People Make Roofing -John Kiesel - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with John Kiesel of Division 7 Roofing. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Welcome to People Make Roofing a call to action led by McCormack Partners and Roofers Coffee Shop. We're tackling the industry's biggest challenges from outdated misconceptions to the widening skills gap. Our mission, to show the next generation the true potential of roofing, including the diverse opportunities, endless growth possibilities and a chance to make a lasting impact. Join us as we share unfiltered stories from industry professionals across North America, inspiring and guiding the future of roofing. This is People Make Roofing.

Luke McCormack: Hello everybody, this is People Make Roofing. I am Luke McCormack, CEO of Roofing Talent America.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And I am Heidi Ellsworth, president of Roofers Coffee Shop and we are so excited to be here for People Makes Roofing. We have a special guest today, John Keisel. Welcome, John.

John Kiesel: Hello Luke, hello Heidi. It's nice to join you folks on this conversation, I think it's going to be exciting and I'm looking forward to participating.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: John, can you introduce yourself real quick? Just tell us a little bit about your company.

John Kiesel: John Keisel, I'm president of Division 7 Roofing in Columbus Ohio focused only on single ply commercial and industrial roofing systems.

Luke McCormack: Well, John, thank you for joining us. I've been excited to get you on the campaign because we both joined the Roofing Alliance at the same time. I seen you coming in and before you know what? You weren't even in the room then you came in the room, you won Innovator of the Year, you're expanding into new divisions, you've got a new office coming up. We've been very happy to support your expansion through recruitment.

And John, when I started this campaign back in 2021, I'd come into the roofing industry and what I seen sort of dumbfounded to me that the type of progression that exists, the people that can literally start at the bottom and build a multi-million pound successful business. And when I met you and seen you as someone who's done that, Heidi and I were like, "We need to get John on the campaign." And for everyone listening, that is the purpose of People Make Roofing. It's to move the conversation away from these outdated stigmas that roofing is outdated, there's no career prospects, there's no money to get made in it, there's no career path. As on the call, we know that's the case and the purpose of this is to shine a light on people like you, John, who started for the bottom and got to the top through the roofing industry.

So we are hoping to share this with school leavers, college leavers, university leavers, career guidance counselors, parents, basically anyone that will influence where the younger generation will go next. But not just that, professionals from the wider construction industry or other markets that might want to change your career and to show them that there's so much to give them in roofing.

So yeah, John's so excited to get into this and thank you for joining us. So question number one, a lot of people they fell into it, they followed their father, but tell us your story, John, what inspired you to pursue a career in roofing?

John Kiesel: Well, I've put some thought to this and knowing that I'm going to be a part of this conversation with you and trying to construct or reconstruct why I ended up in the roofing industry took me back to when I was a young boy actually. And kind of part of what you were saying, I was exposed to roofing through my father and my uncle that were doing commercial roofing in Pittsburgh where I had grown up and so I knew roofing existed and like a young boy, you look up to your father and your uncle and your role models and wow, this roofing thing's really, really kind of interesting to me as an eight, nine, ten-year-old fellow trying to grow into something.

And it brought me to this point where I had to realize when I was younger that people were being labeled as a natural at sports. You played sports, got involved with sports, I was never a natural at sports. The kids that were really, really great, "Wow, he's a natural." I wasn't a natural, I was okay. And then you go to school and then you hear things like, "These kids are gifted, they're going to the gifted programs." I did okay in school, I was never labeled gifted. But those labels that get put on people when you're young I think was something that... I wanted to try to find something where somebody said, "You're a natural at this, you're gifted at this. You have something that other children don't think to demonstrate."

And that came to me through I guess my quest to build things and vision and be able to see how things can be created and built with hammers and nails and different types of tools. So my grandfather used to bring home pieces of wood and nails and I would just sit on the back patio and I would hammer away. I'd get my grandfather's hammer and I'd build things, maybe it's a plane, maybe it's a sword or wherever I could construct easily enough by putting some pieces of wood together. So, that's when I started to realize working with a hammer was my thing and working with tools, it just excited me. And my uncle and father, they were at my grandparents' house building them a shed and I remember this memory and it really kind of impacted me because they're constructing this shed, I'm banging around with my grandfather's hammer and I get myself involved to help hand things to these guys and looking at their tool belts filled with these professional gray tools. Nothing like my grandfather's little wooden hammer, but big tools and chalk lines and dust powder flying around like, this is super exciting.

