mean, sometimes there's going to be other fields out there as well that you have to have those relationships with to truly be successful.

Trip Swords: I mean, any roofer out there probably knows, what Roger's saying, if you're in a building and water's dripping, it must be the roofer. It just seems more times than not it has nothing to do with the fact that it could be an HVAC unit, it has nothing to fact somebody left the window open. I mean, I remember calls where on the first floor of a five-story building, it's leaking on the bottom floor, it must be the roofer. Now, had nothing to do with the fact the window was left open on the second floor.

Trip Swords: These are the things we run into, but by having those relationships with the building owners, with the general contractors, you can have those conversations, because those relationships are invaluable. It just makes everybody's job so much easier. The one thing we preach to all of our folks here is anytime you can speak with someone outside of your direct organization, it's an opportunity to basically improve on a relationship, to improve on knowledge, to improve on mutual understanding. So, those things have to be embraced and just become a part of your culture.

Roger Glaude: I just want to piggyback on that as someone that's only been here for two years is that's one of the things I really loved about this place is the people and the longevity that people have been here, because it's just incredible how long some of these people have been here. I know one of our guys, he's our superintendent here in Memphis, some of the stories he has starting back in '95 or '96 like hauling shingles with John Jolly on job sites and now he's one of our superintendents here in Memphis.

Roger Glaude: John's best friend Greg, who is our COO out of Memphis and how that relationship is there and what Greg's been able to do to help grow this company is the people that we have are just exceptional. I know probably a lot of places can say that, but I think I truly mean that we just have great people that care and care about one another, I really do.

Trip Swords: Yeah.

Alex Tolle: That's so important too. Going to your job every day knowing that you like the people that you work with, that the company you work for is taking care of you, you actually enjoy going to work every day, that's so important. The people are one of the most important parts of a job and a company.

Roger Glaude: Yeah, I agree.

Alex Tolle: So, how do you all at Jolly Roofing define superior customer service?

Roger Glaude: I'm taking a little playbook off of Tabi, so shout out to her, 'cause I'm reading her statement here. But this is what we think is superior customer service, and that is listening to the specific needs of our customers and tailoring our services to match. Our sales administration field and leadership teams are all committed to being as flexible as possible so that each customer's needs are met from start to finish.

Roger Glaude: I think that she put it very well there, that that's making sure that the customer comes first. I think we can all agree that that's what it comes down to is the customer comes first. Even if you may be right and they may be wrong, I think the customer still takes the lead on that.

Trip Swords: Yeah, and one of the things too talking about tailoring your needs. One of the things that when John Jr. decided to really go all-in for the service industry. A lot of this is around 2009, 2010, there was a lot of things going on in the economy, we decided to back away a little bit from the residential side and we started going all-in with maintenance.

Trip Swords: So, when we did ... it used to be back in the day, it's like when you go back and you do a repair for somebody, you had pretty much one invoice worded one certain way that pretty much went out to all your customers. We started looking up and it was like if we wanted to do work for different people, we needed to realize we had to customize whenever we could, however we could to accommodate their needs to make it very easy to do work with Jolly Roofing.

Trip Swords: So I mean, there was times when all of a sudden as we're going through these growth spurts, you look up and I mean, it's almost like there's nine different formats of invoices that we could use to make sure we made it easier on our customer. There were certain customers you could not use man-hours, you had to use the word labor. Other customers, it's like you had different rates, we had to negotiate these.

Trip Swords: The way that that department grew under Tabi's leadership and John's leadership to become what it has become today, I mean, it's amazing. The biggest part of that is is always being able to put the customer first. There's so many times ... it is so hard to suck it up sometimes and be like, all right. There's a fine line between being a floor mat and doing what you can to make your customer happy.

Trip Swords: I think if you really make sure that they do understand the importance of the partnership, you do what you can and making them happy and investing, I guess you would say, in their emotional bank account when it comes to the things you're doing for them, the things they're doing for you, it makes the customer service just a whole lot easier. I think there's a lot of people out there that would basically say one of the main reasons they continue to do work for us is because ... or that led us to work for them, I guess, would be the fact that we just try to make it easy.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, and I think that's important too to remember that everybody's a little different and whether it's their roof that's different, their business, them as a person and to be able to customize your service to them to fit their needs and just who they are is really important. I mean, and it works out in the long run, because they're going to come back to you, 'cause they're going to remember that great customer service experience that they had with you and they're going to recommend you to all their friends and all their people in their industry and-

Trip Swords: Absolutely.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, I love it.

Roger Glaude: Yeah.

Alex Tolle: So, why should general contractors and building owners work with Jolly Roofing?

Trip Swords: I mean, well, I think we've kind of worn out that whole customer service thing and the relationship thing and our people thing. I mean, probably one of the other things, I mean, we ... again, I can't say enough, I've been here a while and you see a lot of things start to happen. As we've grown as a company, we probably had 35, 40 people, well to over 200 now. One of the things that came very apparent early on is things change as you grow, and one of the things for us that changed significantly was and it was more so out of necessity, but was safety.

