Roofing Road Trips with Heidi Welcomes Rudy Gutierrez- PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an interview with Rudy Gutierrez, President and CEO of Shell Roofing Solutions Group. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast here. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Hello, and welcome to another Roofing Road Trip with Heidi. This is Heidi Ellsworth, RCS partner. Today, I am honored to be with Rudy Gutierrez, a very, very long-term good friend of mine, who is the President and CEO of shell roofing solutions group out of Los Angeles, California. Rudy, welcome to the show.

Rudy Gutierrez: Thank you. And good morning. I'm honored. It's a pleasure to be here.

Heidi Ellsworth: Honestly, you were one of the first people I really knew well in roofing when I started with Carlisle. I, to this day, can just tell anybody about how welcoming, how much he taught me, how many great fun things we did working together. I love how in this roofing industry we meet and we just keep working together, no matter what company we're with.

Rudy Gutierrez: Yeah. You and I enjoyed a fantastic career at Carlisle. We worked on some really cool projects to bring attention to certain products, and back in the day to bring attention to energy efficiency, and you really created a fantastic marketing model at Carlisle. Just so happy to work with you, because you were so enthusiastic, energetic, and just brought some crazy cool ideas to the table.

Heidi Ellsworth: Sometimes more crazy than anything, but you were always game, it's like, "Let's go. Yeah, let's do it."

Rudy Gutierrez: Absolutely.

Heidi Ellsworth: Along that line, Rudy, I know your background, but can you share your background with our listeners on just how you got in roofing. I know there's a couple of other really cool things you've done out there too, even outside of roofing, but had some waterproofing elements. Can you share some of your story?

Rudy Gutierrez: Certainly, I've had a fantastic career in construction, but an amazing career in roofing. I started when I was 15 years old, I was working for a relative, and I tore my first roof off at 15 years old. My experience was so unpleasant that I swore that I would never, ever, ever be involved in construction, and let alone in roofing. I worked construction, put myself through school in construction, and I have never been away from construction in my entire career. It's always been construction. I've enjoyed over almost 30 years in the roofing industry, so it's been an amazing industry for me, but it didn't start out just specifically in typical construction. I actually worked in the entertainment industry and did waterproofing projects in the entertainment industry. I worked on Waterworld. I worked on the movie Hook, Apollo 13, Batman. I worked on almost every single music video for Michael Jackson's album Thriller. I worked at a different environment, but still in construction, and it was amazing, a great experience. I think that the finished product for me was always the disappointing part, because soon as you film it, you have to basically destroy it and put it in the trashcan.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. It's so cool that you got to do that. I love it.

Rudy Gutierrez: Yeah. The gratifying part of roofing is that you build it, and I'm like a little kid when I drive and my kids are in the car. I'd tell them, "Look, we put a roof on that. Look, we put a roof on that." They're like, "Yeah, yeah, okay. Dad, we know. We've put a roof on that, and you did this." So, it's a very gratifying to see projects that we worked on even when I was involved in Carlisle around the world. Very gratifying to see these projects, that's still standing and performing well and that whatever you did and however we had some influence in that decision to put that type of roofing system on, that it still performs exactly the way we intended it to do.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, that's the thing. I grew up with my dad in general. Was a general contractor, and he'd do the same thing, going around, pointing out all of his jobs. That's just such a great feeling. We now do it with our kids, showing them grandpa's jobs. So, hold on, your kids will be showing all your jobs to their kids someday too, because it just gets in your blood, you can't help it. After Carlisle, and as you were going through there, I know you started Shell Roofing Solutions. I love the fact that you really brought all of that, really that focus of energy solutions, sustainability, even solar. Can you tell everybody a little bit about Shell and that focus on...? It has really differentiated you, your team and your business.

