Matt Criswell - 100 years of Excellence in Florida - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Matt Criswell of FRSA. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Speaker 1:
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 Ellsworth:
Hello, and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. This is Heidi Ellsworth and I am road tripping across country to Florida today. Virtually, of course, although I will be there in person come this July, and that's what this podcast is all about. I am here today with Matt Criswell, who is the current president of the Florida Roofing and Sheetmetal Association, FRSA, as we all fondly know. And we've asked him to come visit with us today to talk about what's coming up with FRSA for their 100th anniversary of their annual convention. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Criswell:
Thanks, Heidi.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. 100 years.

Matt Criswell:
100 years.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I know, it's crazy. I can't believe it.

Matt Criswell:
A long time.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I know. Well, before we jump into that, let's take a few minutes, and would you please introduce yourself? Tell us about you, your business, your associate ... Everything you're doing with FRSA.

Matt Criswell:
Sure. Well, thanks, Heidi, I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here. This year's going to be a big year for us. Well, my name's Matt Criswell, obviously. I own a company in Orlando called WeatherShield Roofing Group. I'm a third-generation Floridian. We've been in business since 1995, and we focus exclusively on commercial, industrial, and retail roofing. We mainly do re-roofs and roof restoration. A full-service roofing department, service department for repairs. I guess our big focus in the commercial sector is TPO metal, and coatings, and mod bit.

Matt Criswell:
But in 2020, oddly enough, after receiving just 10 years of phone calls from friends and family about people reaching out about their steep slope roofs, their shingle roofs, we decided maybe it would benefit our customers, families, friends, to open up a residential side to answer questions about their homes. But Heidi, for 30 years, almost 30 years in business, we tried to stay away from residential and shingle in every type of publication we did. We started another leg of it called Marathon Roofing and Contracting and we solely are going to just do residential with that. Which I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing, sparked me into getting my building contractors license so I'm studying for the state exam in a couple weeks for that.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Well, congratulations, Matt, that's pretty cool. I know it's scary. Well, not scary, but something maybe even more headachey to get into some of these new areas, but congratulations that's great. And Florida needs it.

Matt Criswell:
Oh, we do.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And they need as many quality, high-performance roofing contractors as possible on the residential and commercial side.

Matt Criswell:
That's right, that's right.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Okay. Well, you are the current president of FRSA. Tell us about that.

Matt Criswell:
All right. So I'm the president-elect coming in this year for the 2022, 2023 season. So every summer we switch over.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's right. Okay.

Matt Criswell:
So Joe Burns, our actual man now, and he'll be giving up that seat in just a couple months to me. It's been great. A lot of people don't know about FRSA and how it works with the executive committee. There's no good ol' boy network there. It's work the floor, roofing, and sheet metal committees, and then they elect you into this executive committee. You work your way up through secretary, treasurer, vice president, president-elect, president. The immediate past president, you're still on the executive committee, you help with decisions. I honestly don't think there's a greater honor. I don't get a single dollar from it. It's a lot of political stuff that goes on. There's no money in it for us. If I could say without being cheesy, passion and compassion. Rough and tough roofers sometimes don't have compassion or passion, but for me, it's the passion. I want to see the industry grow in the right way, and I think anyways that I'm capable of helping sort of guide that.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Well, I've been involved with FRSA for many years, worked with them for a while. I watched the time commitment, the wisdom, the knowledge that goes into being on that executive board and the board overall is just a huge commitment. You, the contractors of Florida are so committed to this and have done such great things for 100 years. It's crazy.

Matt Criswell:
It is. And I'm not that old so I can't go back and tell you from the beginning, but I can tell you this. I've been, obviously, to D.C. for Roofing Day. I've been to Tallahassee. I've sat in front of the DBPR and watched how they work. I've been to IRE, I've seen how other associations have a group of guys, but I don't know any state in the entire country that has it as big, as collective, and as tight as Florida does. And that would be a challenge not to say that we're better than another state, but I would love to see other states have a tighter, more formality association within their roofing because it really can drive other trades and other industries within their state.

Heidi Ellsworth:
The thing is that from what I see, it is one of the most inclusive and welcoming associations also. One of my very first trade shows, in the roofing industry, was at Florida and that was almost 30 years ago. And Lisa Pate, who is the executive director now, was then the trade show manager for FRSA and brought me right in, welcomed me, we've been friends ever since. And that's just really how that association works overall for everybody.

Matt Criswell:
It is. You can wear cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, or you can wear loafers and a tie, and at the end of the day, either talk shop or just talk about ... I mean, we're all here for the same thing. Well, let me rephrase that. Not everybody's here, but a lot of people are here and that are within the association to make a living for their family, to provide a service for the community. And there's so much that's given back. We're not trash guys. We're looked at as roofers, trash guys, bottom of the barrel but that's not what we are, there's a lot more. And I agree, it's open arms. There's no exclusivity to it where they shun people out.

