Mastering the storm season with technological applications - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Julissa Chávez from SRS Distribution and Jessica Chavez from Labor Central. You can read the interview below or watch the Lunch & Learn.

Julissa Chavez: Hello to all of you. Good afternoon. My name is Julissa Chavez, Latino program manager. Today we are in the lunch and learn series with RoofersCoffeeShop. This is a series that was designed to be exclusively in Spanish for our Spanish speaking audience. We have several topics that we are going to deliver in this lunch and learn series. Today we are on the topic of how to be prepared for the storm season. We know that in the industry world right now everybody is super busy, there are a lot of storms that have happened in different places. So today, the beginning of the day, is to talk a little bit about the storm season and how we can take advantage of applications and technology to get more profit and more job opportunities. I want to introduce you to my guest today. My guest is Jessica Chavez, my sister. Jessica is with the Labor Central company and today, for all of you who weren't in Dallas at the International Roofing Expo, who didn't meet us, they were with us, she's helping contractors and subcontractors connect the marketplace with labor and with subcontractors.

So, Jessica, I want to welcome you and give us a brief introduction of where you are located and what you do with Labor Central.

Jessica Chavez: Thank you, Julissa, for having me here. I'm very excited to share more information on this application, which we're very excited to have on the air, Labor Central. Yes, I'm Jessica Chavez and I'm the chief account manager. And well, Labor Central, as we're telling you, is an app designed to be able to help roofing contractors and roofing crews find each other and connect easily, quickly, in one place. So, I'm very excited to share more information with you.

Julissa Chavez: Thank you. And let's dig a little bit more into the Labor Central application. Next, we have three learning topics today or three objectives, and we're going to start with the first one. The first one is how to incorporate technology that exists when there is a storm event and that opportunity to be able to have gains and opportunities to close more jobs. So, today, on the Latino SRS side, I want to talk about our application. I'm going to start with some tools that we offer to people who are our other clients and how that tool can benefit you when it comes to a storm event. To start off, we have our app called RoofHub. I'm going to show you my screen so you can see an opportunity that exists within our app. Our app is totally free. All you have to do is be an SRS customer. Super easy system and process. But anyway, I'm going to jump into the application to show you one of the things that we can offer to help you guys with how to find out where an opportunity fell for your equipment.

I'm going to show you my quick screen and I'm going to show you our RoofHub application.

You see, you have to be a customer with us and when you have that account number, you can automatically have access to our RoofHub application. I'm going to go to Home. This application is available in English and Spanish, but for some reason I can't show it in Spanish, but it's fully available. Today, of all these opportunities that you see at the top of my screen, I'm going to go over one specifically under the weather, which is called weather. If we go to the weather, we have a partnership with Canopyweather, which basically every time a storm event happens, it is documented on the left hand side and we are going to show you here on the left hand side. Here it's going to go through all the storms that have been documented and the size of hail that exists where that storm was. Obviously, when you have this application, you have to keep in mind that the first seven days after the date of that storm is that you have access to receive the map in what area was that storm that was impacted properties.

In this example, for example, we have that on June 7, here you see on the left, storms happened in these different locations.

We are going to focus today on the one that happened in North Dakota, because I see here that this one looks like it was a good one, 1.7 inches of hail. For all of you that work with insurance companies and you need this date of when the storm hit, well here you have it documented and the area. We're going to go to North Dakota to show us the map, the application and I'm going to lower my screen a little bit more so you can see better. Here I am in the North Dakota storm. As you can see here, you have like some areas that were impacted. What I'm going to do is I'm going to make my screen a little bit bigger so you can see a little bit more detail of how our weather function works. Here it's telling me on my map, what hail fell and where specifically the area was impacted the most. Here it tells me that Argosville had a 1.34 hail. If I want to, I can keep zooming in and out until I can see exactly what street the hail hit and where I can send my team to knock on doors around there to have that opportunity to close more businesses, to replace that roof and help the people in that neighborhood that were impacted.