Rudy Gutierrez: Yeah. During the toughest time of the recession, I believe it was somewhere around 2008, when I decided to put a business plan that I had developed for some time, put it to work and team up with my partner, Hector Gutierrez, my brother, who also is a roofer. And we decided to launch this company. Some people thought we were crazy, but we thought that we had a very good strategy for not only the financial situation we were facing around the country, but for our environment in California. So, in Southern California, we get probably 11 to 14 inches of rain per year, so you really have a tough time selling roofing as a waterproofing, the reroofing part of it. So, we are differentiating strategy-wise to go in and sell energy efficiency to roofing insulation and other rooftop solutions. We found that an owner was more open to listening, how we can save money through energy efficiency and leverage that against the investment. So, we learned how to really sell that strategy, we lived by that strategy and we learned how to leverage that, show the savings and leverage them against the investment and show that return on investment would be the payback period, the cumulative cashflows and what that roof would... The value of that, that roofing system, would be 10 years out, 20 years out. It really set us apart. Then it led us into very specific areas of aerospace, food processing, cold storage, more specialized billings, and manufacturing of specialty components where you need climate controlled. So, we leveraged that, our strategy was clear, the doors got open, and it really put Shell Roofing as maybe a design build specialist.

Heidi Ellsworth: You and I talked about that, that philosophy, that strategy while we were at Carlisle, how we saw working with building owners, and I think homeowners, but helping them to understand that bigger picture of what a roof can do. I mean, obviously shelter, but there's also energy savings and all the things that you now are focused on with your building owners. What are you hearing back from them about Shell and about what you've done for them on energy savings?

Rudy Gutierrez: Well, we certainly have a fantastic client base. Wee don't look for a one-time event type of client. We look for a long-term relationship, a client that is striving to achieve energy efficiency for all the contributing factors, greener environment, reduction of carbon footprint. So, we really look at clients for the long-term. We want to be there 15 years, 20 years when they need to reroof, we want that organic growth. Our clients for the most part, they're really proud to have other new clients call and ask for a reference. For the most part, we've had very, very good references. They liked the fact that our teams are very professional, that we treat the project with respect, that we deliver exactly what we say. At times, we've been off more than we could choose, so to speak, and a w we've ended up losing money on certain projects, but we delivered the project exactly the way we said it would. And it's coming back to payoff, because our clients either have other projects that we've reroofed for them, or that they recommended us to their competitors, even their competitors. So, we have a very solid client base. We really look for that long-term relationship.

Heidi Ellsworth: I feel the same way. If you do the job for other people that you would want them to do for you, it's going to pay off every time, even if every once in a while it gets maybe a little bit different or the scope changes or whatever. I've had that same experience. Just do what's right, and it always comes back. It works. I know that, and I've admired this, that that is also your philosophy when it comes to your employees, and you have an amazing team, I should say teammates, an company culture. Can you share a little bit on just your philosophies on your company culture? And I would also love for you to share how you've been really recruiting that next generation.

Rudy Gutierrez: Yeah. We've been very fortunate to, to find those gems in the rough that want to be involved in construction, that want to be involved in roofing, and put money behind them so we can train them and put them out on the field. A few years ago, after attending Best of Success, after attending NRCA meetings and talking about an aging workforce and the need for workers, we looked at our own team and realized that, okay, everybody's in their either mid-40s, late-30s. So, if we are looking at this long-term, five years from now, 10 years from now, we may have a problem. So, we needed to start to look at recruiting some young, talented people that want to be involved in construction, that have no experience whatsoever in the field, but they did have the desire to be involved in construction. So, we looked at many different avenues, local schools as well as recruitment days. We partnered with a company that also looks for young, talented people, that trains them on just the very basic aspects of construction, the safety, holding a hammer type of thing. We partnered with them. We found some my young people. We spent a lot of money more than you would typically spend on people that already have a concept of construction. That was a difference, is spending the time, having patience, and putting the money behind it to get them up to speed to be able to be effective on a project. We have used that strategy several times now, and we've found out of six, maybe you have two that are really committed to the roofing part. Now, we actually have one crew that's almost made up of young team members that had no experience in the roofing. Another one of them is running projects for us. It takes more time doing it that way, it takes more resources, and patience, lots of patience, but I'm telling you that young people are not technology challenged. They've actually brought some excellent strategies to the table to us, because sometimes when we talk about a project or talk about a condition that we may not... It may take us to come back with [inaudible 00:15:37] for a long time. And for them, they just research information very quickly and they come back and say, "Look, I think we can do it this way. I already researched it this way." And that's impressive, the way they are able to utilize information better than us, me.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. I agree. We have a number of young, really amazing young professionals working with us at RoofersCoffeeShop Now that we've brought on, and I just sit back and I'm like, "Wow." When you give them a chance, empower them, you can learn so much.

