Danny Kerr - Contractor Evolution, Get Ready to Evolve - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Danny Kerr of Breakthrough Academy. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Speaker 1:
Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a longterm professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews, and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips. It's Roofers Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth, and today, we are tripping up north. We are going to see Danny Kerr with Breakthrough Academy. This amazing company has really grown, starting with its roots in Canada, and it has just brought so much value to the US and to North America overall with their training program, and everything they're doing for contractors. So, I'm really excited to visit with Danny about what's up with them. Danny. Welcome to the show?

Danny Kerr:
Thanks for having me, Heidi. I'm excited. Yeah.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. I tell you what, you guys have been really doing some amazing things. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Breakthrough?

Danny Kerr:
Grew up in Canada, so British Columbia. Got into contracting when I was 18. So I started my first painting business when I was 18 years old. It was huge for me. And it was a part of a franchise organization called College Pro Painters. So they were teaching me everything. They would teach me how to do sales and marketing and how to hire and how to do my financials and how to manage crews, and all the stuff that you learn in business school, but you have to actually apply it in the real world. And it was huge for me. I mean, it changed my entire life. I went from being a broke welfare kid to having quite a bit of money and being like I'm enjoying my job and my career. While the rest of my friends were all going to university spending God knows how much money getting their degree, I was arguably learning more and making money doing it. And it was pretty neat.
So I did that for a few years. I then moved to up into corporate for that organization, became head of HR for Western Canada. So I oversaw the recruitment and development of about 150 franchisees a year. And that was kind of the tailing end of my 20s, and I was kind of at this place where I learned all these franchise systems inside and out, I taught tons of franchisees how to build their own organizations. I was in love with it, and I was like, how do we take this idea of franchising and what we've taught all these young people over the years and build that into an actual business itself that's not a franchise?
Created breakthrough academy, which essentially is basically everything we used to do with our franchisees. It's a business in a box. And then we've got this cool community now that's organically just been built. We have about 400 businesses we actively wok with where they're all sharing ideas and collaborating and innovating together. It's just neat to watch. It's like this was something that changed my life when I was younger and now I get to build a business that kind of does it for everyone else.
I'm a true believer, the franchise model is good, I do think it's a bit dated and I think there's issues to it that by doing it in this way where we just have a membership model and everyone pays fees every month and they can leave when they need to, it's way less transactional. They get what they need out of it and we can build a fairly large organization without having the complexities of franchising across north America. It's a much simpler way to scale and for our members, it's way more high value with way less commitment.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I love what you're saying because really when you look at contractors, that's exactly what they need. They need this ability to incorporate great systems, processes into a business that they already love. Like you, you loved being outside, you loved building these businesses, the craftsmanship of it. You are really delivering something that I think so many young people are coming out and wanting to own their own business, and now you're enabling them to do that.

Danny Kerr:
Yeah. If I'm honest, I actually find it, it's mostly guys who are, in roofing anyways, it's people that they've hit the $2 million mark and they're like, where the heck do we go from here? I think that what happens is, you can get up to tow million on your own just like piss and vinegar I call it. You can just move and hustle and make it happen and sell jobs and deal with issues because it's all you. And maybe you have a couple of people helping you, but it's fairly simple management. It's when they get to about two million and up, and we see a lot of guys, two to say 15 million is where we see a lot of our roofers that we work with. And they're all in this place of like, if I don't manage my numbers, 1% on, let's call it 5 million bucks is $50,000. That's an entire administrative salary, that I could have afforded. If I'm not in charge of all these people properly, people are transient, I can't actually build a business. I get stuck doing everything myself.
And so, these issues become amplified as the business grows, and that's really I found our sweet spot more than anything I think. We're okay with startup, I actually don't focus a ton on people that are just starting up. I'm just more, when they're at a place where they're like I can't get any bigger because it's all on my shoulders and I don't actually know how to do this, I'm just kind of making it up, or we could pretty much just, you're cutting through a jungle with a big machete trying to figure it out, we paved a seven lane highway, just come on, jump in the car, we've got air conditioning and we'll take you to your destination. It's still work but it's a much more streamlined path.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I find that so interesting because there are so many contractors, you're right, who get to that point, when you can't do it by yourself anymore. And that's really any business, I mean, I think about Roofers Coffee Shop and working through our business and where we're trying to start scaling and doing those kinds of things too. So important.
What I really like is you have a real comradery with all of your members and you're delivering things to them that makes it easy, like you said, easy to learn. One of your newest things is contractor evolution. Talk to us a little bit about that. How does it work and how's this helping your members?