It also has the ability to bring this little monkey down to street level. I don't know if it's going to work here or not, but basically it can show you the house and the streets that were impacted. I guess I'm not going to be able to show you that, but you have that option on our app that's going to show you like the street view. So, as I tell you guys and guys, we're going to say this is June 7. That means until June 14 I have access to see these maps in these areas completely free. If I get to June 15, which is seven days after this date that was documented, then when you click here, CanopyWeather is not going to be free. You're going to have to create an account with them and pay for that map if it goes past seven days. It's a benefit to you that it's completely free. You have to be the SRS client and with this we give you the tools to say in what area you can take advantage of and win the E ther A opportunity, know that there are going to be companies that need labor, if you are a subcontractor, for example, and if you are a company owner, you can know in what area you can send your sales guys so they can look for opportunities there.

With that I will stop showing my screen and get back to you. Now, I know Jessica wants to talk a little bit more about a technology and application that she also has to help you.

Jessica Chavez: Yes, thank you, Julissa. Wow, very interesting. And well, after using your RoofHub app, knowing where the storms are, in which areas, in which houses. In detail we are going to have that information using your application. What are you missing? You're missing the workers, right? The companies already have the work, they have the houses ready where the storm happened. So, what we're going to do is companies can come here to Labor Central to use our app and start looking for the roofing crews, the companies in those areas. Find them and try to connect with them to move the work forward, move forward on their homes, get them out and not stop, not wait. Because yes, the storms come all of a sudden and the work is there, but we don't have the workers. Well, but with Labor Central that's going to stop. Here you can easily come and search and connect between the two and start working. And so I'm going to do the same as you, Julissa, I'm going to show you a little bit how our application also works and step by step I'm going to explain it to you.

Well, look, this is the beginning of the application. When you start, this is what it is going to present.

The first thing we're going to do is here on find a crew. And we have the option to also in Spanish, in submit in the application. I'm going to well, what we're going to do is we're going to go find what we're looking for, which is a roofing company in the area of. We're going to put Texas. And we're going to look we're looking for we're looking for a company that can help us with houses, right? From Shingo. We're going to look, we're going to have results. All these companies are going to be available. If you want more detailed information to search, like they have insurance or in the Let's put in the city we know where the storm hit, right? Or the zip code, the zip code where the storm hit. We're going to have those results Those are the companies that we're going to have and we're going to pick one, right? To see the profile. We're going to see what kind of work they do, how many years of experience, what they have certificates, the pictures of the jobs that they've done.

All the information we need to be able to connect with them. Then, we try to connect with them here. We send them.

Julissa Chavez: A message.

Jessica Chavez: And we tell them the storm just came through in this area. We have a lot of houses available for work. I urgently need a subcontracting company that can help me, get in touch with me at this number quickly. We are going to put this message to them. When we send that message, they're going to get it. They're already going to be ready because they already know that area was affected, right? So, they're going to be excited that, wow, a company is already contacting me so I can be there. I have a job lined up, but I don't have any more. And now I've got work coming to work, I'm going to keep busy. Happy everybody, right? We are going to win the companies and the workers working, the homeowners, their roofs are going to be repaired. That's why it's very important that we all join, join us here in this application of roofing contractors and roofing crews to quickly in emergencies, when they're slow, to move companies forward and keep busy.

Here at Labor Central you're going to find each other, you're going to connect and you're all going to continue to be happy getting the job done.

Julissa Chavez: I love this, Jessica, because you know as a salesperson, I used to be a distribution hour salesperson, I had a lot of companies tell me Julissa, I need this labor, I need a crew to do either TTO or metal, or there's roof specializations. So, I love that here, if you're a crew, you can put all the different types of roofing, that it peels you off, that you're a specialist in that. And it's good, it's an opportunity to put your profile up. Is there a cost, Jessica, if I'm a subcontractor to put my profile up and have people find me?

Jessica Chavez: Well, Julissa, for a subcontractor, for a company that has your group and is looking for work, no, there is no cost, it is free. They just have to come and sign up, create your profile, put all the information of your company that you have, as well as this company, fill it out, have it ready, ready so that when the roofing companies, the contractors are looking for a team, you are already here in the central board, ready for them to connect with you. It's simple, it's free, you don't lose anything, so we're waiting for you.