Rudy Gutierrez: Yeah. We certainly understand the challenges of the workforce. I think getting right into the culture, we have a culture in our company here of respect, admiration for one another. We each have goals per day, per week, per month, per year. We have our direction. But we work together as a team to deliver that project to a client. And respect is a word that comes to mind as our culture here. We treat everybody with respect. We don't deal with situations, challenging situations. We're not susceptible to problems, and we have challenges, but we deal with them differently. We don't use profanity. Not that we can't, because we certainly can, but we don't use it when we are in a professional environment. I treat everything as a professional environment. Yesterday, we were up on a project, about a quarter-of-a-million square foot project and just a quick team meeting, and we treated it like we were holding a very, very well prepared, highly-technical professional meeting, but it was just up on the roof to say, "The project is progressing well, this is what we need to do next, and this is our goal." We treat everything like that. By the way, we have some really cool team members. We don't call them employees. I think we're a team and we're a streamlined team, but we rely on every single person. I know that my team relies on me to make sure that I even have toilet paper in the restrooms-

Heidi Ellsworth: Okay.

Rudy Gutierrez: ... when it's my turn on the calendar to clean it, that it's completely clean and ready for them. So yes, we're a team here.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. I love that, and I love that about your culture. You share that all the time and you can see it when I see your teams at the different shows and we are visiting and talking, the professionalism, the friendliness, and engagement. We have [inaudible 00:19:17] respect as one of our key elements at RoofersCoffeeShop, and you and all of your teammates at Shell embody that. I love that. I think that is something that as an industry, we're seeing so much more and you are definitely a leader at the NRCA, which is one of the next things I also wanted to talk about along with this next generation that you've brought in and building this company culture, because you can recruit, but you can't retain, unless you have a company culture. We're all understanding that. You're helping to lead efforts in diversity and inclusion through the NRCA. I would love just to hear what you're seeing in the growth of diversity in roofing amongst the next generation of young people, millennials and Gen Z, women, all minorities and ethnicities. What are you seeing and where are you hoping we're moving towards?