Danny Kerr:
So, we spent, actually, it's helping our members a little bit, it's probably helping the public even more. We spent years now building all these cool companies, having all these crazy success stories, and I'm the only person to talk about it. And everyone's kind of like, well, Danny's cool, but what's actually going on behind the curtain? My business partner is actually running it with one of our key guys, Benji, and they're basically every week, putting out a new podcast.
We're interviewing a lot of our members, obviously, we're interviewing industry professionals, we're interviewing some of the key vendors that we work with. And we're trying to I guess unveil what's going on behind at Breakthrough Academy, behind the curtain. There's a lot of learning that our members have gone through the last couple of years, a lot of really cool successes that are almost hard to believe when you look at their numbers, people that have doubled and tripled in size, their profitability has gone through the roof, they've come out of the day-to-day completely in their businesses.
And it's cool to see that as a testimonial, it's a whole nother thing to listen to an hour long podcast of exactly how they did it and what they did and what their journey looked like, because I think it's very relatable and I think a lot of people are trying to figure that out.
So, Igor and James and I, third partner, James, we sat down about a year ago when coronavirus hit, and I'm not going to travel as much, right? So, what is the right way to get the word out, well, obviously digital is. And then we started to realize too, we don't really own an audience externally. We don't have anybody listening to us. And there's so much gold that goes on behind the curtains, I was like, let's just do that, let's just show everyone what's actually been going on. Let's interview the actual people on the ground doing this stuff. And it's cool. It's been neat to watch.
Our members love that obviously because they just get to hear about each other's success stories a little more, it kind of brings them all closer. But the public I think this will be huge for them to really just get inspired for more than just how to do sales and how to do marketing. But how do you manage your financials properly? How do you manage your time effectively? What do you actually do when you handle stress with your staff? All these little things that we teach are now becoming public conversations that we can have with everybody else.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And contractors love to hear from contractors. I say contractors to contractors, but that's human nature. I want to hear from somebody else who's doing similar things to me on how they did it, how they saw success. And so it makes total sense to bring it together. And the part I love, even when we started this podcast, it was Roofing Road Trips and we're heading up north, well, it's all virtual because that's what we do now. And it's made it so much more accessible. I think it's really important that we keep kind of this hybrid because it's really opened up so much opportunities. I would love for you to talk a little bit about those first three shows that are coming out on contractor evolution and kind of what's some of the feedback you're hearing, what are some of the highlights?

Danny Kerr:
Yeah, a couple of things. I'll say internally for us, we're learning a lot about what it takes to do podcasts. It's not a simple thing. Those of you who have launched a podcast, you probably understand it, and if you've ever just listened to them and just thought, man, it just sounds like they jump on the mic and start talking, we took a year to plan this thing out. A lot of time. We had to set up a full on studio, we had to think through our content, we had things for our brand and our messaging. Anyway, it's finally being launched. The biggest thing that I'm realizing and seeing is these are the conversations that happen late at night at the bar when no one's really talking business but they are. Do you know what I mean? There's more learning that happens at those late night conversations then maybe at that conference or that big headline speaker you had because that's the more tangible, realistic stuff you can actually get done.
I think what we've tried to do with everybody, and I think we'll get better at this actually, I'm watching our first free shows, we're okay because we're getting used to it. But just that idea of, can we just have a nice stand-up table like you have a bar table, can you have a few drinks and just talk, and just let go of trying to be somebody or trying to say something that makes you sound good and just be you, and just let loose and have that open-ended conversation. So that really I think is kind of the vibe we're trying to bring with our members. And yeah, ultimately, each episode has a different topic and an idea.
I know Ryan Stewards, I was listening to the other day, was the first one that got launched, but it's just cool listening to the story, because I remember bringing him in four years ago, he now works with one of our coaches. I actually don't talk to him every single day, and I'm listening to him like, you did all that. [inaudible 00:09:56]. And the guy's, he's scaled from, I think it was three or four million to about 15 million. He's completely out of the day to day, he was working way too many hours and missing his kids. He's now working 30 to 40 hours a week. He's got an awesome list of hobbies and time outside of work.
And his staff themselves are changing as well and having better work-life balance. They won't leave him. Some of them have been with him for eight years, they won't leave him because of the balance and just the simplicity to their job he brings versus constant chaos, which stresses them out. And I'm like, that's really neat, because I remember sitting down for coffee with him and he was telling me all of these issues. And now four years in, he's a new man, and he's changing people. Anyways, it's stuff like that, where it's just we're getting out of just, I guess the headline, like, hey, let's talk about one big topic and let's just get into people's lives and see what's really going on.