Julissa Chavez: I love it, Jessica, because that's one thing that you can have national access to, for people to find you, instead of, for example, using Julissa's network to be able to find more job opportunities, because you can have more opportunities as subcontractors for your people. If you are someone who travels, also that you are willing to travel, I can imagine that here you can put in which cities you are available. I can imagine.

Jessica Chavez: Yes, right, Julissa, yes. You can put the states, that you are available to travel. So, the states that you choose, as I can show you here this person. Where are you? Here, he put which states he wants to travel.

Julissa Chavez: It is going to travel, but no. I think it is available to

Jessica Chavez: Yes, they are available to travel to these states. So, whatever job, whatever there is in these states, they are available to travel to these states. But if they want to stay at home, in their area, they can also choose that they don't want to travel and they want to stay in their area, right? And that's where the work is also going to come to them, different opportunities in different companies that are using central labor.

Julissa Chavez: And for example, Jessica, we're talking about the benefit to your contractor in finding more job opportunities. Now, if I own a roofing company and it says I have a job that I got from my aunt who lives in Florida and I need to get a crew to do this work for me as a company owner, what would the cost be to me and what would the process be?

Jessica Chavez: Yeah, you as a company owner would write yourself as a contractor, right? Like, you're going to create your account, you're going to fill out your company information and when you're going to have access to. Here, just like this account. This is where you as a company owner, you can come, like I'm telling you, look for this roofing equipment that you need in Florida, right? You're going to look here in Florida, you're going to need somebody to do shingles around the house and you put the city in and you're going to get the results. You're going to get the results of the companies that are available and that's when I tell you, you can contact up to 15 companies in one time. You send the same message to 15 companies that you are interested in contacting and those 15 people will respond back to you separately. It is not a group. Each one is going to get that message separately. So what do you have? You have all those opportunities to talk to them, to explain the job.

Who is more convenient for you? Who is closer? Who is giving you the best proposition in terms of work, money, right? You are looking at the requirements that each one has.

So, nothing, you don't have to go anywhere else. Here you come, here you find it in your area, the kind of company you need here at the Central Exchange.

Julissa Chavez: And one thing I notice, Jessica, is that they have like ratings, I see like five stars there, which is super important, I imagine that as a group, in my experience in the industry I've had groups tell me Juli, you say they don't want to pay me on the job. This opportunity that you have here of you leaving as a review, if someone hired you and they didn't want to pay you or they looked bad, it can be super important for subcontractors. When it comes to looking for other opportunities, I imagine they can pick and choose who has a good history of being good pay, of doing what they say they're going to say, what to do. Tell us a little bit about the rating that the subcontractor and the owner of the company can have, because I love that feature.

Jessica Chavez: Absolutely, yes, that is very important, very, very important. Because you as a company owner, as a contractor, you can come here and see the rating of what they've given you, right? You don't want to Well, as you say, many people have told you that they don't want to pay me, I've been struggling a lot and that's a problem. But here, if you look at the rating and you will see that there has been no problem, that they have done work together and they have both been very good in terms of the work, in terms of the pay. So, when the contractor, the owner of the company, worked with a roofing team, he can come here and say Oh, I loved this person, he was excellent, he communicated with me, the work was very clean, so I want to give him a five-star rating, so that the other contractors know that this group is very good at working with them. Likewise the subcontractors, the roofing crews, they also have the opportunity to say, No, I struggled a lot with this company, I was there trying to communicate with him for payment, I struggled and struggled to get paid and I am still struggling.

So, I want to come and tell people that with this person it is very difficult to work with this company. So, I want to give him a rating of one star, two stars, because I didn't struggle much. And that way the companies will know who to work with and who not to work with, right? So, that is very important and here we can give them the opportunity to know the rating of each profile of each company and more option and more that you feel at peace to say well, you have had good experiences, I think I feel good to work with this company because of the rating it has. So, it is something very important that they are looking to know and that we can give them.