Rudy Gutierrez: I was fortunate enough to co-chair diversity inclusion at RCA, which has developed a strategy for diversity and inclusion. Even I consider myself pretty diverse and very inclusive. Realized that I learned a lot, I learned a lot from people that have spoken at our NRCA gathering with regards to diversity and inclusivity. Really, you can't have inclusion without diversity. Diversity promotes all inclusive. That's exactly what it means. In order for us to be successful in the future, we will need to have diversity and inclusivity throughout different ideas from different, whatever, backgrounds, cultures, et cetera. Different ideas is what's going to make a company successful no matter what you're doing. Women is such an untapped resource for workforce. Only 10% or less of the entire workforce in the construction market is women, and it's much less than that in roofing. I think that for us to develop strategies that promotes that bringing in that untapped resource, it's just a tremendous opportunity, whatever your age. Then the millennial factor. I think that most of us, we say, "Well, we put on social media..." In our marketing, like all the way to the back of the line as it and millennials don't they put all that stuff in the front of line. That's how they operate. That's how they think. And I've learned that I had to go to seminars for that, by the way. I understand that they utilize information much more effectively than we do. Understanding that, understanding of how they feel about our work environment. They have no issues going to company, to company, to company. So, they have to be kept interested. You have to create interest within your own company to keep them motivated. They need opportunity. It's very clear that as we continue to bring in the young, talented people, we've understood that they need opportunity, and we need to create that environment that keeps them interested, that we can do this through the roofing industry. Roofing is an awesome high-technological industry. The perceptions of all, they no longer apply. You need to have so technical intellect in order install a very good roofing system. That brings that interest to the younger team members that we see. But women in roofing for me, that's the untapped source. Its ethnicities, 70% of the Hispanic market or construction market is Hispanic. That's just the way their industry is. But for me, the diverse market needs to be there. We need to promote to all. I think that we can attract talent from all aspects. We need to promote to bring in to... The age of a roofer right now, the average age is about 48 to 50 years old. Well, we need to bring that gap down. We need to bring it down to about 30, 35 to have a sustain market. Then to have a future leaders as well, because I have my son, my nephew who are going to be the future leaders of this company, wanting to keep them interested in, keep them focused on their development.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. That's the thing. Just like you have your son and nephew, I have our daughter, Megan, is working for us, and we have these amazing young people who are coming up and who have watched our careers and actually are interested enough to say, "I'm interested in that for my career," or at least to be involved, maybe her telling where all that's going to go, but I think that inviting people in, like you said, and then being welcoming, making it so people want to stay, and I think that is so critical. Also, for me personally, I want to see other people who look like me. I want to see other women. And I want to see a lot of people who don't look like me. Especially in that next generation, they're going to demand it. It's just going to be an expectation. And so you're way ahead of the curve, and sorry, but I've got to bring this up, you were named the company of the year by the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. That's pretty dang cool, Rudy. You got to tell us just a little bit about that, because that leads right into this. You've just opened so many channels with your business.

Rudy Gutierrez: Well, we were very honored to be named 2019 business of the year by the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which has about 800,000 members and associate members. That's a large group of people, very influential, not only in the California market, but at a national level. So, for us, for my team, obviously I was very honored to receive that on behalf of them, because we go out and we create all of these opportunities, and sometimes even the roofing part of it is we bring in some difficult roofs and our team members look at it like, "Oh my God, how are we going to get under those units?" Or, "How are we going to take care of these waterproofing details?" But they'd deliver on what we propose. I think our company was recognized by those professionals around the industry in California as a company that is a responsible company that grew responsibility and responsibly, that is active in the community, that is thinking beyond just the typical sustainable construction, energy efficiency, all the things that contribute to a positive environment, I should say. So, yeah, we were recognized that we were honored by the Chamber and it was such a thrill to receive this, I was very happy for our team. My brother, who was my partner obviously, sometimes I get these crazy ideas, like I put them into play, these cringes, but this recognition was important to our family and to our business.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. That's really impressive. For people around the country who mainly don't understand the scope of the CHCC, it's huge. It's huge. Like you said, even though it's California, it's very influential nationally, and for you to be at that level with that company or with that association, I just love to see roofing acknowledged that way. It's awesome that it's your company and it's even to have roofing companies starting to be respected and acknowledged that way across the country for their philanthropy, for their performance, for the diversity, for the energy and sustainability. I'd love for you just to comment on that a little bit, because that does our heart good, we've been waiting for a lot of this stuff to happen.

Rudy Gutierrez: Yes. As I mentioned, I'm a fanatic about our industry. The roofing industry has given me an amazing life and I think it transcends into the message of our company, and the members of the Hispanic chamber of commerce recognize that enthusiasm for our industry and my involvement in associations, and in particular, the national roofing contractors association, and the message about roofing and how, how skilled it is and how technical it is and how professional it is as well. To bring that level of recognition through an organization with almost a million members and talk about roofing, it's a... Yes, I agree. Even the dog's excited,

Heidi Ellsworth: Megan will fix that.