Trip Swords: I mean, if you're looking at Jolly Roofing and you love the fact the customer service is there, the relationship is there, you look at certain things from a safety standpoint and what we've been able to do historically, I mean, safety is crucial for us. I mean, it's one of those things to where it's our responsibility, whether it be management from the highest level to middle management, to if you've got a new guy working with you for the first day is make sure everybody gets back home to their family.

Alex Tolle: Absolutely.

Trip Swords: I can say, unfortunately, I've been a part of one of those visits to where you're letting someone know that's not the case and I'll tell you, it changes you. It's one of those things to where us as a company and when something like that happens, I mean, it does, it changes you. It's one of those things that becomes at the forefront of what we hold near and dear is the fact that this is a family. We started off here, I mean, truly as a family, the Jolly family and it has definitely grown and we like to treat it as such. So, our commitment to safety probably from the standpoint of just all the guys here and the ladies here is we want everybody to get homes safe.

Trip Swords: For instance, our EMR rates say that. I mean, historically we have been a very, very safe company and it used to be all you worried about was making sure everybody got off the roof okay. Now it's like with the advent of phones and everything else, you're trying to make sure people drive okay.

Alex Tolle: Yeah.

Trip Swords: So just like every other company out there, our big focus now is in the automobile industry is making sure that everybody driving our trucks is being safe every day and we're doing what we can to make sure that happens and all of our folks get home.

Roger Glaude: I would like to also add onto that, that along with our exceptional EMR rate is the commitment from John and Greg and those guys in investing in people to make sure we are safe. We have a safety director, we have a fleet manager, making sure that these things are important. A top-down approach, since it's important to them, it's important to everyone else in the organization, so I think that's very important.

Trip Swords: It is. Kind of just briefly when you said that too, whether it be the outfitting of every single vehicle with the cameras, making sure that we're able to ... we're not all about ... this isn't the deep state, we're not looking to really spy on people, but it's just as much for us as it is the people out there is make sure that we're doing what we should be doing and we're backing up what we say we're all about. You can't [inaudible 00:17:37] and talk about safety all day long, yet not practice it on a daily basis, so that kind of stuff is crucial.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, and it's like you said, just making sure everybody gets home every day to their families. Of course the job is important, of course you want to be efficient with your work, but you want to make sure that these people who you value on your team, your family are getting home every day and able to come back the next day and they're excited to work and not scared and they know that you guys are taking care of them.

Roger Glaude: Absolutely.

Trip Swords: Absolutely, yeah.

Alex Tolle: So, we all met you guys at Converge last year. You guys did an interview with Heidi, so that's kind of where our relationship started, but why are you an R-Club member and what are some of your favorite things about RoofersCoffeeShop?

Roger Glaude: So yeah, so I ran into Heidi at the Converge and she asked me to sit down and talk to her and I did and I thought it was fantastic. I talked to Trip about it and he was like, "Yeah, let's be a part of that," and so we have been. I use it a lot for ... I listen to all the podcasts that are on there, I go on there and I look at all the different webinars. I try to make as many of the monthly coffee breaks as I can, but sometimes work gets in the middle of that.

Roger Glaude: But just all the resources that are on the website. I mean, if you're trying to look in the roofing industry, sometimes it's hard to find some niche type things, but the website and being a part of the RoofersCoffeeShop has definitely allowed us to be able to find some resources that we could not have found otherwise.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, amazing. We're so glad to have you in the R-Club and be able to provide those resources for you, and have you be a part of that R-Club community.

Alex Tolle: Okay, so lastly, probably my favorite question, what would your walk-up song be? Trip, we'll start with you.

Trip Swords: Oh, wow. Okay, Tabi was here and if she was here, she was going to throw in her idea of, I think it's DJ Khaled was going to say, All I Do Is Win. That was going to be-

Alex Tolle: Yep.

Trip Swords: ... from which I love it. I don't know any of the words other than the chorus, that's about it. Again too, I'm a little bit older, so as I've gotten older, I guess some of the music I listen to is. My wife has lately been keeping me on this very strict diet. I think my favorite song right now would be Cheeseburger in Paradise by Jimmy Buffett, because that's all I think about now. She's made me watch what I eat and I'll tell you, it's been tough. So cheeseburgers, man, anytime I get a chance and having it in paradise, absolutely.

Alex Tolle: All right, so I know where to find you when you're in The Bahamas.

Trip Swords: Sweet.

Roger Glaude: Yep.

Alex Tolle: All right, and Roger, how about you?

Roger Glaude: So in college I played baseball, so I had a walk out song that I used every year and the reason I used it is because it had this relaxing type feel to it. I know a lot of people use the hip hop and the rap, but this song, it soothed me a little bit and it's Your Love by The Outfield. It's a nice little classic 1980s rock song, but it's just I really like that song, Your Love by The Outfield and so it calms me out a little bit.

Trip Swords: If we actually had a piano here, he could probably bust out a couple of notes, so this kid's multi-talented.

Roger Glaude: Probably could, probably could.

Alex Tolle: I love it. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me today. We are so excited to celebrate you as our March Roofer of the Month.

Outro: That's a wrap on this month's episode of Roofer of the Month. Thanks for joining us on this journey, we'll catch you next time for more rooftop celebrations. Make sure to subscribe and follow the rooferscoffeeshop.com podcast page for more, and go to rooferscoffeeshop.com or askaroofer.com for more information.