Richard Koetter & Kelly Lea - The Mega Roofing Conference Downlow! - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Kelly Lea of MRCA and Richard Koetter of RCAT. 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 long term professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews, and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from Roofers Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and I am here today heading south, Midwest, heading over to talk to the gentleman from the MRCA and the RCAT about their upcoming convention in September. I am so excited about this. First of all, let me introduce Kelly Lea, who is the president of the Midwest Roofing Contractor's Association. Kelly, thank you for being here today.

Kelly Lea:
Absolutely.

Heidi Ellsworth:
This is going to be great. I've known Kelly for many years and we've done a lot of things together and I've had the pleasure of just today meeting Richard and I'm looking forward to getting to know Richard Koetter, the president of RCAT or RCAT, as many know, the Roofing Contractor Association of Texas. Richard, welcome to the show.

Richard Koetter:
Thank you very much. Glad to have you.

Heidi Ellsworth:
So happy you're both here and I'd really love to start, first of all, just to let everybody get to know you a little bit. Kelly, can you start out, introduce yourself and your company and tell us a little bit about yourself?

Kelly Lea:
My name is Kelly Lea. I'm the general manager of Texas Roof Management Incorporated. I've been with them nearly seven years. I've been in the roofing industry my entire life. I was born into it. I'm a natural born roofer, always been doing this. My son actually is a roofing contractor also, and he works for Empire in Fort Worth. My nephew is actually my director of operations here at Texas Roof Management so we're definitely a roofing family.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I love it. Kelly, you and I have done so much together in the past with Midwest Roofing Contractors Association and you've just so many years. We're going to talk about that in a minute, but I just had to put that in there. You've just given so much back. Richard, can you introduce yourself and your company?

Richard Koetter:
I'm Richard Koetter. I'm a president of Armored Roofing Company in Wichita Falls. I've been here since 1976 working for Armored, back when things were simple. You had four products you could buy and that was it, unlike like today where you have tons of things you can do. But I started here when I was 19 and just worked into it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. That's great.

Kelly Lea:
Had a little bit Texas Roof Management's been in business for about 28 years now and it is 100% woman owned business. That's a little unique in the roofing industry.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yes, it is.

Kelly Lea:
[inaudible 00:02:58] has the most wonderful company I've ever worked for in my life.

Heidi Ellsworth:
You know I'm a little on, I really like that at being part of [inaudible 00:03:11] roofing. That's pretty awesome. Well, Richard and Kelly both, thank you on great companies, great history in roofing. Let's kind of jump into talking a little bit about the association. Kelly, maybe you could talk just a little bit about MRCA, what you do, and the association overall.

Kelly Lea:
Well, MRCA is a regional association. It covers 17 states in the middle of the United States. It's from Pennsylvania to West Arkansas, the Dakotas, Southwest of Texas. We're a pretty large organization.

Kelly Lea:
I think both our organizations are about the same size. We tend to specialize a little bit more in commercial roofing and RCATS more in residential. We're hoping that all this stuff coming together really helps both sides of this steep slope and low slope roofing out there.

Kelly Lea:
MRCA is 71 years old. We've been around for a long time. It started with a bunch of Kansas City roofers in Kansas City, Kansas is where it first started at. It's grown. We've been up and down. We brought in associates as you know Heidi, several years back, which has really helped our growth. It's been a very successful thing to have associates associated with our association. Anyway, because we didn't do that for so many years and I think it's made us a better association because of that participation.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I was really honored to be on the board or on, I should say on the association advisory council and when it first started. That was great. I loved it and been very involved with MRCA. Richard, tell us a little bit about RCAT. What a great state organization. You guys do so much. Please share more about the association.

Richard Koetter:
RCAT was formed in 1975 by about seven or eight roofers around the state. We were one of the charter members of it back then. Like Kelly said, we were commercially commercial until probably in the late '80s, early '90s where it transitioned to, we got more residential contractors in it and now it seems we've probably got more residential than commercial contractors in company.

