Go from stuck to scalable

RCS Influencer Melissa Chapman says contractors who scale successfully are the ones who stop treating growth as a hope and start treating it as a strategy.

Hitting a growth plateau is a common but fixable challenge for roofing contractors. The key to breaking through is shifting from “doing the work” to “building the business.” Growth at scale doesn’t happen by chance, it’s the result of intentional strategy, systems and leadership. 

Get crystal clear on your vision and milestones: If the goal is to grow, you need more than “we want to get bigger.” Define where you're headed in three to five years and reverse engineer milestones that get you there. This creates alignment and decision-making clarity across your team. 

Audit your current infrastructure: Growth exposes weaknesses. Take a hard look at your operational workflows, estimating and job costing processes, team structure and leadership capacity. Are your systems scalable or are they duct-taped together? What got you here won’t get you to the next level. 

Standardize with SOPs: Systematize repeatable processes across sales, production and customer service. Documenting your SOPs makes it easier to onboard new team members, maintain consistency and create predictable outcomes, which is the foundation for scaling. 

Build the right team: Scaling a business requires getting out of the “founder bottleneck.” Delegate high-level functions to competent leaders. That means hiring and developing a team that can take ownership, challenge reason and not just follow orders. 

Track the right metrics: What you don’t measure, you can’t manage. Install a simple dashboard to track key performance indicators like backlog, gross margin by job, close rates and labor efficiency. These metrics tell you where you’re winning — and where you’re leaking profit or time. 

Strengthen your leadership and culture: Companies that scale well have strong leadership at every level. Invest in developing your team’s problem-solving and communication skills. A growth-oriented culture isn’t just about working harder; it’s about working smarter together. 

Focus on your customer experience: As you grow, don’t lose sight of what built your reputation. Create a customer experience that builds loyalty, generates referrals and differentiates your brand. Scaling doesn’t mean sacrificing quality; it means delivering it more consistently. 

The contractors who break through plateaus and scale successfully are the ones who stop treating growth as a hope and start treating it as a strategy. It’s not about doing more – it’s about building better, and that’s what we teach to members of the LDR Accelerator.