S2:E37 Roofing Road Trip with Heidi- PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an interview with Dan Tinker, CEO of SRS Distribution,Inc. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast here.

Heidi Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trip with Heidi. I'm Heidi Ellsworth, an RCS partner. And I have to tell you, this is a great day. This podcast, it's something I've wanted to do for a long time is to sit down and have a conversation with Dan Tinker, CEO of SRS. Dan, thank you so much for being here today.

Dan Tinker: Of course. Happy to be here. Thanks Heidi.

Heidi Ellsworth: I mean, I'm honest, this is kind of exciting for me. As you well know, we've known each other a long time, I watch all the great things you do, the great leadership you bring to not only SRS, but to the roofing industry. So I'm excited to have you share today one of the coolest things, and I hope that doesn't hurt anybody's feelings, but one of the coolest things about SRS and that's Raise the Roof Foundation.

Dan Tinker: Yeah, for sure. It's a big part of our company's history in the last six years and we're proud that we decided to set it up back in '14 and we've raised over $5 million for some amazing charities since that timeframe. And we do some great events. Most people know us from our concerts at the IRE and we also have an annual golf tournament and several other events throughout the year. But you know what I'm proud about Heidi is it's a vehicle for people to donate and know that 100% of the money is going to go directly to charity. No overhead burden is incurred by the foundation. SRS Distribution pays a 100% of the operating costs for the foundation. So it's one of the few charities that roofers and remodelers and builders can give to and know a 100% of the proceeds are going to go directly to serve our three main pillars, which are veterans causes, wounded veterans and many other causes that relate to our military. Second pillar is, anyone impacted by weather-related disasters, whether that's hail events, tornadoes, hurricanes, or whatnot. And then the third and last is really just supporting all our local communities, which we operate in. And those are everything from supporting women, children, anything else, first responders, our police forces and everything else in the big communities that we operate in. So it's been great to do it and we're honored to do. We actually changed the mission statement of our company back in '14 from "Make Money and Have Fun," pretty simple and short, to "Make money, Have Fun and Give Back." And we did that when we founded the foundation. So it's a big part of our culture now. Our employees love the fact that they can donate alongside our suppliers, our customers, and the company also. And some of the time we match those funds and leverage their giving. So it's been great. We've been honored to be able to do it and then give to some very meaningful charities. So a 100% of what we raise goes to other charities every year. And we are a 501(c)(3).

Heidi Ellsworth: And I know we worked together I think it was a couple of years ago with the flooding in Houston and Raise the Roof Foundation was right there. You were all doing tremendous things. And I realized that's kind of the second pillar that you're talking about. But maybe talk just a little bit about that. Because right now there is so much going on out there between hurricanes, wildfires, flooding. It's just crazy. And I know Raise the Roof is right there helping.

Dan Tinker: Yeah, for sure. So you're right. Look, I think everybody knows in roofing, we benefit somewhat from weather-related impact so it's one of the things we feel very comfortable with that, look, if we'd benefit from insurance claim work and storm work, we should give a part of that back to the community as we feel like everybody should. And yes, this year with the derecho that hit Iowa, the hurricane and tropical storms that have hit the United States, especially Louisiana recently. One of our big benefactors of our foundation is a group that goes down called Minuteman Disaster Response and they go down and deploy first responders. And we bought them sleeping semi-trailers, shower units and food units, so they have full semis to deploy so 100s of volunteers can come and help people out that have lost their homes and they can go look for survivors right away. In fact, many times they're there before emergency personnel are, because they deploy with weather technology before the weather even hits. And they're put in position and they're all qualified and trained to be able to help people go door to door, whether it's rescue, whether it's providing medical services or food and shelter, they're down there. And we provide a lot of the trucks and the equipment and the supplies that volunteer group needs. So things like that really make a big impact because it is hard. Even police and fire and other people locally say had we not sent that team down there with that equipment, they wouldn't have a place to have a base camp to even run their disaster response. So it's pretty meaningful and all of our people rally behind that cause. They're a very special group.

Heidi Ellsworth: Wow. That's impressive. And along that same line, I know we have it on the Coffee Shop right now. You on are doing some great things for first responders with your One Family, One Fight. What's happening with that?