Julissa Chavez: I love it, Jessica, because obviously as a Latina, I mean, I always want to protect and help my Latino people, so I love that we can offer them the level of protection here before you go to work with someone you don't know, please check out the rating to make sure it's a good opportunity for you, for your team. We both know it's hard to hire people, so you have to keep the people you have as happy as you can. And what better way than if there are new job opportunities for you and your team, that you can have like that reference of knowing okay, this is a good company, I'm not going to put any of my team members at risk, there's not going to be any problems from what I've seen in the reviews, or I love that. Jessica, I love knowing that we have a way to protect our people as Latinas, obviously, knowing that yes I'm going to take a new job opportunity in a new state, with a new company, risk my team, make sure it's a good opportunity for all of us.

I love the ratings, so guys and gals, don't hesitate to use this platform, it's spectacular.

Take advantage of free subcontractor leads to help them find new jobs. Take RoofHub's platform to help them find out where they're going to need labor or if you're a company owner. Likewise, so where you can send your vendors or as a company owner with Jessica, you can also find those labor connections in different markets. Between Labor Central and RoofHub we have applications for you, so take advantage of what's out there on the technology side. Now I'm going to move on to the second objective of today, which is how to grow your subcontractor business using technology as well. With that we've talked about how to find work, right? How to find work. Now we want to talk about how to train your team that you already have. With that I'm going to go to our application again to show you another part that exists that can benefit you. I'm going to roofhub again. And now, if you can see my screen?

Jessica Chavez: Yes, very good, Julissa. Okay, the.

Julissa Chavez: I see very well. Thank you, Jessica. Now, right after the weather, we have the training thing. If I go to training, we have different trainings that are pre-recorded. You can watch it on your own time, but basically, you have here on Exact Me, how to close more opportunities, how to have a history of your company when you're presenting to new opportunities, whether it's sales or new ones that you want to start working with them as a subcontractor, how to knock on doors. There's various content that's here that's totally available, free, that you guys can use if you're a business owner with trainings, they're available here. So take advantage of these trainings that are completely free. The person giving the training is our training contractor. Well, it's not our contractor, it's an SRS employee named John de Rosa and he's our contractor trainer. Basically, what he does, he travels and does different workshops and all the content that he does when he travels and does the trainings are here, guys and girls.

Obviously, the topics are in English, but it's something that if I can grab something new that wasn't there before, for example, here's about the sales pitch, right?

How you can offer financing. Many different topics of marketing, of sales, of financing, totally free and available with this application. We want to talk about how to grow our company, how to grow our knowledge, how to be better prepared with training. This is something that is also available to you for free with just being an SRS customer. And so I just wanted to go over this other value that we have to offer and I'm back on the screen to bring Jessica back and have her talk to us a little bit about how to work with the Labor Central Network as well.

Jessica Chavez: Yes, Julissa, perfect. A lot to offer. The trainings are very important and when you finish going with Julissa and taking that SRS training, you come to Labor Central and you put in your profile that you have that training. You can put on your profile, I completed the SRS training and you put it there so that the companies, the contractors, can know that you've taken that training and you're more prepared, more ready to work. And not only that, also if you took like OSHA Certification, which is the one that you have, that many of you rooftop crews take 10 hours, 30 hours, that's valuable time that you took to take that training, those certifications. So, here you come to your profile, and the more detailed you put that you have certifications, the more companies will want to work with you, the more they will want to contact you. Nrca has the P rocertification for roofing crews, so you can take that training, take that time to open more doors to grow your company.

Contracting companies will not hesitate to try to contact you and try to work with you and give you work, because they will be confident that you already have that experience, that information and you are prepared.

So, very, very, very, very important that you can come with Julissa to SRS to take these trainings. Here come to Labor Central. I can give you more information on how to get here to NRCA for Pro Certification, for Ocean Certification. Lots and lots of training, lots of information that we can share with you. So contact me, contact me at Cochueliza.