Heidi Ellsworth:
What I love about that is it's authentic, and that's been one of the things that we've really focused on at the Coffee Shop. And I'll tell you three years ago, now I think we're in three or four years, when we started this podcast, I had no idea what we were doing. None, none. And I was really clueless, I don't even want to listen to any of those. I don't want to actually listen to them, period. What we've found is just like right now, you and I talking, this authentic feeling brings out the best of people. I love what you're doing, and really sharing the stories of the contractors, obviously, that's a passion of mine also.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Let's just talk a little bit about, I love the work-life balance that you were just talking about and how Ryan has gone, what he's gone through to find that, and now sharing that with his team. What's some of your philosophies, Danny, on that?

Danny Kerr:
I am by trade a workaholic. I talked a bit about my past, but being 18 years old and starting a business is no joke. I was working 80 hours a week and I was stressing myself out, and I pretty much, from 18 to probably 21, didn't think I was probably fit to run a company, if I'm honest. I was just a hustler. My motto was like, I may not outsmart you, but I will definitely outwork you. And that was my way to get through life. And it became almost a piece of pride for me where I was just like, I was holding onto that, being like, that's what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. If you're not willing to do that, then get out of the way.
It was a very young 18 year old mindset. It did well. I mean, it helped me grow and develop, but I wasn't super happy about it. My wife who I have three kids with now has been with me since I was 18 years old and she's watched me go through all this, and she challenged me quite a bit. She's like, look, if you want to run a business all your life, that's fine, I don't need to be here. But if you want to have kids and actually have a life, you need to learn how to do your job better. And I was like touche.
A lot of this actually happened through the 2008 recession. And as things were kind of diving, I was like, I can't physically work any harder. I have to step back and figure out what the heck's going on and be able to do things once well. My business partner who is the polar opposite to me was a colleague at the time, but I just watched him work, and I was just like, you have a weird way of kind of making things look simple. Now he's highly intelligent, he's very analytical, he's much more of an implementer, whereas I'm much more of a dreamer. But I realized, if I don't have some of that in my life, I'm not ever going to move forward. And I might make money, but at what cost.
And so, I did, I went through a pretty big journey myself and just learned things like priority management and situational leadership and conflict resolution, and really learning how to let go and lead my people and spend more time realizing that if I can put an hour into something, it should be into influencing my people.
At one point, I had 150 reports fall. Through a layer of management, through my franchisees, but I had 150 painters out in the field at a given time. And I can go spend a couple hours trying to whatever book work or whatever it is. It's useless at that point. It's a drop in the ocean. I have to go spend more time figuring out how do I develop my people and get those people to go and basically do the day-to-day stuff. And that was a big mental shift for me. We might be behind on sales. It's like, well, what do I go do? Do I go and try and [inaudible 00:14:14] a bunch more leads for the team, or do I teach them how to get more leads and take the longer route? And that was the big approach that I kind of took.
I went from 80 hour work weeks down to about 40. I got back into my gym routine, I started to kind of see the business actually grow. We went from, I think my first couple of years I was around a million, a million and three. We went up to two million within a year and a half. And it wasn't hard, it was just me being able to just reshift my energy to the team. And I stopped being a doer of all these things I was doing all the time to being more of a leader of the people and letting them do the day-to-day, and then removing myself from that equation, I should say.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. That's so interesting. I think you're pretty wise and brilliant cause you're doing it much younger. I'm still battling those same things, but have had many times where in my career, I've just said, okay, I'm going to stop, I'm going to make a shift, I'm going to focus on my family. This is going to be it. And then start up a new thing and off you go. I'm very much in the same place, but finding that balance too, and I think it's so important.
As people are growing rapidly, I know we've seen huge growth during this last year being so digital, I know you're seeing huge growth and the demand on roofing contractors. It's crazy. What's your advice to contractors on kind of handling that rapid growth, and even maybe they aren't even creating it, it's just the demand is so high right now.

