In episode 76 of The Kitchen Table, Ken Baden interviews James Faulkner of PCR Roofing and former army engineer, as they discuss James' transition into a leadership role, the importance of core values in a company, and the value of problem-solving skills learned in the military.
Tune in as they dive into the challenges and successes of managing operations in a fast-paced environment.
TIMESTAMPS
[00:02:26] Applying army experience to business.
[00:05:30] Combat engineering in the army.
[00:09:27] Problem-solving in the workplace.
[00:16:09] Meeting project timelines early.
[00:17:24] Military skills in business world.
[00:20:25] Supplemental management in roofing industry.
[00:25:41] Learning and adapting to challenges.
[00:27:46] Dealing with adversity logically.
[00:32:38] Seeking Success and Control.
[00:35:00] Core company values and growth.
[00:37:06] Importance of core values.
[00:40:32] Topic suggestion and appreciation.
QUOTES
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Ken Baden
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Welcome to the Kitchen Table, a podcast about where business is done. So pull up a chair and join your host, Ken Baden.
All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the kitchen table podcast, where business gets done, where we take door to door sales and business practices, and we apply them to everyday life if possible. I think it's possible, but I don't know. What do you think about that new little tagline there, James? I just added that. That's the first time I've used that one. So hopefully it works.
Ken Baden
Yeah, I like it. You know, it sounds like we've been using it for a while.
James Faulkner
This is the show where we take door-to-door practices and apply them to everyday life. I don't know. I don't know that last part. You know, I don't know. Listeners, let me know what you guys think. If you think that's stupid, I won't say it anymore. But I do sincerely, I know I'm trying to try to give a little gist of what the show is about. But if you've been listening to the show, you already know. Right. So today I've got a special guest in James Faulkner. James is currently here. So if you haven't picked up on the theme. I have, you know, these big name guests and it's wonderful, right? Tommy Mello, Andy Elliott, Ryan Steumann, you know, some major heavy hitters in business like, you know, Todd Price. And I've got the roof strategist and all these amazing uh, examples of what's possible in business and business influencers. And, uh, just, uh, I love that, but I have to say the other side of that as I bring a lot of people on within my own organization or my own close circle, whether it's business or a mentor of mine or someone that works here. So in this case. James is somebody that's just recently started as a leadership piece of this team about a month or so ago. And I thought it'd be really cool to get James perspective. Why? Well, because James was somebody that, you know, we had interviewed. And we didn't take lightly bringing him on. He had experience and he's got experience having worked for a commercial, a major commercial roofing outfit. But moreover, he had a very impressive resume and has done time in the army. And so he's got a really cool story and a unique perspective of applying these tools that he's used that he can now bring to this business or business period or management that he learned in the army. So I'd love to hear about some of those. I don't know, I would imagine like whatever we do here now, James, is probably a lot easier than, I don't know, anything that you had to orchestrate in live action in the army. If ever there was a time where it's like, Moving, you know, I don't know, a platoon of people, you know, you got helicopters and maybe even bullets flying overhead. Uh, have you ever experienced anything like that in your time in the military? And does that sound like something that you've had to deal with?
Ken Baden
Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's funny, the challenges presented here, I would never call them less than the challenges that were presented over there. They're very different. You know, over there, it was a lot of kinetic things, a lot of, hey, we have this objective, whether that was stateside, or we spent our time in Iraq. Um, and it was like, we have this, this goal and we need to move as a unit, as an organization, we need to move a thousand people in this direction across the board. Here's your part in it. Uh, don't mess up because if you mess up, it's, it's, you know, it's the wrench in the, in the wheel that kind of stops everything up. And I kind of, my, my journey to this point was definitely untraditional. I was a originally a college dropout. I went to community college out of high school and did not have the I would say the maturity at the time to succeed on my own in that regard, you know, I came from a military family. And that was always in the back of my mind. And when I realized, well, I wasn't ready to, to go to college to be successful in that regard. I was like, well, I'm not just gonna sit at home the rest of my life. And so I went down to the recruiter's office. And all I wanted to do was I wanted to do combat. I wanted to do the grunt work I wanted to do to be in the suck, to be in the middle of it. And so I joined as a combat engineer. And I got to experience a lot of that. And I got to experience a lot overseas in Iraq, we went in 2016, kind of at ISIS's height. And the whole mission set over there was to train up partner forces, the Iraqi army, the Peshmerga up north, and to assist them in kind of mounting this offensive that pushed ISIS out of their stronghold in Mosul. And so that's what we did for the first, I'd say 80% of our deployment. And then the last fifth of it was we pushed up north, and then we started, you know, more kinetic operations running out of a firebase up north to start that whole offensive into the city. And, you know, I was, I was young, I was 20 years old, and it was, it was definitely kind of a feats of the fire moment.
