Mr. Roofing - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Carlos Rodriguez of Mr. 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.
Hello, everybody. My name is Alex Tolle with rooferscoffeeshop.com, and I am here for the November Roofer of the Month podcast. I'm here with my good friend, Carlos. Hello, Carlos. How are you?

Carlos Rodriguez: Fantastic, Alex. How about yourselves?

Alex Tolle: I'm good. So happy that we are on this podcast today, that we get to celebrate you. Carlos is with Mr. Roofing in San Francisco, California.

Carlos, just go ahead and introduce yourself. I already did it for you, but introduce yourself. Tell us about your company.

Carlos Rodriguez: Yeah, thank you, Alex. Yeah, so my name is Carlos Rodriguez and I'm the chief enthusiasm officer here at Mr. Roofing. And we are a roofing and solar business here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Alex Tolle: Amazing. I love the changing up the CEO.

Carlos Rodriguez: Yes. Really, that is my responsibility. As the owner and the CEO, my responsibility is the culture of our business. And so at first, I was a little uncomfortable with that, but I decided to roll with it because it just reminds me of my primary role, which is to make sure that we're honoring our mission, vision, values, our core focus, our teammates. And roofing is the best-kept secret, so I have a lot of fun in what we do and I want to make sure my teammates do as well.

Alex Tolle: Amazing. I love that.
What kind of services does your company provide? And what is your specialty?

Carlos Rodriguez: Yeah, so we're licensed by the State of California for roofing, solar installation and we're also licensed electricians.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Carlos Rodriguez: But the core focus of what we do is roofing. Pretty much anything from the roof up, that's what we do.

We've been in business since 1989. My father started our business. And I always tease, I never wanted to have anything to do with it. In the summers, my father would ask me to go and help with the tear-off crews and teach me the value of hard work and really to keep me out of trouble. And he would say, "If you don't do well in school, you're going to have to do this every day." And as a 15-year-old, my frontal lobe wasn't fully developed. I understood it as if it was a bad thing, but as a grown man now, I really think it's the best-kept secret.

I've been in charge since 1998 and been putting in systems, processes, people to help grow our business and take care of our clients and take care of our teammates.

Alex Tolle: Amazing.

Carlos Rodriguez: That's how I got into solar. There would be a mutual client that I would have with another solar company, so if someone would award us the work and then the solar company would just butcher up our nice new roof. In order to protect our clients and our reputation really, because when it would leak, they'd blame us and when we go out there, it turns out it was the solar company that worked on that roof, so what I started doing is collaborating or asking my clients to let us manage that.

And then we just got good at it. We would waterproof it. We would rack it. We would do everything but the electrical. And then I just thought, why don't we do this for ourselves? And so that's how it went about us getting licensed to install solar and be electricians, because I want the roofing industry, I want us to... That's our domain, the roof, so I wanted us to be the primary contractor on that. And that was the driving force around how we got into that.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, and I'm sure as a homeowner, they definitely prefer that they're hiring one company to come in and just take care of everything for them. They don't have to try to coordinate with other contractors and try to get it to all line up. They know they're calling you and you're going to come in and do the whole job and do it right.

Carlos Rodriguez: That's correct. And along with that, not only through the whole design process being the convenience of us doing it all and then being able to have trust and confidence that there was one point of contact if there was a question, a concern or even a compliment. And along with that, we also do everything else from the roof line up, like make proper ventilation, skylights, gutters, anything that is involved with that. And another reason that I decided to get involved in solar is a lot of the skill sets to be installing solar on the roof is already... That's a natural compliment to what my teammates already do, so it was a natural progression for us.

Alex Tolle: That's great. Can you share something special that your company celebrates? Whether that's, you're the chief enthusiastic officer, so I'm sure that you guys celebrate a lot, so whether that's birthdays or anniversaries, what is it that you guys celebrate at Mr. Roofing?

Carlos Rodriguez: Yeah, so I try to focus on celebrating on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, annual basis, as much as we can, again, to make sure there's good energy, a good vibe within our company. On a daily basis, it could just be anything. We're measuring how many appointments we set, how many contracts we were awarded. On a weekly basis, we'll recognize the top performer that helped do that. On a monthly basis, we have a big company meeting and that's where we'll recognize people for their anniversary with our company. Whether it's a year or 20 years, we like to recognize those people within our organization.

And birthdays. Something that we started doing is giving a card and a gift card for our teammates' children's birthday.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Carlos Rodriguez: We just want everyone to feel that we're a part of it and they're a part of us. Something else too, just we all come from different places in the world. I'm from Mexico. English is my second language, so we'll celebrate different religious events that someone might recognize and make sure that people feel included and feel part of our organization and celebrated one way or another. That way, they want to come back and help us and then we can do... Our customers are happier. That's the idea behind all of that. It's about how we make-

Alex Tolle: Yeah, that's so amazing-

Carlos Rodriguez: ... them feel.

Alex Tolle: ... that you're celebrating so many things. I'm sure that your employees, it just probably makes them feel so good, so loved by their employer that they're not just another number. They're really a person and they have all these things going on in their life, and that you recognize that. That's amazing.

Carlos Rodriguez: I hope so. And you know what it does? In different phases of our company where we've had growth spurts and we bring on new teammates, we try to do assessments up front and interviews and try to make sure we get the best people possible within our core values. However, our culture, if they don't like that sort of stuff, it repels those people. The people that have left are just because that vibe wasn't lining up with theirs, and we're okay with that. We want the people that they want to be there with us and enjoy that sort of stuff.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, you got to make sure that you all mesh together well because you're spending all your time together, so you have to make sure that you all get along and have the same values.