Dan Tinker: Yeah, no, that's, we're real proud of that. So during COVID, we all kind of rallied together as an employee base and a team member, and we kind of came up with a rallying cry for our own company to get through the COVID crisis. And we came up with that One Family, One Fight rally cry and it's been great to motivate everyone to really just say, "Look, we're all going to do whatever we have to do to get through it." But after we kind of got through it, and then our business got fully back staffed and obviously demand in our industry has been fantastic since May. We really felt like we needed to give back to frontline people. I think we all learned with our kids at home, how much we undervalue teachers, hospital workers, police, fire and any other first responders. So we felt like we do a lot for contractors, but we really need to give our contractors something to give to the homeowners that are in these categories. Because they've been working around the clock and tirelessly for our country. So we've always supported veterans, but we felt like we had to go beyond this time and really do something to give real cash monetary benefit to all homeowners. So the way the promotion works, it's pretty simple. Every one of our 60,000 contractors that buy from SRS can offer this promotion to any homeowner for remodeling, reroofing, new construction work. It basically offers up to a $250 Amazon gift card for anyone that's in, again, police, fire, medical first responder community. As long as they're purchasing, their contractor is purchasing the material from SRS up to $2,500 or more, they get $250. So basically it equates to about 10% of the materials for their project or get donated or paid back or reimbursed from SRS to the homeowner directly. And the contractor doesn't have to spend a dollar to do that. They just have to offer the promotion and have the homeowner sign up through our website.

Heidi Ellsworth: That's great, that is. And you know what I love about that Dan is the fact that you're really doing something. It's so often that it seems like there's been a lot of talk and not a whole lot of walk. And I love the fact that you're doing that. And you're also doing it in so many different ways through the foundation.

Dan Tinker: Sure. No, it's important. Look, we want to set a good example and look, there's a lot of good people in our industry doing a lot of good things. A lot of our great contractors are, are doing things to match this or do things in addition. And we think it helps inspire people to want to do something more. But look, these people deserve our respect. They deserve some monetary benefit for all the hours they've been putting in for all of our families to keep us safe and keep us healthy and, be on that front line. Obviously, the country is going through a lot right now. And, these people really are unsung heroes that in a lot of cases are underpaid and don't have the resources to get their homes improved in this timeframe where most of us are back working from home, but these people are out on the front lines protecting us all. So it was important for us to do something and do it right away and make it monetary and real and tangible. And we've had over a thousand homeowners sign up through the site. And then obviously as the jobs are completed, they all get their reimbursement and their money. So it's neat and we're excited. It runs all the way to the end of the year. So we're real excited to have that one.

Heidi Ellsworth: It's impressive. That is impressive. I love it. I'm so happy that we get to be a part of it. We're going to profile people. We've been having all that information on RoofersCoffeeShop. So wherever people find it, please, please take it on. The contractors with SRS are doing some great things. And I'm kind of curious, Dan, we have a lot of contractors out there and you're right. The roofing business, we're doing good helping people. I think people have realized how more than ever how important the home is and taking care of our structures and our infrastructure. But what do you recommend to roofing contractors who are kind of wanting to do more that way, who are wanting to do more philanthropic work, who want to get more involved? What are some of the advice you would give them?

Dan Tinker: Yeah and that's a great question. I think my biggest advice to anybody wanting to get involved is you don't have to go set up your own foundation and you don't. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. It takes lot of legal documents to get approved for a 501(c)(3). Use the ones that are already out there. They're great organizations, but vet them carefully and make sure the money you're giving is going directly to the causes you care about. And they're not milking off a big percentage for running the organization. For example, Wounded Warriors and Red Cross, I think 40 cents on every dollar you donate to those two go just to the staff to pay the staff. No one at Raise the Roof Foundation gets paid. Everything is paid by SRS. So a 100% passes through and again, not advocating that people have to donate to our foundation. They're welcome to and know that their money's going to go where it's going to go and all of it's going to go there, but I would just tell them to do their homework, but donate. And the other advice I'd give you two other things is, one, we feel like you shouldn't donate to massive organizations that your money is just going to be a drop in the ocean. Try to find a smaller group or smaller charity that you actually being a donor there actually make the difference for that foundation. You're a top donor so concentrate your giving to smaller organizations that really you become a meaningful donor to them. You get to know the team, you get to know where the money's going, and you really feel connected to the organization as opposed to I just mailed off a check as a tax write off. And I kind of just know it's a big organization, but I have no idea if the money went anywhere I wanted it to. So that's one piece of advice. And the other is don't forget we have the NRCA's Roofing Alliance too for our industry too. And a lot of people are not aware of the Roofing Alliance. And it is our industry's own foundation as well. And we certainly support it. But also if you don't, in addition to that, you certainly have the option with the Raise the Roof foundation. You don't have to be an active customer to donate to our foundation. You can donate and we send you an annual report every year to know exactly where every dollar went and all the great causes. And you can also go to our website, the SRS raisetherooffoundation.org website. If anyone feels compelled to sign up to be a donor or just wants more information. And we have an executive director, Michael, that can reach out to anybody if they're interested in, and we hope everybody will join us at IRE next year in April for our Raise the Roof concert.