And so you definitely had, cause you hear engineer and it's like, Oh, you know, cause full disclosure, when we first saw, you know, me and a couple of the leaders here looking at the resumes and we're like, Oh, you know, he was a, he's an engineer in the army. And then. And we saw these different pieces on the resume, like combat missions. I'm like, I don't know if engineer means the same thing that it means with like, say Kevin, right. Our CFO, who was originally an engineer, uh, I don't think it means the same thing. So for clarity's sake, uh, I guess, you know, for those uneducated, like myself, I mean, what exactly is an engineer? You said combat engineer in the army.
Yeah, so engineer is a job field in the army is very broad. I think it's a great resume bullet point. But unfortunately, it might mislead a lot of people when they think I was like a systems engineer or something. It encompasses that, you know, the army's got those, they've got their technical engineers, they've got geospatial engineers working on maps and satellites and whatnot. But then on the other side of things, you had what I did, and what a lot of my peers did, which was combat engineering, which was a lot of we dealt with explosives, minefields, you know, clearance operations, demolition and things like that. And we worked hand in hand, I'd say 6040 with our horizontal engineers, which is orchestrating moving metric tons of earth around, you know, clearing airfields, building airfields, anything that's horizontal, really, it's kind of this half and half mixture of your more traditional combat arms, and then a construction aspect of it. And they bleed a lot more into each other in that environment than people think.
And it's funny you say that, because that resume, you said it could mislead some people on a resume. We figured out pretty quick that it probably didn't mean what we thought. And ironically, in our experience in a commercial roofing company, was more to like, OK, hey, this guy is somebody that we could we could see as some experience. While it's not residential, at the very least, you're used to the pace, you're used to, you know, bigger tickets running those operations. And if you can run everything that's involved in a commercial job, you can handle a residential job where it's way more fast paced, quicker in and out in a day. But there's still things that go wrong. Tell us about some of the stuff, I would say, like some of the intangibles that you learned in the army. Like if you could get, so you gave us a story in the interview of like, hey, where, where was there a situation where something went wrong or you had to kind of come up with a solution because we were looking for a problem solver. And I think this is great by the way, for you entrepreneurs or even salespeople or, or, you know, anybody that's interviewing yourself, there's like several different perspectives to be looked at here when you're listening to this. And the whole point of the show, man, is I don't get paid for this. I don't really plug anything on this. I just enjoy talking shop and hopefully helping some people with what we talk about and getting some great guests on. And admittedly, for me, it's great when I get some top tier guests, so to speak, because I get those connections. And you never know when you might need them. But if you're a rep and you're listening to this, And you sell in the Maryland, the DC metro area, DMV of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware. And you think that this team sounds like a team you might want to be a part of, you know, reach out, reach out to myself, reach out to James. Um, and you know, I'd love to see a result of this, but I saying all this to say, like, I hope that it helps, right? Like that's really what I want. I want to, I want to provide value. And hopefully that we say something that's helpful, whether you're a salesperson or a young or old professional, uh, it doesn't matter what age you are professional seeking to better yourself or build the best version of yourself. So in this instance, if you're listening to this, you can either see it from person who's interviewing. You can see it from the eyes of myself and who's doing the interview and like looking at James's resume. And James can give you his perspective or the perspective from the army. It's a really unique, you know, pay attention to that because we're looking at, okay, this guy's got great problem solving ability. And we wanted to find ourselves a problem solver because we