Carlos Rodriguez: Ideally, yeah. Exactly. That's the goal.

Alex Tolle: Yeah. At Mr. Roofing, how do you all define superior customer service?

Carlos Rodriguez: I take a lot of pride because we measure in different ways, and then that way our clients can triangulate everything that's out there. I love this era of transparency because you can't hide. And then we don't pay for reviews. We don't do anything like that. We want it to really be organic and genuine, so when someone's considering working with us, awarding us a contract, that it's honest and comprehensive.

But here's what I would say along with that, so there's guild quality. Locally, there's something called Diamond Certified, where they actually do an independent study of our customers. And about 50% of the people that go through that process don't pass. And then you have all the Google, Yelp, all of that stuff. But here's what I would say, Alex, is the best measure of customer service. There's no greater compliment than a client using our service again and awarding us additional work, and/or referring us. I think that's really the ultimate measure of really top-notch customer service. And I'm very proud that a majority, 52% of our business is from referrals or repeat.

Alex Tolle: Wow.

Carlos Rodriguez: It would be more. It used to be more. When we were smaller, it was 75% because we didn't do a whole lot of marketing, but because we do more marketing now, the numbers have changed. But that's still a big component of our business, so I'm very proud of that.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, that's awesome. I think a lot of businesses use that word of mouth as to gauge how well they're doing. If people are referring you, obviously if a friend of mine's going to ask for a contractor and I refer you, they know, well, my friend's not going to give me a shoddy contractor. They're going to make sure that they had a great job, and now they're going to pass that on to me. That's definitely a great way to measure. I love that.

Carlos Rodriguez: Yeah, thank you. And I think what a lot of people do is they do the research for you. They'll get multiple proposals. They'll interview. And once someone did that for you, it does help when it's a warm introduction. And we have a proven process to make sure that our clients are completely satisfied. On Diamond Certified, our customer loyalty is 97%. Some years, 98%. I want it to be 100%. And we're trying. We're trying.

Alex Tolle: Great. Sounds awesome. If I was in the San Francisco area, I know I'd be using you guys when needed.

Carlos Rodriguez: Yes, I would hope so.

Alex Tolle: Why are you an R-Club member? And what are some of your favorite things about Roofers Coffee Shop.

Carlos Rodriguez: Okay. As I said earlier, I believe the roofing industry is the best-kept secret. It's gone from, back in the day, I had a mentor that would say that roofing was the lowest trade on the totem pole and usually the people that ended up in roofing were like a pack of pirates. And we're talking about in the '70s and '80s.

But now, it's really a lot different. We fly drones. We have robotic welders. We have a lot of technology within our business. The clientele is a lot more emotionally intelligent, and so we're drawing a lot of wonderful people into our industry. It's always been that way, but even now more, it's... Like pharmaceuticals. Back in the day, pharmaceuticals was considered snake oil salespeople And now, it's a highly regulated and lab coat type of an industry. And so roofing is taking on that same trajectory.

And what I love about being a Roofers Coffee Shop R-Club member is that you all are helping broadcast what a wonderful industry we are. You're helping our industry, the people within industry, get educated about different aspects within technical, a lot of different things within roofing. And so it's that uplifting, that positive influence that's helping more people see that we're doing good stuff. And that's what I really appreciate the most. I learn. You all put us together, and I learn from other wonderful companies, other manufacturers, vendors. You're all connecting all of us together and just making us better.

Alex Tolle: Good.

Carlos Rodriguez: That's near and dear to my heart because that's what I want for the roofing industry. I want us to get recognized for the good stuff that we do, and how legitimate our businesses are.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, and that's so great to hear that you feel that way about the coffee shop, because obviously that that's our goal, is to bring the industry together to really highlight all the good work, hard work that people are doing and really just shine a light on the roofing industry, so I'm so glad that that's exactly what you're getting out of it.

Carlos Rodriguez: Absolutely. I'm grateful for it, and it's really super exciting. It does something to a lot of us and our self-esteem, my teammates within my company, some of the stickers are look up to roofers and a lot of really good stuff. And we deserve it. It takes a special person to do what my teammates do up on a roof.

Alex Tolle: Definitely.

Carlos Rodriguez: Between the weather, the altitude, all the things. And they're so efficient at doing it, so thank you for being that shining light for all of us.

Alex Tolle: Awesome. Aw, thank you, Carlos.
All right, last but not least, what would your walk-up song be?

Carlos Rodriguez: Wow. Yeah, so I love music. I love music. And there's a lot of them. And I think if I'm... One of my favorite hip-hop artists is Mos Def, and he goes by Yasiin Bey now and one of his songs is UMI Says. And basically, it talks about shining your light on the world to see and enjoying and being present in the moment. And so every time I hear that song, it sets my mind in the right place. It helps me be present. And I think it would be that because I really enjoy the music and the words that it's relaying, so I think that's what it would be.

Alex Tolle: That's awesome.

Carlos Rodriguez: "Shine your light for the world to see." UMI Says.

Alex Tolle: I haven't heard it, so as soon as we're done here, I'm going to go listen to it-

Carlos Rodriguez: Awesome. Absolutely.

Alex Tolle: ... and then I'll really know you on another level.

Carlos Rodriguez: Awesome, yeah. Love it.

Alex Tolle: All right, well, thank you so much, Carlos. We are so excited to honor you as our November 2024 Roofer of the Month. This will come out on the 1st. Happy November, everybody and we will catch you on the next one. Thank you again, Carlos.

Carlos Rodriguez: I appreciate it kindly. Thank you so much.

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.