Heidi Ellsworth: Okay. So this is the part that I'm super excited about. I was like, okay, I want to make sure we get all these good questions in here Dan, but I've been dying for this question most of all. Every year, your concerts are amazing, Journey and in fact, Journey, the article, and it's still our number one article on RoofersCoffeeShop. Everybody loved it. It was just so awesome. And so with the IRE, in fact, tomorrow morning is our Coffee Conversations. We're going to be talking with Ray from IRE, talking about it and moving to April. So I understand you have some exciting news that you're going to share with everybody on this podcast. What's happening next year?

Dan Tinker: Yeah. You're the first to break the story, Heidi as usual, but no, I'm excited to announce. We really thought long and hard of is the right thing to do to bring a big group of people together during COVID. We're certainly optimistic here that by April 15th of next year, things will have settled down and we can put on a concert in a safe environment. So we're planning on doing it. We just signed the contract. We will be at House of Blues in Mandalay Bay. We've been there two other times at two other IREs in Vegas. So people will know they can literally walk right out of the show floor right into the concert on April 15th next year. But yeah, I'm thrilled that we're partnering this year. We're doing something a little different we've never done before. And in light of what's going on in our country, we really felt like we needed to focus on diversity inclusion and respect in our industry now more than ever. So that's the theme of this year's IRE. We're going to be giving all of the money raised at the concert to two great causes, one, the National Women's and Roofing Group. And second, we're going to be donating money through the Roofing Alliance at the NRCA to establish scholarships for people of color. And again, minorities that we want to recruit into our great industry. Again, we all know we aren't the most diverse industry in the world, and we really want to make a push and a strive to change that. We're doing our part in our company, but we really want to help the industry move forward in this effort. We think it's time we take a leadership role in that, not only our company, but our foundation so. And in that light, we've signed up Little Big Town to be our opening act opening up for Darius Rucker. And they're going to be talking a lot about diversity and how important it is in this country to bring us all together as again, one family with one fight.

Heidi Ellsworth: I am so blown away. I mean, first of all you know my heart is with National Women in Roofing and with Roofing Alliance. We do so much, you and I are both involved in all those meetings and get togethers and the fact that you're doing this and SRS Raise the Roof is doing this. I mean, what amazing leadership for the industry. This is exactly what diversity inclusion is all about. Really stepping out there. Tell me just a little bit more. I know it's the right thing to do, but there had to be quite a lot of discussion, and I know you already are doing this as a company, a lot of diversity inclusion. Maybe just share a little bit more on that.

Dan Tinker: Sure. Yeah. So as you know for a long time, we've had our own women's leadership forum at SRS way before even the National Women in Roofing and got started. We've also have our own Latino forum. So all of our Spanish-speaking employees have their own employee mentoring group and employee support network. But one of the things we realized this year when everything started happening around the country, we weren't doing enough for all minorities. We were focused on women. We were focused on Latinos, but we weren't focused on all minorities and that was wrong. And so we said, "Hey, we got to do more." So we signed up a big initiative internally with the company to really push a new message of diversity inclusion and respect for all people of color, all minorities. And when I talked to our employees that are minorities all over the country, they always say one thing, "Dan, I don't want anything given to me. I just want the same fair pathway to opportunity as every other employee." And you know what? I had to be the first one to admit some of the things I was doing were excluding minorities. It could be as simple as me taking some executives on a golf trip and some of our employees don't golf. And just by doing something subtle that isn't really intentional, you can realize that you're excluding either women or minorities because that's just not their thing. So we really had to look internally and say, "Hey, what are the things we're doing that are insensitive? Even though they're not intentional to be harmful" and say, "Hey, let's be more aware." And let's make sure more importantly, as we think about employees, let's make sure every employee in this company has an equal playing field to make it to become a branch manager or a salesperson, an executive down the road. And make sure they have all the ample opportunity of anyone else in the company. It doesn't mean everyone's going to be the CEO of the company. It just means that everyone has opportunity and everyone should be given the tools, the resources on an equal footing and let the people that shine no matter what their background get to the top and move up. So we are a meritocracy, like every good company where the best person for the job should have the job. But we want to be an equal opportunity open meritocracy, where you don't just get the jacket because you've been here the longest, or because you're a certain color or certain race, certain gender, whatever, it doesn't matter. Nothing should hold you back. And if you want that job, we'll assign you mentors, we'll train you, we'll teach you and we will help you get there. And that's something we want to be proud of as as we continue to evolve as a company.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. That is so inspirational. You and I have sat in many meetings with the Roofing Alliance and NRCA talking about raising the professionalism of the roofing industry and this truly does it. This is really what needs to happen to attract all the talent we can into this great industry.