don't have the time to go in and do it. What we would normally do, which is work with James forever, right? Like not forever, but. you know, bringing him in as our operations management piece. I knew I needed to get him going quickly. He needs to understand our workflow quickly. And while he doesn't come from our industry, he's going to have to understand what we do. or his place in that or ultimately his division, right? And what are the pieces he has to work with? And he's going to have to figure out how to most optimally use those pieces, right? He doesn't have to know how to write supplements, but he has to know how to help his supplement team perform and do things optimally. And then where are the pitfalls and how can I fix them? So we were looking for a problem solver, somebody who could have a high bandwidth. We use the disk method, so it tells us You know, is he system dependent or more of an engineer brain and ironically at a very high C, which would lend us to believe that you do, not surprisingly a high S, which most military people do. DISC is D-I-S-C. It's an acronym. So we knew all of these things that were likely, you know, when you came in to interview, but you gave us a story and an example. And one of the questions we asked was, give us an example. of when you had to solve a problem, things didn't go right. And it was hectic. And you were able to do it. And you told us this, but this bridge or whatever, I'd love to have you share that story with the listeners in real time, if you would, actually.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So one of the things that the army does great. And a lot of people, they think of the outside. And it's a fair thought to have is that, well, the military is very structured. It's very, you follow the rules and you do this. And for the most part, you do. But when you get in certain situations, You get a lot of autonomy and you're given a lot of resources and you're given a lot of problems that you can solve within certain parameters how you see fit using whatever resources you have at your disposal. And a unique thing about my job was we dealt with a lot of, like I said, building things and construction and whatnot. And like a good example we had was out of one of the bases I was stationed at in the training area, we called the back 40 out in the back 40. There was a plot of land that they basically that base command came down and was like, Hey, we want to build this up into something we want to build into a range we want to build into whether it's a gun range with the demolition range, whatever the case is, they were like, right now it's a patch of woods. We own it, you don't need permitting, we're giving you everything you need. But this is a patch of woods, and we need to turn it into something that's usable to train soldiers. And the way it trickles down is they essentially push it out with obviously with the help of DPW and the civilians that work there and then the contractors and whatnot. They push it down to an engineer unit usually, because we have the construction engineers. And they're like, hey, here's this, here's what we need. Now go, go make it happen, go fix this problem that we have. And by method of the trickle down effect that ends up eventually landing on mine and a bunch of other partners of mine's laps. And the problem was, we need a range built. Like, okay, but we need to build within a certain time. We're like, that's great. But right now, it's a patch of woods with nothing leading up to it with, you know, vegetation with the ground is wet, we need, you know, soil samples and XYZ before we start building. And for a lot of those things, a lot of the science back things, we could lean on DPW, we could lean on the civilians that that was their area of expertise. But the actual building is where we came into that problem. And so it lands my partner's eyes lap. And we're like, Okay, what are the resources we have, we have this time limit. But the problem is, we need this range to start getting cleared and to start getting built. But that doesn't line up with building a road up to it. How can we get all this equipment moved out to site if they're going through woods and stuff? So we sat down, we were like, Well, how can we tackle both of these problems at once? So we're not doing one thing at a time, we can always walk and chew gum at the same time. And so you're sure you guys are able to do that, man.
My dad would argue that you weren't my dad's Navy. So he'd say, I don't know, man.