Richard Koetter:
We've got a lot of programs going. We've set up programs for help the roofers out. The good thing about it is I can call anybody all over the state. I know so many people around the state and ask anything about anything going on and you get an answer or they'll help you out. I've helped other ones out. It's kind of a big family basically. Like Kelly said, we're probably about the same size number of wives right now.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Well, just a little fact on Roofer's Coffee Shop, the number one state with the most people who visit our site, Texas. You have a lot of roofing going on down there.

Heidi Ellsworth:
You guys are going to do, you're doing something kind of unprecedented, at least nothing, I mean, maybe it's happened, but I've never heard of it before where you're taking your associations are coming together where you usually have two shows, you each have your own show, which we've attended both. We're always attending both of them, but this year you are bringing them together and you're doing it as one group in September in Dallas. I'm going to start with Kelly. How did that idea to merge the convention this year come about?

Kelly Lea:
Well, several years back, we decided that whoever the president was, that's where we would go to have our conference at. In the last five or six years, we've been to Kansas City. We're going back to Nebraska next year, because the next president's from Nebraska. I got the opportunity to choose Texas and that's what I wanted to do. I decided Fort Worth because I want true Texas and Fort Worth really is true Texas is what it is.

Kelly Lea:
Well, Sarah Ramone, who is the executive director for RCAT, and I were sitting around and we're talking about the conference was going to come here. She was very gracious because she was going to move her conference so it didn't conflict with our conference. I think I just said at one point in time, "Well we ought to look at trying to do this thing together. Wouldn't that be exciting? Think about all the people that we could get." We talked about that the suppliers and manufacturers would love that. They only have to be one show in Texas this year. Is it two different shows? They were all for that.

Kelly Lea:
We just started talking and when we didn't know if it was going to happen or not. Rachel Pinkus with our association and Sarah have worked extremely close together to make this happen. I'm going to give RCAT all the kudos because we're letting them sort of run this show. We're participating with them so it's the bigger association letting RCAT run this thing. We're excited about that. They've all done a great job. It's going to be very well attended and we've heard nothing but good vibrations from all this thing going on.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Richard, this is pretty cool. I mean, it is great. I mean, I know Sarah, she's awesome. First of all, even Kelly, for Sarah to say, "Hey, we'll move our show," but then for you all to kind of look at it and say, "No, let's just make it." I love the name of it. It's in your advertising, Mega Roofing Conference. I think that's so perfect. Richard, how is that kind come about from the RCAT side?

Richard Koetter:
Well, Sarah and I have been talking this for probably a year and a half or maybe two, because I was incoming president during this period and she asked me about it and I go, "I think it's a good idea." We've been getting with MRCA's office and doing back and forth passing information on to see how everything would might work out. They come up with an idea. We looked at it and it was pretty, they come up with pretty good plan. It was very little tweaking we had to do to it to help them out. I thought it basically a great idea.

Richard Koetter:
Like Kelly said, all your suppliers, it's helping them out because it makes one show. Instead of having one show one month, another one another month in the same area, we just said it'd be a joint one. I think we'd get more people in. We've already sold out all the booth base. We're up to 205-210 vendors already at a booth sold. It's usually by now we're only at 60% and we sold out in the end of June it was sold out already. It's going to be a good show and I think it's going to be a lot of good speakers coming in for it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Tell us a little bit [inaudible 00:10:16].

Kelly Lea:
[inaudible 00:10:16] board meeting. I'm sorry. We had our board meeting two weeks ago in Montana and at that point in time we had sold all the booths out and we actually added 17 more booths since we left Montana. I mean [inaudible 00:10:31] waiting when we got finished with this thing. Like I said, it just seems to be exploding and everybody wants to participate.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Right. I mean the buzz is great about it. I love that. Richard, you started to talk about speakers and some of the educational coming. Talk about that. What's going to happen there?

Richard Koetter:
Well, you got Mark Graham's coming in from NRCA. We've got, let's see, where'd we go here, just look at my notes. Steve Phillips coming in, Paul Reed, Jim Johnson will be down there. A lot of names people know for that.