Danny Kerr:
So I have about 80 roofers we're working with right now. I get to see the ins and outs of it, the entire industry. I mean, everyone says, oh man, in my state, there's just no one to hire, and it got even worse. Or like man, roofing specifically. I'm like, it's not even just roofing, it's landscaping, it's painting, it's renovations, it's the entire home service industry. And generally, I'll speak to a couple of things. So yes, there is more work out there than anyone can handle, and that's weird, but it is where we're at and it's where we've been at actually for a few years prior to COVID-19. So, it's really amplified that. And what's gotten obviously a lot worse is there's less people to do the work. So we've got this huge dichotomy going on.
The only thing I can really say to that is if the challenge is now on finding good people, how much time, money, and effort are people actually spending on that. So I'll give you just an interesting story. The first job I ever produced when I was 18 years old, I had six painters out ready to start to train with me. So I was like, I'm going to train these six guys, I'm going to get them working, and then I'll be able to have a summer where I can just book work and let them kind of do their job. Within the first hour of starting work, three of them left. It's mostly due to me. I showed up late, I spilled paint on the concrete. It was a gong show, I was 18 years old, and they were like, this guy's a gong show and we're not going to work for them. So they just left.
And I was like, I have enough work for the next month booked to be able to sustain all these six guys, and I only have three to do the work. And I'm sitting there problem solving. My first mindset goes to, okay, well, I've got two hands, so maybe I can paint with two brushes at the same time, maybe a third, I don't know. I wasn't thinking clearly. I was thinking about how to get the job done, and I called my coach at the time and I'm like, I've just lost three of my guys, what do I do? I've got two hands. Can I figure out how to, and he's like, "Danny stop." He's like, "You're going to have to actually stop that job. You're going to have to tell the three od your remaining guys to take another week or two to kind of get ready for the next job, and you're going to have to go hire people."
And what was going to be a reaction of go take care of this immediate issue myself turned into actually the opposite, put even more work on the back burner and go get your people, because otherwise, your whole summer, you're just going to be behind the eight ball, behind the eight ball, behind the eight ball.
So, that would kind of be my message to the industry, which is like, go book the work you need, take care of it, but stop focusing so much on sales and marketing. When I look at this industry, we're obsessed with sales and marketing. Why? There's like a gold pile over there and it's not leaving, it's getting bigger. And yet this other pile of like available people is fairly sparse and far and few between, and we put very little effort, time, money, energy, skillset development on recruitment. When that can become one of the most deadly skills you could ever learn because the economy shifted. In 2008, it was like, how do we get more work, how do we get more work? And unfortunately, our mentality has been ground into wanting to figure out how to do that now, even though that's not even a need anymore. It's like, it's insane. And yet the new recession we have is the recession of people, and we haven't shifted our mentality towards that.
So, again, just a thought on where do I spend my time, it's like spend it in the area that requires the highest amount of skill and the highest amount of problem solving so you can forge a new path for the organization itself instead of just accepting what's broken and working harder within that broken system.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And that is easier said than done because I know I've actually, we've gone through a hiring, we've hired a number of new people recently. And knowing that we needed it to go forward, but it's always scary. It's always scary at that point. And so you're right, that balance between sales and marketing, hiring, making sure everything stays sustainable, I mean, that's really what happens to I think any business owner. What wakes you up sometimes the middle of the night is do I have the right balance, am I putting that together?
So, I know we already talked a little bit about that 2 to $20 million, you said 15 earlier, but really taking it to that 20 million. I think that's a big part of it is finding that once you get to that thing, it's like, I know I need to hire more people, I know I need more resources. Am I going to be able to sustain it? How do you help contractors with that?