Yeah. We, things have changed a little bit for the better or worse, but Yeah, there's that. Unfortunately, that is definitely a rule we can hypothetically or metaphorically walk and shoot gum at the same time. And, but I knew we had connections with the air crews that were stationed at our base. Not through I won't take full credit for knowing them. But I knew people who knew it's all about connections. That's fully what I believe. And I'm sure you obviously would agree with that connections in this world in any world is more valuable than most things. And so I knew people above me that I was close to that connections because they were senior leadership with the air crews that were stationed out at our airfield near the side of base. And we knew that, okay, can we coordinate efforts through these these connections liaisons that I made, and that he made, can we coordinate efforts to simultaneously have these construction crews clearing and grading and laying pavement and laying roads at the same time that we're actually building on site. Well, we can do that if we airlift most of the airliftable, if that's a word, equipments and materials onto site. And so we went down to our air crews, with a couple partners of mine basically, you know, played the the dog and pony show and There are salutes and, hey, here's, you know, our requests. We're requesting this. We definitely name dropped a few times that, hey, we know so-and-so. Do you guys have, you know, open space on your calendar to assist us with this project? This is coming from, you know, the garrison command, the base command. They want this done. DPW is on board. All the civilians that kind of control the ranges are on board, but we need, this is falling onto our lap. Can we make this happen? And through the power of bureaucracy, we ended up getting clearance for it. We ended up getting those boxes checked. And what that allowed us to do was build at the back end of this project, this plot of land, at the same time that we're building on the front end of this land. And then we ended up just working towards each other. We met in the middle and we met our timeline. You know, if it had been a very traditional, okay, step one, step two, step three, the resources that we actively had, I mean, I was not a helicopter pilot, we didn't have helicopters, you know, I had vehicles, but vehicles can't drive through trees, they can clear them, but that's not a slow process. Right. And so it was kind of this thing outside the box moment of like, if I work with what I have, you know, step by step, this isn't going to get done in the timeline that they're asking for. So how can I make that happen? It's like, well, let's think outside the box. And you know, you're probably not going to think on the surface, your first thought's not gonna be let me use a helicopter to go make this happen. But we had connections. And then so we ended up meeting our timeline.
I was gonna say and you guys, you guys hit the timeline. We did.
We beat it by like three weeks.
And that's what we were looking for, man. It was like, Hey, give me an example. And think about that. Like if you're the employer and you ask that question, then you hear that like, okay, well, that's a good answer. Right. Um, you know what I mean? Like, what do we have as a comp here? Like, Oh, I don't know. Um, it rained and we have to push back the roof. You know what I mean? Like it's different stuff, but like, it's more over to like, what is our expectation then of this role, like having to be able to deal with high pressure situations, but just in a much different scenario, you know, and so like, I just, I really value what the army and the military does for folks and puts them in these positions where it's like, you know, you can take these business skills that you've learned and these hostile environments quite literally, you know what I mean? And then you bring them into different hostile environments, because they're still hostile. It's just not life and death. You know what I mean? But still, it must seem like must pale in comparison. But like, how do you think that translates? How do you think those skills and skill sets and problem solving skills and management skills? Like, how do you think that translates to here, what we do here or the business world here?
You know, I think it translates a lot more seamlessly than somebody might think on the surface. Because yeah, I mean, we had overseas in Iraq, there was things that we did. And while this is not that, what that gave me was that gave me confidence in not only managing people, but making decisions autonomously and Kind of trusting the instinct and trusting my own ideas and whatnot. And you know, when anything here that happens, because while it's not hostile people, you know, when you have people that are looking at bills or people, you know, people's money is at stake, the insurance company's money at stake. I mean, people are very passionate about that, understandably so. And so that confidence to be like, Hey, I got making this decision. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. Like, it'll be fine. Like I'll, I'll, I'll make the hard calls. I'll make the, I'll take the heat from the homeowners or the insurance company. Um, you know, I will definitely say maybe part of it's with age, but if you would have asked me before my time in the army, Hey, are you willing to, you know, be the guy that's making those calls to somebody that, Hey, insurance company or Hey, whoever. you know, you messed up, are you willing to take that wrath? I probably would have said no beforehand. But now it's like, yeah, of course. Because at the end of the day, everybody has a goal. You know, we have a goal. We're a business. And I definitely think the biggest thing I pulled over from the army was was was confidence and problem solving skills.