Heidi Ellsworth:
No. It is so welcoming. But I will say that the FRSA has been a leading voice, not just in Florida but in the nation, on the importance of licensing. Talk a little bit about that, Matt, the importance of having roofing contractors licensed, and all the things that FRSA does to help make that happen.

Matt Criswell:
I'm glad you asked about licensing because that's an important staple in the state of Florida. There's not a lot of reciprocity in the state of Florida. When you have an association like ours, and you have the dedicated guys like we have, it's a pretty cool thing to see how other states reference our codes, our tactics, our rules, and regulations.

Matt Criswell:
Even to the international side of it, it makes you believe that we are doing ... We're going in the right direction. We have so many codes, so many regulations, so many rules that spill over into other trades. I personally abide by those or hold those to a really high standard because, in the end, it's what protects our business, it's what protects our industry, and it's what protects the public. You got to have rules and regulations. Yes, they can be bent, and moved, and manipulated, and sometimes they have to be changed, but there's some states no license, no registration, no regulation, two men in a truck go out and put a roof on. They don't get hurricanes but the roof isn't ... It's probably not to the manufacturer specification or to the research and development that has gone behind that roof.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Right. To the building codes.

Matt Criswell:
To the building code.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Building codes. I'm really excited, we're going to be interviewing Joe at the show because RoofersCoffeeShop's going to have a live sound stage there so we'll be bringing those interviews live to everyone over YouTube. Just from the executive board's view, what are some of your top initiatives right now?

Matt Criswell:
Okay. Somebody taught me this a long time ago, never speak for somebody else so I'm going to tell you my initiative. Are you ready?

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yes, yes.

Matt Criswell:
It could open up a Pandora's box but it's something that I've watched happen over the last decade. I'm a roofer, I'm a Republican, I'm a true serial entrepreneur, and at heart, I'm a capitalist. And you put all those together and so I guess it makes me a business owner, it Makes me a roofing business owner. But with that said, what I have might not appeal to everybody in the industry, but we have to have some type of insurance reform or our regulations have to get reorganized. This is a topic that a lot of people tread on lightly, and it may not make people happy, but these door-knocking, flyer flinging, cold calling, hailstorm-seeking roofing guys are killing two industries, big industries, in my opinion.

Matt Criswell:
They're killing the roofing industry and they're killing the insurance industry, and the insurance industry affects everybody. Take roofing out of it, if you live in Florida you have to have insurance, it's just the law. These companies have bastardized the AOB system, they've turned insurance companies inside and out, they've made lawyers rich, which we should never have to have a major plate of lawyers in Florida for roofing. There's no such thing as a free roof. There's no such thing as a free roof. Homeowners need to educate themselves on these rules and regulations that these door knockers are going around and saying, "We'll get you a free roof."

Matt Criswell:
Americans in this great nation, we're being degraded. We're being used to line the pockets of these individuals. They're not all bad folks so don't take it that I'm calling every person that's out there knocking a bad person, I'm not at all. When you sign up for home ownership, which is the American dream of everybody, you've got to sacrifice some things in life. You can't have the home, the car, the expensive clothing, and articles, and items, and extracurricular things on a $50,000 budget, it just doesn't work. And so you've got to save up, you've got to put money back into your investment in your house, you've got to have a rainy day fund, and you've got to plan just like every business has a plan for or, a long-term CapEx, capital expenditure plan. You've got to do that as a homeowner.

Matt Criswell:
20 years ago, the number of claims for wind and hail was so little that the insurance company didn't even put it in a loss class category. It was fire. Then it was water or flood, in a catastrophic loss, which would be a hurricane, a tornado, something like that. They didn't have wind and hail. From 2009 to 2016, which was a better part of a six-year stretch, the wind and hail loss accounted for 37% of claims in America.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow, wow.

Matt Criswell:
Now, this was 2009 to 2016. In 2021, that same statistic has nearly doubled and caused just the insurance industry in Florida alone, just Florida, to lose in excess of $1.6 billion. It's driven home ownership, or homeowners rates up 50, 75%, some people even seeing doubled, if they can get it because we've had nine companies pull out in the last 20 months from the state of Florida.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow, wow.