So, they're to a point where they're putting this roof on this shed, they take a break, I get myself up on this roof, grab my grandfather's hammer and I start hammering these shingles onto this shed. They come back like, "John, how did you do this? You actually installed these shingles the right way, the way they're laid out, the bond lines are straight and how'd you know how to do this?" Well, I didn't have an answer, I just knew that I could see roofs, I could see the patterns in the roofs and I just went to town doing it and completed this roof. And their response was like a teacher or a coach telling another child or another person participating, you're natural or you're gifted. So that was really the fuel to my career right there.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: How old were you, John, when you did that?

John Kiesel: I'm going to go back to maybe it was around nine or 10 years old and today you might think like, "Oh my gosh, where's children's services? What were you [inaudible 00:07:11] climbing and going up on a shed roof?" Well, at nine or 10 back in the '80s, we're scaling 40-foot trees, we're running around jumping people with our bikes. I mean, they were devils, you know? So we wouldn't want to call children's services on my parents for letting me up on a roof 40 years later, however long it's been. But I was a young kid and just made my way up there, it was nothing to me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that is so cool.

Luke McCormack: That is amazing, John. And I think that even myself as a young kid I was always outdoors, I was interested in how things were put together. There was a show, How It's Made and I used to always watch it and see how things were put together, I never really had the avenue to pursue that. And because of your mum and dad, they've been able to show you that this can come into a real career and obviously you've built something amazing here. So hopefully from young kids that are watching this and they think, "Well, I don't know anyone in roofing." You just shared an example that if you've got that desire and you know that that's the thing that you like to do, that it doesn't need to end there it can go a lot further.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I am really curious too because I mean, that's a very young age to really... And I always love it when kids kind of go, "Okay, I know and this is what I love doing." And the parents encourage that, encourage what you're doing, I know I've been through that with my kids. But I would love to hear a little bit about your next steps after high school, how did you continue to get into roofing and what was really rewarding about that?

John Kiesel: Yeah, I mean into these memories still at a young age of being at Sunday dinners at grandma's house every Sunday was mandatory, you had to have dinner at grandma's house. My uncle, my dad would be there, my mom, if we weren't there, we had big problems, right? She made the food and you're going to eat it and you're going to be there and we all knew we were going to be there, and Sunday dinners were all these filled with roofing stories. My dad, my uncle, guys on the cruise names like Pig and Slick and these guys were just kind of superheroes to me, they were bigger than life. The stories I heard about these guys just intrigued me and how crazy people can be and act, and the fun atmosphere that roofing sounded like it was to me.

But going through high school and going to building trades and not pursuing a real high-level academic career, it was more like, let me get into the building trades programs, let me expand on what I think that I'm good at naturally and not push the envelope when it comes to things I wasn't really excited about. So when I graduated high school, I had a choice of maybe the military, maybe college or maybe I joined the roofing industry with my father and uncle and that's what I chose.

Being able to go out and buy my own professional tool belt, my own professional hammers and show up to work that first day and thinking everybody's going to be, "Wow, John's here. Wow, look at all of his great tools and he's going to help us really do some great things." To meeting the Pig and the Slick, these guys I heard about on Sunday dinners to have them tell me, "Put your tools down, forget about those for quite some time because first you're going to prove you're tough. You're about to do tough work and through this tough work and proving yourself, you might get a chance to pick up a tool and actually do something, but not until you prove yourself." And I was tough and I did put the time into doing all the manual labor stuff and kept my tool belt sitting there nice and shiny. Mostly they used my tools and when I wasn't looking, that was kind [inaudible 00:11:11], their stuff was beat up but could possibly used my new tools.

But it took a couple of years to get myself actually, I guess adopted into the crew, you have to prove yourself. So once I got that chance, it was like "Okay, now I can start showing you that I'm smart too." Because until you prove yourself, they didn't care how smart you are or what you had to offer intelligence wise until you prove.

So once I started to be able to vision and see how roofing comes together and see holes where things weren't working properly, I quickly made it to right-hand man position, right along these guys doing the build-up roof and the tough work in Pittsburgh. So I got my roofing card and tools were all mine, I just love to create things and see things that they couldn't see even though they were 40 year veterans in the industry. So that's really where it started to take off for me.

Luke McCormack: I'm really intrigued, we've been shown that nine-year-old John with that desire with building swords to getting your equipment and your tools and then actually proving yourself and moving up. So I'm really keen to hear, how did you go from that stage to get to where you are now?

John Kiesel: So through some different life events, moved from Pittsburgh, ended up in Columbus Ohio, had maybe eight, nine years of commercial roofing experience at that point in time. It happenestance to run into a fellow that worked for Division 7 Roofing, my superintendent currently today, Craig McGinnis and I saw some roofing plaques on his wall we came over for lunch with a family type event, my family knew his family and saw these roofing plaques on his wall I was like, "Hey Craig, so you're a commercial roofer?" He was like, "Yeah." I know I'd be roofing now and I go, "I'm looking for an opportunity here in Columbus." And he said, "Well, come on, I'll get you on at Division 7." So he got me on at Division 7 as his right-hand man doing work.

