Meet Michelle Ly Hall – Beacon's Female Roofer of the Year Winner - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Michelle Ly from Hall Roofing and Construction. 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. This is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here today with a winner, the winner of the Beacon Female Roofer of the Year 2023, Michelle Ly. Michelle, welcome to our show.

Michelle Ly: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, I'm so excited. What a great honor. You are pretty amazing. I've been reading all about you, and I'm just like, wow. Wow. So I'm so excited for this podcast. So you can share it with everyone out there. Let's start out with introduction. If you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Hall Roofing.

Michelle Ly: Okay. So my name's Michelle Ly, and I currently work with Erik Hall of Hall Roofing and Construction as his operations manager, and he is my husband. He is really the big dreamer, and I like to say, I like to do the organizing behind the scenes to make sure everything works.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it.

Michelle Ly: In addition to Hall Roofing, we also have a few other businesses that we operate. So in addition to a roofing company, we own and operate a few bars and restaurants here in the local area.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, you're busy.

Michelle Ly: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's amazing. Wow. Well, I would love it if you would share some of your history, even just tell us your life story and then how you got into roofing.

Michelle Ly: Okay. Well, Erik and I actually met, we were licensed insurance adjusters and we were traveling all around the nation. We would travel where there were hailstorms and windstorms, tornadoes and hurricanes, and we would work three weeks on, one week off each month. Sometimes we would work together on those three weeks. Sometimes they did not line up, and sometimes we were sent different locations. I wanted us to get off the road at some point, and he was brave enough to decide that we could do this on the other side as contractors. And so he decided to do that. We are both from this local area. He's from Georgetown, Texas, and I'm from Round Rock, Texas. So we decided to come back home and open Hall Roofing and Construction. We didn't know each other in school. We met at work at Farmers Insurance. So that's how Hall Roofing and Construction started was just us wanting to get off the road and pursue a future family life, which is hard to do on the road.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, exactly. Now, how long has Hall Roofing been in business?

Michelle Ly: It has been 11 years now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow. And there's a family?

Michelle Ly: Yes, we have a daughter, six years old. She's in first grade, so I guess that's truly my full-time job is I do cater to her first.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I like it. As it should be. And you know what, that's what's so great about roofing. I mean, my whole career has been in roofing and I was able to be with my kids, to be able to make that balance. There's just something about the roofing industry that kind of seems to fit with the family.

Michelle Ly: Yes. He could start off early in the day, get the guys going, and I can work through the evenings once I get Reagan on her schoolwork and eating, and I can work through the evenings like that. So we were able to trade off and really cater to each other's needs during the day.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. That's how my husband and I were too. So, kudos to you. Tell us a little bit about the culture of Hall Roofing and really what you've established.

Michelle Ly: So what's unique about our business, and I wouldn't say just our business, but something that we pride ourselves on is since we were both insurance adjusters, we spent a lot of time with storm chasers that were on the road a lot. Some of them can be very aggressive, some of them can be very dismissive to insurance adjusters. And as a woman in the field in a different city all the time, sometimes that was very intimidating, very hard for me to work with. And when you're working 12, 13-hour days, that gets really old really quickly.

So when we started Hall Roofing, we already had connections with insurance adjusters. They were our peers, they were our friends, and we know how not to treat them in order to communicate well. Our roofing company was started based on we want to be a good middleman for insurance companies and homeowners. Homeowners, I mean, nobody reads your policies before you purchase them. They're written in legal terms. And as insurance adjusters, we spent many training sessions, hours reading policy backwards and forwards. So for us, it was important homeowners understood what their insurance covers, and sometimes we're able to support insurance adjusters saying, "Hey, you know what? They're right. Your policy actually doesn't cover that. So let's figure something out there." And then sometimes we're able to help the homeowners and say, "Hey, your policy should actually cover this based on what we're seeing here." So I feel like we were, without being public adjusters, just being able to help interpret some of that language.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think that's so important. As a homeowner, you never read all that like you should. And so to have someone you can trust and who can help explain it, that is so important. And I love to see the culture that you've created around that, really embracing it and helping the homeowners and the insurance companies. I mean, it seems like at some point it should be able to be a win all the way around.