Kelly Lea:
Larry stopped out of Springfield, Missouri's going to be there, great motivational speaker.

Richard Koetter:
Of course, each of us have our own. We have a speaker coming in at, I think our 10th, our first day, we've got a speaker coming in. That's not exactly set, but I can't really say who that is yet for sure. It's what's in work. We have a big name speaker trying to come in for that to do a speaking event. But we got a lot of seminars and a lot of comp, lot of you meet a lot of people there that everybody probably kind of knows everybody from locally from the state, but we have a lot of new people coming in that we want to try to get interested in it and participate in it with us.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. It seems to me like this is going to be a great opportunity for both of your associations for membership too, I mean, to be able to cross advertise, to be able to have contractors who maybe have not been involved with MRCA or not been involved with RCAT, learn more, get more involved, also not just contractor members, but some of the vendors that are coming in too. I mean, what a great cross promotion.

Richard Koetter:
We have on your vendor side, of course, both of us had a lot of the been national people together, but MRCA, we've got ones coming in that's more in tune to them that they follow them around more than us. They're more of a national deal. It's working out pretty good, but everybody's want, like I say, everybody's wanting to get in on it because it's big.

Heidi Ellsworth:
It's really big. Wow. Before we, I don't want to miss either too Richard really kind of talking a little bit about there's a lot going on in the roofing industry right now. I know for both associations, you really do a lot to help with advocacy, education, technical, all those kind of things. What are some of the big things that are happening in Texas right now that contractors should be aware of?

Richard Koetter:
Well, right now we've got people coming in talking about the supply issue. That's a big issue right now. As Kelly knows, trying to find material when you need it and then even if the manufacturers are promising it, whether you get it or not and what the price is going to be, those issues we're discussing a lot of it right now. Locally, we're working on a mentoring program to bring in to where we've got the new people coming in. We've got people set up around the state. If they want to call and ask, I've got a problem. I got something new I'm trying to get into if they want, we're trying to help them out to do it right the first time. We've got people spread around the state.

Richard Koetter:
If you want to call somebody from your area, you don't really want to call your competition, you can call somebody from El Paso or Corpus or here or Fort Worth, Dallas, anywhere, West Texas, Amarillo, Lubbock, anywhere you want to call them from, Austin, you can call somebody else and say, "Hey, I've got this, I'm doing this. What am I going to get into if I start this? What kind of problems do I need to look for?" We're starting that, trying to get that program off. Plus we got our local licensing program for Texas that you have to take test, pass all the questions on business and the commercial and residential side to what the manufacturer require. That's more of a continuing education for roofers also.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's excellent. That's excellent. Kelly, I mean, MRCA is just known to be leading on the technical side. What are some of the initiatives on the MRCA is working on right now from their technical committee and are some of those going to be available to find out about during the show?

Kelly Lea:
I believe we'll have a couple of white papers during the show and I'm not sure what they're on because I'm not on that committee anymore. But we work very closely with WJE right now, and we have adhesive test going on. We have insulation tests going on. We have several things in the working.

Kelly Lea:
We actually just funded $40,000 for technical research with WJE. We've committed a lot of money into that aspect there.

Kelly Lea:
Our TNR committee has just gotten better every year. We're in the fortunate position that we could put so much money into it so they can come up with all this stuff that we need to work on. That's the biggest thing we got going, and there'll be some stuff in the conference that you'll be able to see from the TNR committee.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Excellent. Then I know also River's Coffee Shop was really honored last year to win one of the awards for our coffee conversations. You have just great awards every year at the show, and that's still all happening with all your meetings and everything, all the awards?

Kelly Lea:
That's one of the things we really, really try to promote to the contractors and what we'd really like to bring to [inaudible 00:16:08] contractors is our safety programs and our initiatives and safety. We've been in and built outlines to build safety plans out of. You can turn them in. Our own council reviews the safety plans and tell them what they need to do to make them better.