Matt Criswell:
From the state of Florida alone we've had nine pullouts. It's like are you freaking kidding me? I mean, I'm a roofer, that's what I do. I'm in the hailstorm center when these hail storms come through. I'm here at 6:00 in the morning, shingles getting banged everywhere, but I don't have a single leak in my roof. And it's like at some point in time you got to wonder, of all the shenanigans going on ... It sparked me to create my own initiative. I said, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do whatever I can. I'm going to call the CFO of Florida, Jimmy Patronis, and I'm going to call his office and say, what can I do to help reform the industry?"

Matt Criswell:
I said it earlier. I'm an entrepreneur, true entrepreneur, I don't just own a or two roofing companies. I have holding companies, I have an airplane company. And I'm not tooting my horn, I'm just a serial entrepreneur. I love the act of business. I love owning a business. And I love capitalism. I love money. I mean, who doesn't right? But you've got to do it in a way that's the right way, not the wrong way.

Matt Criswell:
And using unsuspecting homeowners, and insurance loopholes, and defrauding the insurance companies and capitalizing on it, to me, in my mind, if you're in front of me, I'm going to tell you're like a Bernie Madoff or a Jordan Belfort, in my mind. You're taking a situation and manipulating it to benefit you, you're not doing it for the homeowner. If the homeowner doesn't have a leak in that building, or that structure was designed to be changed out every 10 years, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in. Those shingles are made to last 15, 20, 30 years, depending on the environment, and to change them out after every single storm. I mean, we're packing the pounds on in the landfills. We're killing the insurance because a $15,000 roof is now a $35,000 roof because everybody's got to get their cut. You got to have great business sense.

Matt Criswell:
Half of these guys don't even have a license. Don't even have a license. They 1099 all of their sales guys, they used unlicensed crews sometimes, I'm not going to say all the time, they sub all the work out, they have very little overhead. There's 30 or 50 of them right here in Orlando. I mean, that's just the Orlando area. They don't pay into the worker's comp system because they don't have their own employees. Our Class Code's 5551, they're not paying into it which hurts everybody.

Matt Criswell:
And I'll close up with this. It's putting a strain, not only on our industry, roofing industry, but it hurts everybody else as a whole. It hurts the real estate industry when you're trying to sell a home that has a 10-year-old roof on it and you can't get insurance on it, and the homeowner's got to put a roof on it that doesn't need a roof just so they can get the dang thing sold. The cost of insurance is going up. It affects vehicle sales. If you can't afford $300 in insurance a month now, because there's very few insurance companies that'll write it, it's going up. From a citizen's perspective, it's got to stop. There has to be some type of thing. I don't know. This could be another podcast we could talk about.

Heidi Ellsworth:
It could. What I see, and it makes total sense, is this is consistent with the FRSA philosophy for the last 100 years, right. It's all been about licensing, respect, professionalism, ethics.

Matt Criswell:
That's it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
How you go to market. And I mean, just like FRSA has its own self-insured fund, I mean, you have ... In your presidency going forward, really just taking what has been built and continuing it.

Matt Criswell:
Just reforming it, that's all it is. You hit every button on the head. Listen, we're not saying, or I'm not saying ... I should really say it that way. I'm not saying that you're not allowed to go out and put shingles on houses or put flat roofs on businesses, I'm not saying that, and I'm not saying that you have to be a charity and do it for free. If your business practice is built on only doing insurance work, you're not a roofer. In my mind, you're not a roofer. And you're hurting the industry. What you are is you're just collecting the check, passing the trade on to somebody else, and five, 10 years down the road, you won't be in existence. That type of business model is not 100-year business model.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And that 100-year model is really what has gotten you ... Like we talked about at the beginning, so far into being a leading thought leader amongst associations across the country. Let's talk real quick about that convention that's coming up because it's at Daytona Beach, which was where the original-

Matt Criswell:
Where it started.

Heidi Ellsworth:
So tell us about that, that's exciting.

Matt Criswell:
Yes, it's the first time we've been back to Daytona Beach in 100 years. I think it's the first time we've been back. I know it's definitely where we started. We're going back to the beginning. We've got a celebrating the 100 years, everybody's gotten this-

Heidi Ellsworth:
It's beautiful. Beautiful artwork.

Matt Criswell:
It's gorgeous. I mean, just everything depicted about is awesome. 1922 to 2022. But going back to the roots though. We're back this time to do a really long show. We had to cut it down to two and a half days. This one starts on Tuesday, July 19th. We've got all of our sporting events that we've had before. We've got the fishing, we've got the golf, we've got the rifle and pistol shooting. We have our kids program back for the entire time, not just one night now. We're going to have a welcome reception on that night, Tuesday the 19th from 5:30 to 7:00. And then Wednesday, boom starts our seminars, we've got a kickoff luncheon right after the expo floor show opens at 11. Thursday we've got our business lunch and that night we've got our dinner. There's going to be a lot of stuff. Oh, Friday, let me tell you about this. Friday we're doing something called free lunch Friday. Everybody who comes to the expo on Friday gets a free lunch.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Nice.