Michelle Ly: Yes. And we've built rapport with insurance companies, not only the ones that we formally worked for, but just because we were always able to communicate with respect and communicate with integrity and always admit, "Hey, you're right. I did not know they had that in their policy, but you're right. Let's just do what we can and make sure it's right for the homeowners, right for you guys to ensure this property." For us, it was always let's make this a win-win for everyone.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I love it. I love it. So let's talk a little bit about the Beacon Female Roofer of the Year. Congratulations.

Michelle Ly: Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You are the winner for 2023. How's that feel? And tell me about the experience.

Michelle Ly: It was overwhelming because I had no idea that there would be over 3,000 submissions.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Michelle Ly: Beacon told me afterwards that they said they went through over 3,000 submissions and narrowed it down to five finalists. And I said, "I just don't envy how you can go through that because every story is different. And some of these women just reading their resume, how in the world did I stand out against all of this talent?"

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Michelle Ly: It was amazing. But when they narrowed it down to five finalists, I felt confident that my village and my community would step in and get me to the finish line.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And they did. I love it. Well, what and who do you credit with your success in business today that has really brought you to this point of winning this award?

Michelle Ly: Well, I would say, I mean, I'd have to point out that without Erik, I would still be in corporate America and climbing the corporate ladder and being successful in that way. But Erik is the risk-taker and the big dreamer and is like, "Hey, we can do this on our own, and there's going to be tough spots." But he was the one that jumped, and I just jumped with him, sometimes unwillingly, sometimes... But it was because of him. He believes in hard work and he believed in the integrity of business and what our word means. If we say something, then that's as good as it being in a written contract.

So I'd have to say the success of our business is really because he can dream big and then proceed with making it happen. But then I would have to say that my work ethic, I have to credit to my parents. My parents are Vietnamese refugees, and they came to America after the war and didn't have money, didn't know English, and they are the essential, they're American dream. And with their hard work my siblings and I were college educated, but they just worked hard. That's just what they did is worked hard. So I feel like my work ethic comes from them.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's cool. That is cool. And really to think about that, sometimes it's so hard to believe what your parents did, right?

Michelle Ly: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Coming to a new country, not knowing the language, and then making such an amazing successful life.

Michelle Ly: Because they did not know English, my brother and I, our first language was Vietnamese. We didn't really learn English until we got to school and was exposed to it daily. We'd pick up some from neighbor kids and things like that. English is our first language now, but growing up it did not start that way. And that has also given me a different view on things like I am able to communicate in now three languages, I can communicate in Spanish as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Michelle Ly: But for me it's just like, okay, I have to really put myself in their shoes. Not only do normal homeowners not understand this policy, but now we're talking about, it's written in English, a language they aren't even confident on. I've picked up a great knowledge of how to deal with patience. I mean, translating things for my parents at a young age, I was always able to like, okay, how do I explain this in terms that would make sense to them? So, that's something I've learned through the years.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And now you're able to apply that to your businesses.

Michelle Ly: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's great. Because that's also with employees too. I'm sure being out of Texas, now that you are trilingual, which I'm just... That is so cool, because I'm always so impressed with that. But you have a beautiful Latino community there that you work with too. So now you're able to communicate on several levels.

Michelle Ly: Yes. As far as communicating to our crews, to our in-house employees, there's just a lot of different languages that we're all speaking the same roofing language. They just may me different words.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. I love it. That's perfect. I mean, you and your husband own the business, so it's a women-owned roofing business. How important do you think it is to recognize and celebrate the women-owned businesses and just women overall in the roofing industry?