Rudy Gutierrez: So, I was just honored to be speaking about roofing and our industry. Yes, you are absolutely correct. Bringing recognition to our industry, I think it was very satisfying, and I was honored for Shell Roofing to be the one bringing the message to almost a million members.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. That is so cool. One more thing, because we're getting the end of our time here, but there's one last thing I wanted to talk about, and that is this very incredible logo that you sent to me to share. Thank you. That really talks... And everyone listening, you'll have to go to the Shell Roofing solutions website and check this out. We'll also get this up on RoofersCoffeeShop, but you have put out a logo about roofer and that being an essential worker. The pride that I think the roofing industry and the men and women who work in it have felt over being that essential roofer or essential worker to keep things going during COVID, let's just end on that. Tell me a little bit about the inspiration of this logo, and also how your team has handled this COVID and coming out of this into the recovery, which we're all hoping will happen sooner than later.

Rudy Gutierrez: Yeah. In the roofing industry, we're called essential workers. In California, in particular, we were called to continue working through the stay-at-home orders through the pandemic. I think if you're not outside working and every day dealing with people, you didn't quite get the whole aspect of how a strenuous this was, or this is, but particularly when everything was being shut down, of people being in the frontline our medical workers in particular, but our essential workers, the people keeping the buildings in our case dry or in our case continue building, it was very stressful for our team, I know that, because we had several team members say that they chose to stay home, because they were afraid to bring home a problem to contract the disease, and then infect their loved ones. We completely understood their position. We really did. We didn't say, "No, you can't do this," or, "Look, we have work and we're essential workers." It was simply an option. But 80% of our teams decided to keep working. We made some adjustments to our operation, and we're so proud of our team that during this pandemic has continued to work, even though they each have family members or conditions at home that could impact them greatly. So, we started discussing of creating a logo to honor our team, and we hired a non-essential worker that was laid off from Disney animation. We hired him to put together a logo with some ideas. We researched the NRCA, we researched RoofersCoffeeShop, everybody that had any information on roofing. And this is what he came up with. He talked to our guys on the field and some of our guys gave input. So, this was a really a team effort. The slow part of the logo, it's like shingles, and then the flat part is obviously roofing and then the roofer on top. I think it really honors our team members, and that's really what we wanted to do. So, now we're creating the logos that are going to go on the uniform, everything that they could wear and wear it proudly. I think this is a symbol for a roofer that I'm going to wear it, because I love it. If the NBA has a symbol, I'm going to have my own, and that's that logo we created.

Heidi Ellsworth: I love that. I love it. I'm just sitting here looking at it as we're talking, and I know this is audio, it's a podcast, so not everybody can see it. So, definitely go out and look for it on... It will be on the Shell website, it'll be on the RoofersCoffeeShop website, because this is the type of pride and respect that we're seeing in the industry that is just growing and is growing because of leadership like yours, Rudy. So, I want to thank you so much for your leadership in the industry and for your continued friendship and mentorship. As I said at the beginning, I'm just honored to always be able to work with you. It's just so great. Thank you.

Rudy Gutierrez: I appreciate you having me and letting me just give my perspective. This is an industry that I love. I created an amazing life and lifestyle because of this roofing industry. Filled with generous people that I can call on for ideas, to share issues, and to gain their perspective and approval at times. This is a very generous industry. Heidi, thank you for your friendship and for always reaching out to me to let my perspective.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is great. Thank you, Rudy, so much. And I want to thank everybody for listening. I think these podcasts, I keep learning so much on them. This is your chance to really hear what other leaders are doing in the roofing industry, to get some ideas, that one nugget that can just really change your business. So, I would really encourage everyone to go to the read, listen, watch portion of RoofersCoffeeShop, listen to the podcasts that are out there, listen through all of our channels and subscribe so that you know when this next one's coming up. So, Rudy, thank you again, and thank you everyone out there for listening today. Have a great day.