Dan Tinker: Yeah, for sure. It's a shame. I don't know if you know this, but a statistic that I read one time that pulled high school seniors of what career they least like to do in their life and number one, bottom of the worst was garbage collection. Number two was roofing, doing roofing. So we have to change that in this country. And IRE and the NRCA are working hard to change that. But we as a company is one of the biggest companies in in the distribution side, we need to do our part. And we felt like this is finally saying, "We're moving the professionalism forward." And we have to do our part and hopefully that'll inspire our suppliers, our customers, and our competitors to do the same.

Heidi Ellsworth: I agree. I know it will. And I have to tell you, I think you've just created quite the buzz in the industry across the board with everything that you're doing with Raise the Roof Foundation on. As you're looking forward into this next year, what is some of the advice that you would give to contractors to the industry as a whole kind of moving forward through COVID? You just have shown such great leadership in the industry. And I would love to just kind of what are some of the things that you at SRS are focused on going forward into 2021?

Dan Tinker: Yeah, that's a great question. I think the biggest thing that comes to mind is that don't get mired down in kind of what has been a very tough year. And look, it's taken its toll on everybody mentally, physically, it's been exhaustive. It feels like it's been four years since March, not one. And I think my advice to everybody is don't take for granted the blessings we all have in this industry. It is a wonderful industry that's done well by all of us. And we have been resilient better than any other industry other than maybe one or two of all industries in the United States. So we should not take that for granted, but we've weathered this storm amazingly well. We have tailwinds that are continuing and I see '21 as a record banner year for the industry. New construction is going to be on fire with millennials finally buying houses and finally leaving urban centers and what we call urban flight, moving to the suburbs. People working from home wanting bigger homes and remodeling homes at a rate that we've never seen. Just generally people valuing their time at home more and wanting to have a better home, whether that's a new roof, whether that's a new deck, a new landscaping, a new pool, whatever it is. So look, I think we're in for a couple really big banner years, but everybody needs a little bit of a breather and a break. So my advice to my team and everybody is, "Hey, between Thanksgiving and February, take time to recharge your batteries. Take a breath. Staff accordingly for the spring." Because it's going to be busy as probably we've ever seen in 20 years in our industry. And so be ready for that. Don't overtax your people. Don't forget that they really do need a break. Even if they're sucking it up how hard they've been working, they really do need a chance to recharge their batteries and be ready for what I think is going to be an amazing '21 and '22.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is so great. Thank you. Because that's exactly what we're seeing at the Coffee Shop too. And it is about really taking care of yourself, taking care of your company and your employees and giving back, which you have been doing and the folks at SRS, all of the people there. And so before we go, Dan just one more time because I always like to end on this. How can contractors, first of all, just one more time, how can they be involved with the frontline heroes and how can they be involved with the SRS Raise the Roof Foundation so everybody has their pencil right now and they're writing this down?

Dan Tinker: Sure. No, happy to bring those to wrap up on those two points. But yes, if you're interested in promoting our first line or for first line responder promotion, all you have to do is go to srsdistribution.com, you'll see the link to download the information you need it. We have all the flyers you need to present to the homeowner. They can sign up very quickly and qualify and be approved for that. Once you buy the material through SRS that links together and then the Amazon gift card gets sent directly to the homeowner. And then as for people wanting to be a part of the Raise the Roof Foundation, we'd love to have you. We have thousands of contractors already that donate either annually at the IRE or at our golf tournament or at other events. You can read up on our foundation website, where our money goes and all the neat things that we donate to any other great charities. Again, a 100% of what we take goes to other charities every year and the website for that is srsraisetherooffoundation.org. O-R-G.

Heidi Ellsworth: Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you for being a part of RoofersCoffeeShop. Thank you so much for everything you're doing for the industry. And thanks for being on this podcast, Dan.

Dan Tinker: No, anytime. Heidi, thank you for all you do for our industry as well, and everybody out there stay safe and can't wait to see you all in Vegas at the IRE.

Heidi Ellsworth: Oh yeah. We're going to be there to see Little Big Town and Darius Rucker, for sure. So thank you. And thank you everybody for listening to this podcast today, as you know, Roofing Road Trips with Heidi are all on our site under the Read, Listen, Watch initiative. So go there, read it, listen to it, watch it. However you want to learn, we have it there for you and you will find all of our podcasts, videos, and eBooks, everything you need to continue your education. Thank you again for being here today and we will see you next time.