Julissa Chavez: And, Jessica, I know you talked a little bit about NRCA. We've talked to you guys and gals today about roofhub, about SRS, about Labor Central, the benefits that the two platforms offer for subcontractor business owners. Now we want to talk about NRCA. For all of you who don't know what NRCA is, it's the National Roofing Contractor Association. It's the National Roofing Contractor Association. It's the one they want to give more of an impact to the Latino market. We know that in this industry there are a lot of Latinos on the roofing side, so one of the things that we are trying to help them is to bring to you the knowledge that there are resources for you guys and gals. If you are with Roofing as a subcontractor, as a company owner, as Jessica said, you have the NRCA in Spanish, you have certifications, you have a lot of benefits, so we cannot leave you out of this topic of importance to you, because I think they bring a lot of benefits and I also want to give you this introduction to get to know them, to visit their website, which is phenomenal.

And thanks to NRCA also for being a partner with us, with RoofersCoffeeShop, with Labor Central, with SRS, because we really want to give them the importance and the knowledge that this association exists and they want Latinos to know about them and how they can help you in your business.

Thank you, Jessica, for passing this along and I just wanted to show you their page. With that, now I'm going to stop showing my screen and I'm going to show you about the Hispanic side of the Roofer's Coffee Shop. Let me look it up right now and in the meantime, for all of you who don't know Rufers Coffee Shop, I wanted to tell you that Roofer's Coffee Shop is the first digital magazine entirely about the roofing industry. And today we want to review them and welcome you to get to know them as well. So let me, I'm going to get my page ready and I'm going to show you my screen right away so you can get to know this digital publication as well, where you can find more information for what you need on their side as well. Here is Rufus Coffee Shop. The industry's 100 percent digital publication. When you go here you can put in your language, which you prefer to see the news. Typically on Saturday mornings I come here, I can see what's new in the news, what's new in training.

Other things you can see is, for example, training classes, help from lawyers, obviously, more about news that's going on in the roofing world.

They also have a section where you can basically follow them and they have a YouTube channel as well. I just wanted to give you the introduction to this digital publication, that this is for them, that we are with you in this lunch and learn. I just wanted to review with you that this is also an opportunity for you to continue to grow your networks, to continue to grow your knowledge of events or opportunities that exist in this roofing industry. And with that we are going to end our lunch and learn, our session series with our call for action. So, on my side I'm going to start first, on my side, if you want to know a little bit more about events that we have, I invite you to sign up for our newsletter. I'm going to show my screen here again so you can see our newsletter in Spanish. If you go to SRS Distribute for Latinos. Com, you can find our newsletter. I'm going to change my language to Spanish. And basically, what it is here, is when we have training, when we have promotions, when we have any type of communications that we have to tell you about the industry or what's going on.

It's great that you guys write to our newsletter in Spanish.

We have two to three events per month, different cities, so if you can't make it to the one we are doing next week, maybe you can attend one we are doing the following month. For me, my call today is just be part of our Spanish newsletter to receive our news. And with that I'm going to stop showing my screen and give you, Jessica, now the opportunity to talk about the call for her.

Jessica Chavez: Thank you, Julissa. I just also wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that for company owners, if you want to sign up with us, the cost is $99 a month, but if you're with S RS, we have a partnership with them that we're going to give you a discount, which is one that would be $89 a month. So, if you want more information, visit us at www. Laborcentral.com. You can contact me directly there on our website, it will give you the opportunity to send me an email. Our number is 682-288-2885. You can contact me there and I can help you sign up, do your profile for free for subcontractors, $99 a month for company owners and anything else, I'm here to help you.

Julissa Chavez: Thank you, Jessica. A pleasure to have you back, sister, and to see you again. To all of you, thank you for your time, for your attention. We have more for you, so don't forget. Check us out, Roofer's Coffee Shop, Spanish lunch and learning session, sponsored by SRS for Latinos. Thank you for your time and, Jessica, thank you for being my guest.

Jessica Chavez: Thank you, Julissa. How nice of you to see us. How nice to be with us. I have a good day. See you later.

Take care of yourself. See you later. Bye.

Julissa Chavez: Bye. Bye. Bye.