What would you say? That's actually a great answer, man. I wasn't expecting that last part. It made me think of a second question, but I'll hold it. So having been here, uh you know now having sort of being thrown into the role of operations management because of just byproduct of like hey we've got someone newer uh you know and just for clarity's sake right like what's the natural progression that we went through here at the company for for everybody to hear and sort of learn from right well we had the same folks that came up uh, for the first couple of years. And then, you know, we had the same production manager, which originally was my father. Um, at the time we called it ops and, you know, he's former military. So I thought that would be a great dynamic if nothing else, like, well, not like, I don't know, he would, he always makes the distinction and be like, well, I wasn't, uh, the veteran during wartime, whatever, man. You know what I mean? I appreciate that he's trying to clarify, but the things that I see as a civilian that I'm looking to get out of someone who is former military are organizational skills, punctuality, stick-to-itiveness, right? Like, if they say they're going to do something, they're going to do it. Finishing stuff up, meeting timelines and deadlines and all, you know, good behavior generally, right? So, in this case, bringing you into a situation where it's like, listen, man, I got to jump back into sales. Uh, AR is a part of operations. So is supplemental management, uh, which was a big part of what we do in the roofing game. As far as insurance is concerned, I'd say it's equal parts sales and supplementing, um, you know, supplementing is how we communicate with the insurance companies and basically say, Hey, you forgot X, Y, and Z on your bid. We need that. Right. And so very important. And then, of course, administrative. So you've got these three functions within your own department that you then need to try to learn as quickly as possible. But in a lens of like, OK, I don't need the necessarily like for me, I want to know how to do everything that I'm reading that I'm being asked to do. Which is difficult because you in supplementing, it's like, well, you'd have to learn how to write exact to me. You have to learn all the strategies and everything. You know what I mean? And it's like, well, on what level do I need to do this? I would say how, how easy was that transition then? Like, having come from a roofing background, but a commercial roofing background being thrust into a role where it's like, Hey, we need you to manage these components. One is incredibly important in AR because we have a gentleman who is running that, but it's coming back to sales who I need. I need to take them. I need to steal them and bring them into sales. Um, and oh, by the way, I was going on vacation the week that we hired him or the week after. So he just literally got thrown into. Don't fuck up. You know what I mean? Don't mess up the collections. But there was a part of that that was, I don't know, I don't want to say organized purposely, but we knew like, hey, if he's who we think he is, he'll figure it out. I'll give him everything that I possibly can. But part of what we wanted to see was, does he have the ability to problem solve and figure this out. We'll give you very clear parameters. So like, what was that transition like for you even coming, like forget just the military, but like having come from a commercial roofing background into this, like what advice could you give someone who is, you know, transitioning to a new leadership role of kind of how not to get overwhelmed or, or I suppose just what advice in general would you give so they can, you know, be successful because so far you have been and there's still a lot of course that we're working on and everything but i mean that's a big transition you were doing production production meant something very different at the roofing company you were at you were more traditional running jobs ordering materials doing those things and we knew that And then we were putting you in it. And I know that, by the way, they called that ops. So in theory, bringing you into ops, you're like, oh, well, this is just, you know, I'm going to do this for a residential roofing company, but we call ops something very different. So it's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what we mean when we say ops. I know that's what you guys, and the irony is we used to call what's now called production operations. Um, and we call it what's now called operations like insurance back office, but we don't only do insurance restoration. So operations makes all the sense in the world, but just for you people listening. Operations is all the backend that happens, whether it's accounts receivable or AR, collecting checks, making sure the money's coming in, making sure it gets released from the insurance carrier, administrative, right? Processing checks, sending out ITELs, just day-to-day stuff. And then of course, the supplemental side, like we talked about, which is such a key component. So thinking you're coming into one role, And of course, being explained what it was.
Yeah, of course. Yeah, I wasn't I wasn't yeah, I wasn't blindsided to the slightest.
You weren't duped. But. I'm sorry, I just lost my train of thought. I wanted to make clear that it was distinct, like you weren't, I don't want it to seem like we didn't trick you or blindside you, but, but not a ton, but yeah, please go ahead and answer the question.