Kelly Lea:
When we started this program, I've been on this board for 11 years and my first committee was safety. One of the first things we did was start working on safety plans. I don't want to write somebody's safety plan, but I would like to give them an outline to do that. We worked real hard at that through the years, but Gary Alman reviewing your safety plan and telling you what you can do to get better, I think the first year that we did it, we had 20 people apply for it and nobody won the platinum award. It was gold, silver and bronze, and now there's probably 20 that win the platinum award because your safety plans just get better when you do that.

Kelly Lea:
But all that information is available. We've been trying to really get Steep Slope members to come into our association. We've made that a priority in the last five to six years. Our next president is a Steep Slope president so we're pretty excited about that. We can help people.

Kelly Lea:
Membership for us is that one of the real big reasons we wanted to do this together is for the Steep Slope contractors and that occurs with North Texas Roofing Contractors Association, RCAT. I've been associated with both these associations for many, many years. We're hoping to bring some people into the fold. I think it could be very membership wise. It could be good. We can provide a lot of things to help them with these white papers, with the safety programs, with the safety outlines, with the safety review and innovation award that you won last year.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That is very cool. Fort Worth, what a great place. I was just there last year and for one of the first times I really was able to walk around and see it. Richard, what are some of the events and some of the activities that people should be getting excited about coming to the show?

Richard Koetter:
Well, of course, Tuesday we've got our golf tournament. It's online registered. We've got all the speakers. We've got the seminars. Of course, Kelly, the MRCA's got their young council and they've got their different programs. We've got a lot of different programs coming in, mainly the conference itself. But we required for their state, if you [inaudible 00:18:48] license you're required to have 10 hours or eight hours of continuing education every year. The desk gives them the opportunity to come in and get their accreditations they need to keep our local licensing thing going on.

Richard Koetter:
We do have for this conference, we have, like I said, we've got probably, I looked at the programs, we've got probably 10 or 15 different speakers coming in to different programs give them. We do have another one we started last year we have where it's a round table class where we get basically five or six people have been around for a number of years and then basically it's an open forum, ask any questions between residential, commercial, anything you want to ask about, we'll have somebody on our panel to ask questions. This is where, from business standpoint or to roofing issues. It's an open forum. We'll have a class on that. It gives them the chance to ask anything they want or learn anything they want to start in.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Very cool. I love it. You did mention also the young professionals, I know last year they had this great event and was actually a casino night. Kelly, any ideas on what they're going to be doing again this year?

Kelly Lea:
Well, we found that really works pretty well. A lot of people like that, so we're going to do a casino night again. They do a community project also. We're actually going to build bicycles on the floor that are given to different school districts around the Dallas, Fort Worth metroplex. Kids that don't have bikes or need a bike or ride a bike to school, we right now, we've bought through the board 35 bicycles. We're going to build 35 bicycles during the show out there.

Kelly Lea:
The YCC event will be the first night we have a past president's dinner where we invite all our past presidents to come and get them actively involved in the show and do that. Then our big deal, one of the biggest things that we do is the auction for the ...

Heidi Ellsworth:
Foundation.

Kelly Lea:
Yeah. That's where a lot of this money comes from for us to put back into the foundation board, makes all this money and then they give it back to the association for the studies and stuff that we do there.

Kelly Lea:
But the last couple of years we've raised $80,000-$90,000 in our auction out there. Then I think one of the big things is we've asked everybody to participate. RCAT members can come to YCC. They can come to the auction. We're trying to get our folks to go play in the golf tournament. I was trying to, but I got a meeting that I would never get back to if I did. But so we're really want to integrate this together and get everybody involved and touch base on everything that happens.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Well, I've done all of these events so a couple years ago, I was at the RCAT golf tournament. I did not golf. It's always safer for people when I don't golf. It is great event, great event, and the YCC and the auction of course, and Roofers Coffee Shop is donating to the auction. We're very excited to ... Actually, we're donating a podcast, so someone can come and do this podcast just like you all. I love how you're intertwining it and it's all coming together. How do people register? How can they attend?

Richard Koetter:
You got [inaudible 00:22:47]. Go ahead Kelly.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Go ahead, Richard. I should have said that. Go ahead.

Kelly Lea:
Go ahead, Richard.