And there's some bumps, and turns and twists, but to keep the story kind of on a track, continued to be a right-hand man got an opportunity to be a foreman and started running projects. And I'm down in Columbus Ohio on this small little roof, my next project was going to be this pretty simple warehouse project and that's where I was going to take my crew and we were going to go do this next but the owner of the company, of Division 7, George Reiss came out and we're standing on this little low roof downtown Columbus and he says, "Hey John, your next project's." And he points is right in front of us, this 36 story high rise roof building. "That's your next job."

I'm like, "Okay, I've never high rised before." And he said, "Well, we've never roofed a high rise either, but you're the guy for the job. So let's do this thing, here's the estimate, here's the scope of work, it's yours. Figure it out. Just do whatever you need to do. We haven't figured it out, but we got the money to do the job so do whatever you need to do." So I figured out how to facilitate this high rise roof, tearing it off, putting it back on, night crew tear off, day crew install using elevator systems and a bunch of elaborate processes to get this roof off and on above the Ohio Department of Health that were moving in October 1st.

So I literally spent between the night shift and the day shift on most days during the week, sleeping in the elevator control room.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

John Kiesel: So I had to do this. I mean, it was when I had a new child that was born working as an hourly person and it was go time, I just saw the opportunity and seized it and I didn't have a guarantee. Nobody said, "If you do this, you're going to get promoted." I just did it. The owner of the company, George Reiss, again, he came out to the roof looking down on Columbus, now we're up high now looking down to where I kind of was when I was looking up back to that roofing shed experience he's like, "John, I don't know how you did this, this is amazing and we're done completely on time. We crushed it from estimate, this is amazing." Just like the shed with my uncle and my father.

And he says, "John, I want you to teach the other foreman in the company how to roof like you." This is a salary position I said, "Speak no more." Whatever it is I'm doing that thing you know to go from hourly of watching whether to guaranteed money, I'm going to do whatever that is. Let's just do that. So then I worked with the foreman [inaudible 00:16:34], the tool belt that I wore still was applicable to my position as superintendent, running around, meeting with the crews, showing them how to get it done faster, "I'll get my tools, I'll show you, I'll demonstrate we'll do these things." Then started to evolve our operations into a pretty high performing, overseeing process.

So again, George seeing the success in that he says, "John, I want you to be the general manager. Administratively, I want you to oversee the service department that needed to be grown. I need you to oversee a HR department." I need you to start overseeing these other entities of the process that I wasn't familiar with. But again, I'm going to figure it out and I have the vision to see the processes of what needs to be done. And there was a point in time when I'm being promoted into these management positions on the white collar side of the business that I realized that the hammer wasn't a tool anymore. And the hammer I was used to broke things because I'm a demanding type of guy and administrative work or HR work, it needed to meet my or we were going to have a conversation, right?

And I realized that I didn't necessarily have the tools for this. But what I did realize was there are people out there that have the tools to do that and being able to see that I don't possess every component of a person to be successful in all realms of business, I found the people in HR handle the hiring, handle the management of the people. 'Okay, well, we need somebody to estimate jobs." I really don't like sitting in a computer all day calculating numbers, I need to find people that had the tools in these other areas, their tool belt different than mine. But these are the tools that I put in place to grow Division 7 to where it is today and through those choices, I was put in an ownership position of Division 7. So again, proving, demonstrating, being flexible, seeing opportunities and just thinking differently has been my secret sauce.

Luke McCormack: That's amazing, John. What a story, I'm so glad that you shared that. On that last point John, how important is it to put in second tier management to take your business from one level to the next? Because sadly, we see so often my father, he had a roofing contract business he was putting in every nail, sending every invoice, it never really took off. You see a lot of roofing business owners where they've got a good business, but they won't relinquish control and it never really gets to the next level. So how important is it to put in second tier management in order for you to take the business to the next level? And what impact did that have on you and what would be your message to other business owners who try to do it all themselves and not delegating the way that you did?

Outro: So for George, that gave me the opportunity to relinquish that power was kind of that type of person you're talking about that he realized that in order to grow, he didn't want to control every single component of the business, he was willing to allow control to be handled by somebody else and step back and realize life can be enjoyed while somebody's taking on the business. And he found value in being able to enjoy himself and didn't have his identity in roofing. And I think that's a big component is well, where do they find their identity? They find their identity in being the all encompassing person for their business and the fear of losing that by giving part of their identity away for other people to manage. I think it's something you have to really dive deep into your own mental perspective of your identity isn't your roofing business, your identity is more than your roofing business. So that's step one to me is really understanding why and how you're limiting your company so-