Danny Kerr:
There's a few things. One is that hasn't had any to do with recruiting, it's actually just the forethought that goes into what it's going to take to find these people. In December, people should be building their strategic plan. They should figure out roughly how much revenue they're going to do next year, set a goal on it. Figure out what this organizational structure should look like and basically figure out what roles you're missing, and then figure out the separation of tasks, who does what. And you'll start to see very clearly like, hey, we need four more sales guys. If we're going to do that, we need another sales manager. Hey, you know what, with all these subs we need, we're going to have to have two more project managers.
Okay, so we need two sales guys, one sales manager and two project managers. Do we go hire them tomorrow? Well, we could start. It's December. We've got a lot more time than if it was March, and everyone's already taken. So it just starts with that forethought of where are we going, what do we need to get there, and are we looking for that early? So back in my day, when I was doing college probationers, I was September to January recruiting. I already knew my year end plan in September for the next fiscal year, and I was recruiting all through that season when everyone else was dumping employees are slowing down and kind of, I was building my team.
And I was very intentional about it. I mean, to this day we spend probably close to $5,000 to $10,000 a month on recruitment. And we put a lot of energy behind it. Me and my business partner, so there's three of us that run BTA, between the three of us, we probably put an average of 20 to 25 hours a week into recruitment in our business currently. So, it's no joke, and it's like, I think a lot of people are like, oh yeah, I post everyday. Are you really, do you have a strategy behind all of that or are you just throwing more money into the fire?
We analyze what works, we build sales funnels, we have expensive landing pages with crazy recruiting videos. We do what it takes to combat this issue. Is it an issue? Absolutely. Is it something that's worth problem-solving? Totally. How much time have we all actually spent problem-solving, and how much time are we giving ourselves to figure that out? Because if it's always last minute stuff, then yeah, it's going to be hard.
Just going back to like, somebody told me this back in 2008, but I was complaining about there's no work, it's all gone. And they're like, "Is there no work or is there just less work?" And I'm like, I booked work, so there's just probably less of it. And they're like, "Danny, you've got to realize like every day in the economy, even in the worst recession we've ever seen as a civilization, there's still billions of dollars in transactions flying through the air every single day. And it's your job to figure out how to get up there and just get a little bit of it."

Heidi Ellsworth:
Find where it's at. Yeah.

Danny Kerr:
It changed my mentality a little bit from an on off switch of like, there's work, there's no work, to like, there is work, it's just more challenging to get. And the same is true for people. You know what, there's way less people out there working, but there are people working, otherwise roofs wouldn't get roofed. Someone's out there doing stuff, someone's selling jobs, something's happening. And so what are you doing to problem solve that issue? And I think a lot of people are too busy stuck in the fires that they've had from last week and the week prior to start to make that happen.
The only way I got out of this was I was just like I need five hours a week of uninterrupted time, and look towards the future a little bit and start to slowly develop it. And the only way I created that space was by looking through the list of what I was currently doing, and I was like, what are all the things that are high time consumption and low skill, because those things probably shouldn't be on my plate right now. They might be because I like to do them or they're habitual or my staff doesn't like to do them so I just take them on. That has to stop because the cost of doing those things is much greater now the fact that I can't find the people to run the company.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Right, right. I think that's great advice. I hope everyone who's listening to this podcast, I mean, those are the kinds of nuggets, that's the kind of stuff, I'm sitting here going, yes, I totally relate to this. It's something that I've had to do too. And sometimes you have to hear it from other people to have that hard lesson of you know what, I shouldn't be doing this right now. There's somebody else who's much better at this than I am. And there's only a few people, only a few things that maybe, a few people who can do this other thing.
So, we're getting close. Danny, I could keep going. This is great stories. I was in sales during the recession and it's so, it's just getting out there day to day and doing it and being smarter than the average bear, and figuring out where you're going. So for contractors who want to get involved, who want to have this kind of support, this kind of training, how do they get involved with Breakthrough Academy and what should they expect?

Danny Kerr:
Sure. So they can go to our website, basically. They check us out, read a bit about us, kind of get a flavor for what's going on. And if they're like, this looks kind of cool, you get a discovery call done first. So we take about 20 to 40 minutes to just have a conversation on the phone. It's not so much a sales call, it's like, are we actually going to be worth sitting down with for a longer period of time because we do have full on assessment after this, it's all free to do.

Danny Kerr:
So I've a couple of people on my team, they basically will sit down and just get to know you a bit better and understand your current state, some of your financial stuff that's in place. Where you're at with your people, your org structure. They'll start to kind of get in with what's going on, and if they're like, we could probably help you, they'll pass you into an assessment. If they're like, we probably can't, they'll actually probably connect you with our podcasts we started which is Contractor Evolution. So, it's a podcast, there's a group associated on Facebook. We have free resources. We're trying to help everybody we can. So if we can't physically actually take you in as a client just because either you're not ready yet or you don't have enough time to do this, we'll tell you. We have long-term three or four year long relationships. We don't want someone to come in for a month and then burn out. It's bad for our brand.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Because you're not ready.