Richard Koetter:
You got mrca.org or you can go to rcat.net/tradeshow. Either one you can register through MRCA or RCAT, either one. It'll work out either way.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Kelly, what's the hotel and the convention center?

Kelly Lea:
It's the Omni and it's Tarrant County Convention Center. It's very easy because you walk out the door of the Omni and cross the street and you're on the floor. I've been to these where you got to walk four miles to get the convention center. We're going to walk across the street. We have a big portion just right in the door. It's going to be fun, and like I said, easy, and the Omni is absolutely beautiful. It's a great place to stay and we have enough rooms blocked for everybody to come.

Heidi Ellsworth:
September is beautiful in Fort Worth?

Kelly Lea:
Yes.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Lovely time of year.

Richard Koetter:
We want to thank also MRCA because they came down was it Kelly, two months ago we had that meeting in Fort Worth at at the Omni? It was about 10 months ago. They had a meeting where their board come down, had their meetings. We came, we brought most of our board come in to meet with them. It was nice to sit in Sarah and I sat in on some different meetings and it was really nice to sit down and talk to everybody and meet who you're dealing with, not just have on the phone and we had what faces the people get to talk to. That was really nice for them to put that out.

Kelly Lea:
That's the first time I met Richard, was that was our springboard meeting at the Omni.

Richard Koetter:
We probably seen each other before, we just didn't ever talk.

Kelly Lea:
Didn't know [inaudible 00:24:29].

Richard Koetter:
Many years I've gone to this.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That is the beauty of associations. That's the beauty of being involved is these friendships. They just keep growing. You think when you've been in roofing a long time, that you're going to be like, "I know everybody," but nope. Every time you still you're constantly meeting new people.

Richard Koetter:
Well, when I started most of the people when I started, they're not even, they're gone. They were in their 50s when I started so they're gone now. I always kind of wondered how it was going to transition. I'd look around and go here's all these guys running it. There's nobody new coming up and all of a sudden you'd have people coming up and it just all just transitions automatically, just always somebody coming up, wants get involved. That's the big thing is getting people involved, come to the conference, see what's out there, meet people, get talked about, don't just join and hide just to say you're joined, come out and get involved with their, go get involved.

Heidi Ellsworth:
It's the best thing you can do for your business.

Richard Koetter:
Right.

Kelly Lea:
I piggyback on that is that I was part of North Texas when they restarted North Texas. I was one of the founding members. I was also on the RCAT board. I was president in 1999 and now I feel like that I've come full circle and I still meet new people every day. The people that I meet, I didn't know Sarah three years ago and Paul's on the board with us now. We're real excited about that. He's brought a lot to this. But the people that I know throughout the United States now from being on these boards and these associations, the people I know throughout Texas, I'm just not a Dallas contractor anymore. I know a lot of folks out there and they've all been great. They've all been great to work with and really built some great friendships.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I love it. Gentlemen, you've inspired me as always. I am really excited for this convention. Again, just so everybody, you need to get on and register. It is September 27th through the 29th in Fort Worth at the Omni and the convention center. You can register, as you already heard on the RCAT site or on the MRCA site. As always, this information is all available on Roofer's Coffee Shop under both of their directories, MRCA and the RCAT, which we are honored to partner with and to get all this information out there.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Richard, Kelly, I can't wait to see you in Fort Worth. This is going to be great. Thank you so much for sharing everything today.

Richard Koetter:
Thank you.

Kelly Lea:
Look forward to it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Thank you and thank you all for listening today. Again, great information of how to get involved, how to build your business, how to get out there and learn so much. When you hear all of this, you can realize how important that is to grow your business.

Heidi Ellsworth:
You can find all this information, as I said before, on River's Coffee Shop, and you can also find all the podcasts that we do on riverscoffeeshop.com underneath the RLW navigation podcast roofing road trips. Plus, as you will know, they're also on your favorite podcast channel so be sure to subscribe and get those notifications so you don't miss a single one. Thank you so much for being a part of today and we'll see you on the next Roofing Road Trip.

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.