Michelle Ly: I have always probably to a fault, have dedicated a lot of time to celebrating women and building confidence. Growing up, because English was not my first language starting out, I was not very confident. I was not a good speaker. I always questioned if my English was correct or if I was pronouncing things correctly. So I would say my confidence level growing up was very, very low. And now, as a business owner, I have worked to help others and understand that I couldn't do this on my own. I did need others to help me and understand that I struggle sometimes, I may fail sometimes, but if we all lift each other up, it's like the rising tide lifts all boats. I'm not just lifting myself up or just you up. But if we're all at a higher level operating with integrity and morals and confidence, then, I mean, just you're building a community that can just support each other.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is so well said. That's exactly how I feel. I mean, and when you think about really the role, I mean the movement of women in the roofing industry over the last couple of decades, we've just seen such a wave of talented, amazing women coming into roofing and being a part of it. And I think it's because of women like you, because of all of us who are, "Come and join us. This is a great industry, let's work together and do this."

Michelle Ly: Yes. I mean, I surround myself, I would like to say with people that can lift me up higher. There's organizations like National Women in Roofing and, I mean, there are women in that group that I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you're so good at marketing. Where did you learn how to do that?" And get tips from them that way. I'm probably a more organized visual person and can probably multitask more than the average person, but I would not say marketing and social media is my strength by any means. So I'm always looking for new ideas, but putting yourself in those positions where you know there's other people that want to do better, really help you, push you to do better as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I agree. I'm a big fan of National Women in Roofing too, so I love it. Okay. So what would you say to other women who are thinking about getting into roofing? Some of the adjusters who you used to work with, or just anyone out there maybe from the restaurants who are interested in getting in roofing, what would you say to them?

Michelle Ly: Well, I mean, I've had people come up to me and say, "I'm interested. What do you think?" I always tell people, it's like, "Well, why do you want to? What brings you to roofing?" And if it's just like, "I want to try something new," I tell people, it's like, "Try it. What's the harm? Try it." A lot of times it is commission based, so I was like, just set your expectations, be realistic. Know what you're walking into. Arm yourself with knowledge.

The downfall with being a woman in roofing is you have to earn homeowners' trust first because they're like, "You're a woman, what are you doing? Do you know what you're doing?" So sometimes I have to put them at ease a little bit with letting them know, "Hey, I'm here. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do a full inspection first. Then I'm going to walk around the house just to see if there are problem areas we need to address." But building their trust that way first. And usually by the time I'm at their dining room table talking about roofing materials and things, I have found that women have a softer touch and can sometimes build that rapport a little bit easier because we sound more trusting with that softer approach.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I was just thinking the same thing, once you get past the impression of you're in roofing. But women, I think are just, there is, there's just a higher trust level. And especially when you're sitting in the kitchen and you're right there, they're like, I trust this person. I don't know, I'm sure, Michelle, you're like this and you've seen it, but it seems like women are more consultative, like they're helping, not just selling.

Michelle Ly: And women that want to get in this industry, I encourage them to come shadow me. I mean, there's the aspect of selling the roof and then there's the aspect of knowing what you're selling. People need to get up on those roofs and see what materials there are, see what problem areas there could possibly be, anticipate what could go wrong. But every single roof I've sold or talked to a homeowner about, I've been on myself.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's cool.

Michelle Ly: That's why I encourage other women. I was like, "Come check it out. I'll show you what I do." And just always have that expectations of it's not an easy job, it's Texas and it's hot, but it pays off. And I'm not in an office all day long. I can be out in the field, I can be in the office, I can talk to people one-on-one, face-to-face.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. It isn't easy, but it is very fulfilling. And you have shown that. I think when you talk about relationships, whether that's with your community or your employees, but there's also this important relationship with your distributors and your manufacturers. And so I really, with Beacon, just really putting this contest out there that I think makes such a difference and has highlighted so many. I mean 5,000, I had no idea there's that many entries. That's so impressive. And you're sitting here, this is so cool. How important is the distributor relationship for your company's success?