Yeah. To answer the question, you know, I think advice to anybody in my position or in a leadership position at all, um, first and foremost, if you're being asked or interviewed at all, If you have any foot in the door in a leadership position, while it's intimidating in a lot of regards, every level you go up, if you're already in the position where you're interviewing for it, then you need to be able to trust yourself that you can do it. There's obviously a reason you're being interviewed for it, whether or not that's personality, whether or not that's if you just happen to run into somebody, the job opportunity comes your way because you've ran into someone at the gym or the grocery store or whatever, well, then they see that in your personality. Whether that's your resume, what they see in your experience, even if... My biggest thing was always, I'll figure it out. And I've always said that. I've said that about any obstacle that's come my way in life. I'm going to figure it out. That's one thing about me. I'll always figure it out. And I've said that. So I'm blue in the face with a lot of challenges that life has thrown me in the last... In my adult life, especially. And sure enough, whether or not it looks like at the time, I always do in one way or the other. I think that's not to brag on myself, but that's how anybody should strive to be at a base, right? If you have a problem thrown your way, by any means, you have to figure it out. You know, I was thrown into this role and I told myself originally, I was like, the learning curve is going to be steep, but I'll make it short. And I think that's the learning curve for any new role for anybody is going to be steep. It's how long you let that learning curve last. That's what's kind of, in my opinion, lies on you as a person. Um, and so my, my mindset, my mission coming into this role was I need to learn everybody's job in my department up until I'm comfortable to not have to hover over them. Like with supplementing, for instance, I mean, I dove right into supplementing and listening and talk to Justin and whatnot and everything. And then as soon as I got enough of it to know what he was talking about, I simultaneously got enough of a good feeling from him to know that when it came to supplementing itself, he had it handled. So when it came to actually doing the supplementing, it was kind of like, okay, I'm going to back off now. I'm not going to dump all that knowledge I just learned, but I'm not going to hover over him anymore. And I did the same thing with AR and the same thing with our admin that's running warranties and everything. I learned everybody's job up until the point where I know I can trust them. And then I let them do their job, the job that they got hired for. And now I'll take my role in a manager role and make sure that timelines are being met, make sure that organization's happening and, you know, all of that stuff. But, you know, you're only as good as your team and you're only as good as you trust yourself. And so there was definitely you know, a learning curve. And I'll be honest, like I was not as productive with my numbers, the last two weeks as I wanted to be. And I took that a little bit, that was a little bit of an ego hit, I would say to myself, because I hit him the first, you know, the first chunk, and then all of a sudden, I was down. And I had to reevaluate, I was like, Am I doing something wrong, x, y, z. And it was a very short moment of Okay, let me evaluate the situation. Let me figure out what I can do better for myself. And then I need to take the emotional part of the stress and dump it. And now okay, that's out of the way. Now this is the logical part of my brain. Let's go make this happen. Let's go fix this and not dwelling. And that's one thing that the army really taught me was you know, anytime you have adversity, whether that's in your personal life, or in the job life, and every bit of adversity is different, obviously, but for generally, you know, there's a logical and emotional part to it. And when you can deal with the emotional part, especially the bigger issues, we're talking this kind of scale, though, when you can deal with the emotional, like, oh, like, I'm messing up. And you can get that out of the way, the quicker you can do that, the quicker the logic part can take over, and you can fix the problem.
Yeah, I wanted to point out too, you know, We, we over here, man, we have a fast paced, fast moving and very hard. Um, we have very specific goals we want to hit, man. And I think everybody here is bought in on that. And, uh, at least I know when they first, you know, that's what I wanted to originally ask you was what, what is it that attracted you to this place? If, if folks are listening and they're looking to. get someone like you right like what was it that but but hold on to that um and i'll try not to do too many more of these adhd moments every time you guys hear me stop that's an that's me trying to prevent diving into another question or an adhd moment because something's gotten me but i'm doing better uh so i don't hijack the show and go into a different direction but um I did want to mention just, you know, what he was referring to, right? Like, and I'll give you credit there. Like, it's just literally just AR and corrections, but it also helped us see like, well, wait a second, you know, where can we be better here in terms of, but, but in that department, what they've gotten released and collected is as best they could have done with, with, with exception of like one or two things. In reality, it was something that for my department, where I've jumped back into the sales to say, OK, well, we've got to tighten up on the collections on our end as far as what we mean by collections, which are converting these jobs. We've got a ton of filed claims that need to be converted into approved deals. Right. And so how we truncate that timeline. Um, as best we can, you know, while we're dealing with this third part of the insurance carrier. And that's led to me recently looking at other options, man, like retail true blue retail, because frankly, what do you do