Roofing Road Trips Podcast: Jason Stanley

By Lauren White, RCS Reporter.

Having been on a roof since he was 13, Jason has worn multiple hats in the roofing industry before serving as CEO for the company his dad started. 

Roofing has always been in Jason Stanley’s blood.  He’s been on the rooftop since he was 13 and currently serves as the CEO of the family owned company his father started, IB Roof Systems™.  The company has been dedicated to serving the industry and providing the best products for contractors for more than 30 years.  In his podcast, Jason speaks with Heidi Ellsworth, RoofersCoffeeShop® partner, about his journey to becoming CEO, the bigger issues he’s identified in the industry, and the ways IB Roof Systems is contributing to the industry.

Jason grew up in Oregon with his five brothers.  His father, Larry Stanley, had a master’s degree in engineering and taught during the school year.  During the summer he had a roofing company. His focus was mostly on coatings, using a product called Rapid Roof by Conklin. 

Later, Larry discovered PVC single-ply from Europe and started importing it.  He believed this product was “going to revolutionize the roofing industry,” Jason shares.  And in 1978, IB Roof Systems was founded. While it wasn’t an easy path, Larry grew his company into what it is now, selling “…PVC based on the merit of providing a roofing centric product—a product that is easier for roofing contractors to put down than others,” Jason reveals. 

“That’s become his fundamental drive for IB Roof Systems, to put together products that are easier for contractors to install, products that perform, are designed to perform long-term, and are easy for the contractors to handle and manage,” according to Jason.  IB Roof Systems has a dedicated following. The company has built a base of more than 400 contractors who purchase products from them every week.

Throughout his years in the roofing industry, Jason has worn a lot of hats.  At the age of 13, he served as a gofer on the roof. He would, “[get] and pick up just about anything and everything for somebody else.”  As the years passed, his responsibilities increased. He transitioned into welding and detailing, became a project manager, and eventually moved into estimating.  

When he was 22, Jason moved to Seattle, Washington and started his own roofing company.  While there, he became his father’s biggest customer. Jason recounts that he, “later was named the rep and sold the business, and that started my sales journey.”  For five years he managed the state of Washington, then moved to Colorado and began placing reps throughout the western United States for 20 years. Eventually he became the national sales manager for IB Roof Systems, and now the CEO.

Jason is on a mission to help contractors understand how to calculate profitability by day, which he believes is one of the bigger issues in the industry.  Although jobs will yield the same 35% profit overall, by using Jason’s system, also known as “savage estimating,” contractors will discover which jobs are more profitable by day.  Depending on how many days it takes to complete the project, certain projects will profit $500 a day while others will profit $5,000 a day. Since there are only so many “roofing days” in a year, Jason encourages contractors to, “Stop picking the losers and start picking the winners and you’ll fill up your roofing year with projects that are profitable.”

IB Roof Systems not only wants contractors to be profitable, but also to be safe.  The industry is promoting the use of wide-width rolls of membranes claiming that they will take less time and energy to install.  This isn’t accurate according to Jason. He explains, “When you do the math on a 200-square-foot project, the labor savings is one man hour…You’re using 25% more fasteners and saving one total hour of labor...”

IB Roof Systems makes products that are roofing-centric and contractor-centric.  “They’re products that you don’t need a seam sealing on. The rolls are sizes that two men can pick them up and move them around a job site.  A product that has a wide welding window where you can turn your gun all the way up, or you can turn it down. You can weld into a corner. You can weld when it’s 105 degrees or 40 degrees and still get a good weld,” Jason discloses.

In doing this, “We can reduce the number of back injuries which according to CNA [an insurance company], is the number one most debilitating, most expensive, injury claim in the roofing industry today.  But yet, manufacturers want to continue to make rolls that weigh 500 pounds and have contractors move them around on jobs sites,” notes Jason.

IB Roof Systems is a business partner to contractors.  “We want to get into your business and find out what makes it tick, how you can improve, and how we can make you better,” Jason shares.  This family-owned company is dedicated to providing contractors with high-quality products that make their job sites more efficient and more profitable.   

Listen to the podcast to hear more from Jason about savage estimating and IB Roof Systems’ roofing-centric products.  Check out the RoofersCoffeeShop® podcast page for even more.