Michelle Ly: I mean, I can't even explain how important it is in just simple words, but a great example of how Beacon has been a great distributor for us is in 2020 and 2021, the world shut down for COVID. There are certain parts of the US that even construction had to come to a halt and you couldn't move forward. There were supply issues. And during that year, 2020, a major hailstorm hit our hometown. I mean, we weren't expecting it, but it hit us. I mean, it was all hands on deck. And so our relationship with Beacon and what we've showed them during all the slow time and all the busy time, they were by our side. They were like, "Hey, we know you need to pump these roofs out, so we're going to give you what we can give you and we will figure out..." Temporarily they gave us a higher credit limit just so we can get roofs on. And then once we collect, of course, pay our bills. But they knew that we were operating at a higher expense level because of how busy we got all of a sudden.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: In the middle of COVID?

Michelle Ly: Yes, in the middle of COVID.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Man.

Michelle Ly: So we were trying to figure out how to do inspections. I mean there was FaceTiming with customers, and I mean, our distributor really pulled us out of like, "Hey, we need these colors." Some of the neighborhoods that got hit were limited on what colors they could install in those neighborhoods. So we were telling them, it's like, "We need these colors, what can you do?" But they were by our sides. They stood by us and we gave them the business, but they made sure that our customers were taken care of to the best of their abilities that they had.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great. So what would be some of your advice to other roofing companies or to people who are thinking about starting roofing companies on how to build that relationship with your distributor?

Michelle Ly: I would say, it's look to the long term when people are trying to earn your business, and it doesn't matter what kind of business. But we're in the food industry as well, so there's tons of suppliers that always come with, "Oh, we can offer you a better price." Okay, that is true, and end of the day, we have to operate a business successfully. So pricing is part of it, but you really have to think about the long-term effects and will this person be there for you in 10 years? Will this person be there for you when you're in a bind? Will this person help support you when it's completely slow and you have no business?

So it's just building that trust and not looking at everything in the short term like, "Oh, I can make this much more money if I go with this person." Well, next year will the price go up? If you find something that works and someone that you trust and you build those relationships, they're going to try and take care of you. Yes, prices will continue to go up and fluctuate, but they're still going to give you the best deal and you have to trust that they're going to do that for you. But I mean, my advice is to look in the long term. Don't let short-term goals guide your business because that doesn't take you too far.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is great advice. That is great advice. Well, I just want to say again, congratulations. Now I probably should know this or not, but I believe that there's a ceremony that comes along with it. Have you already had that or is that coming down the road?

Michelle Ly: We did celebrate and we kind of threw it together because since I'm a hometown girl here, we have AAA baseball team here and-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Fun.

Michelle Ly: ... we were able to celebrate with the AAA baseball team and had watched some baseball, and we got to go down on the field and celebrate. The mascot came out and it was just, I mean, we're a mid-size town, but with a small town feel. So it was just nice getting to celebrate with the community that we won this national award, but I wanted to share it with my hometown.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love that. That is so perfect. Well, Michelle, I am just delighted to meet you and I look forward to seeing you at National Women in Roofing Day, hopefully, in February.

Michelle Ly: I'm going to try. IRE is the same month, so we'll see if I can finagle both those trips.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it's all together. National Women in Roofing Day is right before IRE, and I know everybody's going to want to talk to you, so fingers crossed. We'll get a meet there in person, and I know we'll meet sometime maybe when I'm down at the Texas show.

Michelle Ly: Awesome.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We're coming down to that too. I just want to say congratulations. Thank you for being on this podcast and sharing. You're very inspirational.

Michelle Ly: Thank you. I appreciate your time.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, we love it. I just want to thank everyone for listening. Check out the Beacon Female Roofer of the Year winners and runner ups, or the finalists, I should say. And from last year. We are so fortunate we get to interview so many of the finalists and the winners, and so we have a lot of podcasts out there, and you can just really experience how great these women are and what they do for the professionalism of roofing. Michelle, one last time, thank you for being here.

Michelle Ly: Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you all for listening. Be sure to check out all of our podcasts under the read, listen, watch under Roofing Road Trips. Be sure to check out the Beacon Directory because you will find all the finalists and winners, Michelle's information on there along with all the great things they're doing, including the TRI-BUILT Blu Dog. You got to check that out, Top Dog Award. There's all kinds of great things happening right now. On your favorite podcast channel, be sure to subscribe for Roofing Road Trips and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll 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.