when you're presented with a. A situation where it's like, okay, Hey, look, things are taking longer. This is what we do. We're doing everything that we normally do, and the results aren't there. And we've run the data, we've run the metrics, we've pivoted where we need to, we've changed the CRM, we've done this, done this, done this, like it's still taking forever. And there's this one piece, which is the insurance carrier, that's just continuing to drag things out. They just don't wanna pay, and it's obvious, right? And we'll keep fighting. But if we have the skill set to do more retail, which is my background, why wouldn't we? And so that forced me to start looking at things. And so I just think it's this cohesive unit as an office and as departments. If each department is on top of their data and they know, first of all, they know what their data is and they know what their roles and their numbers are that we're responsible for in each department. you can kind of sniff these things out and figure out where the breakdown is. If you don't, then you're just kind of, I just don't think we give ourselves enough credit. And that's kind of why I pointed out because like, I'm always running high and burnout sometimes, not literally burnout, but just kind of like hit a wall once in a while to where I'm like, I get pissed off or frustrated or whatever, like anybody else. But the reality is, is that our goals are so high that when we quote unquote fall short, it's like, brother, you're still up. You're still going to be up, right? You're going to be up. Like we will be up by the end of this year. It's just not, you know, it may not be. And I don't even like saying that we wanted to be, but we'll still be up. But I guess that's the beauty of having and believing in those goals. So. So truly, you know, but back to the question at hand, which was, what would you say attracted you to this particular position, the company, and why?
The position itself was, you know, it was kind of the roofing, right? I came from commercial roofing to residential roofing. So when you look at the industry itself, that was kind of a no brainer for me. I was like, this is residential, it is different than commercial, but I know the environment, at least I know I enjoy it. And I know the I know the work and the terminology, you know what I mean? So it wasn't like I was transitioning in a complete 180 when it came to the industry. And then with the position itself, I wanted a role where I could manage, where I could kind of, I could kind of control things, not saying to necessarily control people, because I'm very fortunate that people under me that are very good at what they do. But to orchestrate workflow, to orchestrate timelines and processes, and you know, my success, I always want my success to be 90% dependent on myself. And that's been a big thing for me. And I feel like everybody kind of wants that in their own way. But I always wanted to, hey, I want to know if my job was done successfully relies on me. And if it fails, it relies on me too. And you don't really get that unless you're in a manager position in a lot of sense.
What about the, was there anything about the, I suppose, the opportunity of the company itself?
Yes. Yeah. That's that, that's the biggest thing, right? The biggest thing that, so those, those things I spoke about already, that got me in the door, me personally in the door for it, for applying and then interviewing what really hooked me, I should say, because as anybody that's, that's looking for jobs and I don't say this lightly, I think it's a good thing to say, you know, I was obviously, this wasn't the only job I applied to. Sure. Of course not. Um, There was, there was actually a few jobs and in hindsight, I feel kind of bad, but I don't at all. There was a few jobs that if I took this one, I just, they were like, Oh, we're really excited. I was like, I'm good guys. Nevermind. I'm good. Just go. This was a kind of a no brainer as soon as this opportunity came on. And that was the environment and that was the goal. And the, you know, the people in the environment kind of go hand in hand for me. Uh, we had goals, we had lofty goals by say locking a good way though. We had lofty as in high, we had high goals and I'd never want to be in an environment that's comfortable where it's already at. Hmm. And we're not. And I think it's a great thing. We don't want to be doing the same numbers every year. We don't want to think, Hey, what we're doing right now is what we're doing in 40 years. And some companies are like that. The company, and I won't name them, but the company that the roofing company in the Baltimore area, they had been very successful in doing what they've always done. And there's nothing wrong with that for some people, but that's not who I am. Yeah. And this was a complete one 80 from that. And that's what hooked me immediately. I was like, you know, forget the numbers, the specific numbers, it was the fact that we want to get bigger, we want to scale, we want to grow, we want to do bigger and better things. And I had this unique opportunity, definitely not at the ground floor, but to come in at a lower stage than that to help it reach that goal. And I don't find that those opportunities come by very often, I feel like you go on any, any job search, you can look at 1000 companies, and maybe one is in for any industries in that position. And then you'd be lucky to get that opportunity with them. A lot of these places are already established, or if they're not already established at that level, there, they don't want to get there, they're okay with being a couple man operation, that's just doing the numbers, it's always done. And that's okay for some people, but that wasn't what I was looking for. And I just happened to find this environment with the the job itself, the people here, and the goals that aligned with everything with who I am. And it was a no brainer. I mean, it was I think interviewed on a Monday. And I'm gonna I'll be honest with you. I was not I wasn't getting frustrated, necessarily, but I was very anxiously waiting for that email back all week.