Danny Kerr:
Yeah. And we don't want to turn people away either. So we're like, well, let's create this freemium thing where people can hang out, they can talk, they can share resources, they can listen to us and our members talk and get value out of it.
So, first step would just be go to BTacademy.com, B as in Bravo, T as in tango, and then academy, A-C-A-D-E-M-Y.com. Check us out, see what you think. If you're interested, start the conversation. We'll point you in one of two directions. If you go down the assessment route, we spend quite a bit of time getting to know your company, we go inside and out of what's going on. And from there, we would actually start to work with you. We've got a six week course everybody starts in where we go through business planning, financial budgeting, organizational structure development, recruitment process, training process, sales process. And then finally priority management, block scheduling and strategic planning, which is kind of the backbone of all of this actually happening.
And then from there, we pair you up with a coach and we start to slowly chip away at all the implementation items required. And then basically, we would track all your sales, all your production and all your financials live in the cloud so we know exactly what's going on versus the original goal we set with you. And then we basically make sure you hit, or as close as we possibly can. Our coaches' mandates is to help the members hit their goals and make sure they're successful in their organizations. We'll go to hell or high water and make sure that happens.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. That is cool. And you do a lot of networking between the contractors too. I know before COVID, you were doing some amazing events and now you're doing virtual things, and probably going to be doing more. Just give a little bit of flavor for that too, that network of contractors.

Danny Kerr:
Yeah. It's pretty neat. All the years we've been doing this, we've always said we will not compromise, and the membership itself is important to have the right people. You don't want to mix grade ones and grade 12s. You want to have everybody who's in a similar mindset, a similar place in business being able to work together. So we've done a lot of work to kind of build our groups in that way, where we have different segments into our groups. We put these people into an environment where they can finally just relax and be them and talk openly, like guys talking about their divorces they're going through, guys are talking about the highs and the lows, the millions of dollars they're making and what to do about it. The good, the bad and the ugly and everything in between and the business metrics.
And so, we've really tried to set it up to be like, look, this is much more of a tribe than just a transactional relationship. Whatever you need, we're going to figure it out. I mean, I've got stories of one guy who was going through bankruptcy a couple of years ago. We flew one of our coaches to go spend time with him, on our own money, we don't need his money. It's just like, let's go help him. He's one of us, let's take care of him. Through coronavirus, we put out a bursary that was, you don't have to pay for it back, but if you can show that you need financial help, we will pay for your membership for you for three months, and every three months after that, you can renew it if you need to. It's coming at it from a place of we're community, we care about each other, we're in this together, versus you pay me for some money and I'll take care of you. It's like, you're helping the membership by paying, but you're not really, we don't care about that. We're not a lawyer counting every second you work with us. It's non-transactional, it's as much time as you need. And the community itself reacts in that same way.
And what's really neat I've noticed happening is, so right now we have $1.2 billion under management. It's getting up there, and it's going to keep growing rapidly right now, as we go, more and more people are coming in every day. They're all helping each other. They're all sharing their best practices. Not all their financials, but they have a small group they work with where they see each other's financials, every percent of what each other are making. They give everything they possibly can to one another to help each other do better. And that collective brain is way better than any program I'm ever going to create. We've got a cool program, it helps, it gets people in the door and gets them moving for a couple of years with us.
What keeps our people around for three, four, five, six years now is this community. And they're like, look, I get so much from one another, it's the one place that I don't have to feel like I have to hold my cards close to my chest. I'm in a safe place and I can let it go and show people and vice versa, they do the same for me. Questions. Get answered, things move fast forward, and we're becoming a bit of a force to be reckoned with.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah, I love it. The tribe, I love that word, I love that imagery. Danny, that is the perfect way to end this podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you for what you're doing, that whole giving back, we always talk about it. In roofing, it's all about roofing respect, and you show that and Breakthrough Academy shows that every single day, thank you so much.

Danny Kerr:
Yeah, thanks for chatting with me, Heidi. It was awesome.

Heidi Ellsworth:
It was great. And I have to tell you, everybody out there, you heard where you can get information on Breakthrough on their website. They're also on Roofers Coffee Shop. They have a full directory. They have some little promotions out there. They have great articles. We have the whole contract evolution coming on to links on our site so you can find it easily. So please, please take the time to check it out. It is well worth your while. I also want to make sure that you're all finding all the podcasts under our read, listen, watch section. Be sure to subscribe because we have podcasts coming out every week, and the stuff that is coming out here is just so critical for the industry and for your business. So, thank you so much for listening today. Danny, thank you again for being here.

Danny Kerr:
Yeah, thanks, Heidi.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Have a great day, everyone, and we'll see you on the next Roofing Road Trips.

Speaker 1:
Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from the Rooferscoffeeshop.com.