Preparing for disaster: Let's be ready to be helpful

RCS Influencer Randy Chaffee says as suppliers and contractors we can get together ahead of disasters and have a culture of wanting to help people and be part of the community.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with RCS Influencer Randy Chaffee. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello, I'm Alex Tolle with RoofersCoffeeShop and I'm so excited Randy is here. He's usually on MetalCoffeeShop and he's come on over to RoofersCoffeeShop. So welcome Randy to your first RoofersCoffeeShop influencer question.

Randy Chaffee: Awesome. Great to be here  

Alex Tolle: Ok, so our March question is how can contractors prepare for and respond effectively to weather related disasters ensuring that they can quickly meet market demands and support affected communities.

Randy Chaffee: As you know we've had so many fires and so many tornadoes, hurricanes and all these things it's a great question. I come from the supplier side of things and I think it's a culture thing. I think it's a culture thing for the supplier and a culture thing with the contractors and the roofers. And I think it's something you have to plan ahead, like everything you can't wait until the disaster hits and you know a bunch of builders come running into your manufacturing facility your supply house and we all go "what do we do about this?" I think we have to have a plan in effect for how are we going to handle this.

I live in Southern Florida when I'm not traveling and you know when hurricanes are coming. There's a hurricane season that they don't always abide by, but there is a hurricane season so we know it's going to happen and you have plenty of warning when they're coming unlike a tornado or sometimes fires which is a little more troublesome. I think as suppliers and contractors we can get together ahead of time and have a culture of help a culture of wanting to help people and be part of the community not just selling stuff when everything's good and be the good corporate neighbors. I think you put that stuff together ahead of time so that you don't have to go, "Okay, we had a tornado hit with an hour's notice and now we have this big disaster and what do we do about it?" Everybody steps to the plate I think, but let's not put so much pressure on ourselves whether it's at the supplier end or the contractor end to have that thing in place. I think it really comes again back to the culture. There's a time for making money and I'm not saying we sell everything for nothing. I'm not saying we do labor for nothing. I'm just saying let’s try to avoid the taking advantage of tragedy.

Let's be ready to be helpful to work the extra hours if you're a contractor, have extra hours at your store or building supply material house or whatever the case may be and let's really set out to help the community that we have to remember day in and day out are there for us every day. When the time comes and that disaster strikes like that, I think it's important that we do what's right just because it's right, but it also shows the community they want to deal with us, whoever us is right, because we're there to be on the forefront.

So that's my biggest thing is. There are so many things that each contractor should be prepared for, and I can't speak as much to the contractor level because that's not what I do, I'm on the supply level. But at the supply end we really need to be prepared. If you are going into tornado season, let’s make sure we have the stuff that we know after over history we're probably going to need when a storm strikes. Hurricanes are easier, cover a broader area but they're easier to predict. You know from November to June you're going to have x number of named storms are going to hit the state of Florida, the state of Georgia, hit the Carolinas, hit Louisiana, wherever you are so let's make sure that we're not surprised by things we shouldn't be surprised by. And even in the Midwest tornadoes happen and parts of the Dixie area there seem to be a lot of storms. You can't predict where it's going to happen, but you know they are going to happen since every year since the beginning of time right we've had storms in that area so it shouldn't be a surprise as far as it's going to happen, it's just a matter of where it's going to happen, how severe it's going to be. But let's just be ready for it and have a culture of wanting to help and wanting to step out and just go what we need to do, work the extra hours, put in the time, that's it. It's a lot of what I talk about about being a good corporate neighbor, it's an old news phrase but I think it's really important in our industry as well as anywhere else.

Alex Tolle: Yeah well the back into I think it was our December topic last year about cause marketing, doing what's right, helping out your community, it really does come back and help you in the long run but really it's just about being a good person and helping people who are in need after a storm. I think that's important and having the plans in place to be able to do that.

Randy Chaffee: Exactly and you're right, I'm glad you brought that up because the cause marketing is a very important subject and very valuable, but that should be the after effect and a nice and a good after effect but if we're doing all the right stuff because we want to get credit for it, look good and use it as marketing, that's probably still not the right reason to do it. The right reason to do it is because we care about our community, we care about our people. But you're right the effect, cause and effect, the effect is it never hurts to get caught doing something good either and let people know you're helping and if you let people know you're helping, back to the cause marketing, not only do you get the marketing benefits of letting people know what you're doing and that's a plus, but it also helps with the overall effort because if you're a supply house or you're a supplier like myself, and if we're out there talking about this and we're telling people what we're doing, of course we get some marketing effects from that, but it also gets other people involved, gets other suppliers, other supply houses, other manufacturers to step up and say, "Hey I didn't realize this was going on and how devastating this was, we need to step up too." I love it  

Alex Tolle: A nice chain reaction you can start.

Randy Chaffee: It is, I like chain reactions. It's good stuff. It's bad when it happens and nobody wants to have those tragedies and disasters. But, again, I've said it three times already, man we just have to be a culture of giving a crap. You just have to care.  

Alex Tolle: Well thank you so much Randy as always and now we get to meet twice a month for RoofersCoffeeShop and MetalCoffeeShop.  

Randy Chaffee: All right thanks!