I appreciate that. It was the core value. What? Military guy, right? Like or just somebody looking for an opportunity. I'm just curious core values like we hit those hard that have any any impact or hits core values or?
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I think it had the biggest impact it had for me was the fact that you guys followed a core value at all. Because that is everything because the core value is I mean, it's the core value of the company. It's the morals of the company, right? I don't want a company that if they don't have something, some sort of framework, and I think every single person should whether that's based off of Some people are religious in that sense. Some people have other, you know what I mean? I feel like everybody should have something that grounds them. And this company has something that grounds itself, and that's in its core values. And if you lose your core values, you lose your moral compass, and you lose your way. And that's not an organization I want to be a part of. And that's not the organization we have here. Uh, the, the integrity and the willingness to, to not want to screw people over, whether that's employees, whether that's customers, whether that's anybody, we're not looking to get things done the dirty way we're looking to get things done the right way. And we're good at what we do.
Yeah, I just, I can't stress that enough. That's why I wanted to bring that up. And I just, you know, if you're, if you're looking. Or if you're the company, right, or you're the owner, you're the manager, or perhaps you're the one looking, right? Like core values, like what does this company stand for? Like ask them, what are your core values? If they don't have an answer, I don't know, man. You know, like, and I'll be the first to tell you, like when we first started this, we had core values, but they just look good on the back of a, of a back of a folder, right? And so this all became something where when we reinvented our core value system, we all decided on it as a group, as a team, we committed to it. And that's why we're so passionate about it. And so I mean, I just love hearing that, man. And And so far, you know, you've been great. You've been a great addition to the company. I love your story. And literally, it couldn't be better timing because if you guys can't hear, they decided to right outside of the studio to start mowing grass right outside of our window. So which is literally at the three o'clock mark. So our 30 minutes is quite literally up. They're just one minute shy. They couldn't wait. But seriously, James, I couldn't appreciate you enough for taking the opportunity one, and then also having the courage to come on the podcast, because a lot of people at the company are like, hell no, no thanks, are not interested. But I just think it's important, man. Like, I don't know. I like doing these more, if I'm being honest, more than the others. You know, Tommy Mellows was amazing. Don't get me wrong. Like he gave us an hour of his time and I'm like in awe just learning from him. But I just think it's, it's easier, it's easier, and it's more organic than when I'm sitting here. And it's someone, you know, from our organization, or somebody I worked with before. And it's just like, real conversation about how we build these things and the things that we go through. And it's not always I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's not easy. And it's not, you know, we don't always hit every single number. And you know, things get, you have to reevaluate. And, um, And I'm really proud of the team we've built here. And it wasn't by accident, right? Like, a lot of digging, a lot of resumes, a lot of interviews that didn't work out, right? And then you even bring someone on, man, and they may not find that this was the fit that they were looking for, and vice versa, right? So it's just, it takes so much to build that team and to find the right folks. You just can't give up. But when you get it, man, it's just worth more than you could really possibly realize, even myself, right? So I thank you again for your time, my friend.
No, thank you.
We'll see you, I'm sure we'll have you on again soon. Guys, I hope this was of value to you. While the mower's going by and you guys are annoyingly listening to that, like, subscribe, leave a review. It's how people find out about the show. I never say that, but I can't stress that enough. Please leave a review, whether it's on, what is that, the app that we have the actual website for, or Spotify, or Apple, or any of those major podcasts that wherever you're listening on, please leave a review. It really does help us. It's how people find out about the show. Like I said, we don't get paid for this. We do this because we like doing it. We love doing it. And I hope it brings value to you. So if this brings value to you, please leave a comment, maybe even suggest somebody you'd like to see us have on, or something, a topic you'd like to hear us touch. We love you guys, and we will see you next time.
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