Matt Criswell:
So we'll be giving out of free lunch to everybody on Friday. Doesn't matter if you're an exhibitor or if you're a show attendee, we're going to give it out. We're at the Ocean Center. We have the whole Ocean Center arena, everything. Not one square inch is not unused of it. There's vendors out in the front hallway. I mean, it's going to be big. But I got to say this. Next year, we're back at the Gaylord.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Oh, love the Gaylord.

Matt Criswell:
We're back at the Gaylord. I haven't heard many people say they don't like it so we're back at the Gaylord next year. We're all under one big roof, no pun intended. There's no pun intended there. I didn't think about that. It's nice because when you talk about 100 years you talk about a legacy, you talk about people that have been in the industry for a long time. And I don't mean this in a mean way so please don't anybody take it this way. But it's nice for our older leaders to all be under one roof so that they can get to and from everything without having to hail a cab or get in a bus or get in a car and drive to another venue or walk really, really far. That's why we like the Gaylord Palms. Families can have a good time there. They don't have to just stick with their mom or their dad or their husbands or wives or aunt and uncles or whatever, they can go and play. A plethora of restaurants to choose from, and if you want to go off-site you can.

Heidi Ellsworth:
To that point. Well, I've been going to the show for 30 years almost so there you go. Is one of the most family-oriented trade shows in the industry. We're working on our stuff right now, right, what's our giveaway because we want it to be kid-friendly? Because we know kids are going to be coming around and they're going to be giving things on the trade show. You just don't see that and the family orientation as much ... Everywhere like you do at the Florida show. Talk a little bit about that because Daytona's going to be awesome. I mean, to have the beach there to such a great atmosphere for families.

Matt Criswell:
Right on the beach. We've got three hotels. So we've got the Hilton completely sold out. We've got the Hard Rock, which I ... The last time I checked there was only three or four rooms left. And then we've got another third hotel, which I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but they're all right on the beach. So you walk out the back you're right on the beach, the world's most famous beach. It is kid-friendly. Joe and Vicky Burn, their daughter grew up in the industry coming to FRSA. You've got the whole Sloan family from Doris all the way down to even the little kids now, they're in there coming. We'll flip around coins at our annual meetings, or our quarterly meetings and Brian's kids are in there and August's kids are in there messing around. It's been a really good thing for families.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I just think it's great. I'm going to say to everybody, it doesn't matter where you live if you want to go to a trade show that has information, multiple ... I mean, a huge show floor, events, information, the Florida show is great. In fact, I always say really the Florida show is really for the whole Southeast. I mean, people come from all over. I mean, people come from all over the country, let's be honest. We're really excited, Matt because we're going to have our live sound stage, which was debuted last year at the Florida show. The first time we ever did a live Coffee Conversations was in Florida. Everything seems to start there. And this year we're going to be having our live Coffee Conversations and video of all the different exhibitors, contractors, association. Everything will be coming live from the show on YouTube. We want to get you on there and talk a little bit more about how the show's going while we're there.

Matt Criswell:
That tickles my fancy, it's right up my alley. I'll I'll definitely do it. Joe has such a plethora of information. You'll enjoy when you discuss the history, all the knowledge that he has, it's incredible. I mean, he could go on for hours and hours so you might have to contain him, but Joe has all that stuff and it's cool, it's really cool.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I love it. I know Joe, I can't wait to interview him and to talk to him about it because it's just ... It is one of the richest associations there is. It's just rich in so many different ways. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Thank you for being on this podcast, and for sharing your views, and where you're going to be going this coming year, and all the excitement around the convention. We so appreciate having you.

Matt Criswell:
Oh, thanks, Heidi, I appreciate it. Anytime I can come on here and help let me know.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Oh, you know I'll ask. I'll bring you back. And thank you all for listening. As always, you can find all the information you want about the Florida Roofing show, that 100-year anniversary on RoofersCoffeeShop on the FRSA directory. We're also going to have stories and articles, these interviews, so you can get all your information. Hotels, right now. Now's the time to register. Go out there and register, get your hotels, get your airfare. I'm telling you, things are booking and they're going fast. Thank you very much for listening today. Be sure to check out all of our podcasts, which are under the RLW navigation on RoofersCoffeeShop.com, or, more likely on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and get notifications because you don't want to miss a single one of these. Matt, thank you again for being here.

Matt Criswell:
Thanks, Heidi, have a good one. Appreciate it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
You too. And thank you all. We'll see you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Speaker 1:
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.