By New Zealand Women in Roofing. 

How a scholarship program helped one woman transform personally and professionally. 

New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR) is a nonprofit, volunteer organization meant to support the careers of women in roofing, whether they are starting their career or a seasoned member of the industry. They aim to provide a network of mentorship, education and recruitment that helps members in all areas of the industry, from the rooftop to the office. One of the ways they uplift their members is through scholarships like the Leadership Scholarship. The most recent recipient of this scholarship, Laura Cross from the NZWiR Christchurch Branch, shared her experience at the 5-day Outboard Bound Leadership course. Read on to hear about her time there! 

Charting new heights through an Outward Bound Scholarship 

Few experiences are as transformational as embarking on a journey of self-discovery in the picturesque landscapes of the Outward Bound school in the Queen Charlotte Sound.  

For Bremick Fasteners South Island Account Manager Laura Cross, a New Zealand Women in Roofing member, this experience became a reality last month. The 30-year-old received the 2023 New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR) Outward Bound Scholarship. Supported by industry partners, the scholarship allows women in the New Zealand roofing industry to participate in an Outward Bound course, helping them develop their leadership and personal skills. 

Laura’s voyage to the Outward Bound school in Anakiwa wasn’t without its twists and turns. Initially booked to head to Anakiwa in November 2023, fate intervened with a stress fracture to her ankle, postponing Laura’s five-day course. Undeterred by this setback, Laura eventually shed her moon boot and began training again, attending a five-day leadership course in March. Motivated by the prospect of unlocking her potential at Outward Bound, Laura immersed herself in activities designed to test her physical prowess and mental resilience. From navigating Marlborough’s waterways to scaling the school’s towering Kahikatea trees and rock walls, Laura embraced each obstacle with tenacity. 

She admits the course was a journey of introspection and growth. 

“The physical challenges and not knowing what would happen next didn’t worry me. However, the pace we were moving at and being in close proximity 24-7 with people I didn’t know was stressful, and I felt out of my comfort zone. 

“Our watch was a diverse age mix of three people under 30, including myself, and ten women over 40. We had come from having full autonomy over our lives to not knowing when we’d eat, sleep or have a cuppa on our own. We had to learn to let go of control and lean into it,” she said. 

Surrounded by her twelve watchmates, Laura delved deep into the nuances of leadership and collaboration. Through shared experiences and camaraderie, the Bremick South Island account manager discovered the power of teamwork and the satisfaction of collective achievement. She shared, “I have made connections with 12 new friends. Who you are there with is as much a part of the Outward Bound experience as what you get from it yourself. You can learn a lot about yourself through how you interact with others. 

“I used to do rock climbing at a competitive level, so I was looking forward to this activity and the high ropes course. I was teamed with Michelle, a watchmate who was less confident about scaling heights. It was inspiring to watch her progress through her fear. She cried. I cried. I coached her through it, and I was so proud of her getting up there and achieving it. We communicated well, and working together and completing the obstacles was a good feeling.” 

Laura said sailing a cutter was another opportunity to lead her watchmates. She shared, 
“Achieving ten people to row in synch was quite the task. I took the lead as I enjoy rowing, and I’m not a natural navigator! There was no wind; it was the stillest, most beautiful morning ever. The sun was beating down.” 

She explained, “I stepped up and liked having the extra responsibility. I encouraged and kept people on time. Everyone was busting their boiler to get the job done, but without wind, pushing us forward with our blistered hands was mentally challenging. It felt great to lead and have a sense of achievement when we reached our destination.” 

Laura says one month has passed since her return to work, and while she has more processing to do, she is enjoying putting her learnings into action at work. 

“I have gained more confidence and belief that I can do what I set out to do. I feel more empowered to go after things I want. I don’t question myself as much or ruminate on things without asking others first. I speak up more. While I enjoy talking to people one-on-one, I used to be more of a wallflower in group settings, which was challenging.” 

NZWiR Founding Chair Jenny Maxwell said the committee received many quality scholarship applications, but during her interview, Laura’s self-awareness stood out. She explained, “When we met Laura, she knew that to pursue herself and her career to do better, she needed to be more extroverted in her role. She said she could talk to clients from a knowledge point of view but didn’t feel confident in herself. We knew at Outward Bound she could gain this confidence and run with it – to get out there and do well.” 

“I spoke to Laura’s boss last week, and he said there is already a difference in her self-confidence, and he can see a change in her assertiveness at work, which is exactly what we had hoped for Laura,” said Jenny. 

During the five-day course, Laura said a leadership workshop cemented her newfound confidence. “We learned about our leadership styles and how to work with colleagues who aren’t the same as us. We learnt how to tap into other people’s styles to make the workplace better for us and them,” she said. 

She continued, “The workshop empowered me as an individual, and I gained personal insight into my own style. I struggle with Imposter Syndrome. I’m one of the very few female reps in the industry, and despite being in it for nine years and repping for six, I sometimes find it a slog. Sometimes, I have felt I have to work twice as hard as a male, and I have asked myself, ‘Am I good enough?’ I have learnt to accept the success I have is deserved.” 

Despite the deep reflection and personal challenge, there were many moments of levity and laughter. 

“We were leaving Mistletoe Bay on the cutter – we were all prepared and ready to go. Leaving the dock, everyone was rowing and doing what they were supposed to be doing. It felt like a hard slog, but we weren’t moving. We asked ourselves what was happening and why we weren’t moving – before someone realized we hadn’t taken the anchor out!” 

Laura says one of the good habits she gained in Anakiwa has followed her home. 
“I felt very good afterward with what I had achieved physically as I never enjoyed running before the course – yet I’m home now and still running. From a mental clarity point of view, it helps me.” 

The Bremick employee says she is grateful to NZWiR for the opportunity. 
“Outward Bound is not something I thought I’d do in my lifetime. I wasn’t even sure I would apply for the scholarship and I definitely wasn’t sure I’d get the scholarship. Being at OB has helped with my confidence a lot. I feel stronger mentally and physically after having done OB.” 

The Outward Bound Trust of New Zealand offers life-changing journeys of self-discovery. Visit www.outwardbound.co.nz to learn more about their courses. 

Original article source: New Zealand Women in Roofing 

By Dani Sheehan. 

See how these roofing organizations are bridging continents for women and highlighting the importance of expanding your connections within the industry. 

We talk about the roofing industry as a close-knit community, but in some cases, the connections you make can spread across continents. In Season 5, Episode 51 of Roofing Road Trips®, Heidi J. Ellsworth traveled across the globe to talk with the Founding Chair of New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR) Jenny Maxwell. Sharing a love for the industry and wanting to empower women in roofing, the two chat about the formation of NZWiR, its impact on women in the industry and some of the similarities and differences between roofing in the U.S. and New Zealand. 

Jenny has been to the International Roofing Expo (IRE) three times and said it’s a different dynamic in New Zealand. She shared, “New Zealand is 80% metal, so very few tiles, hardly any asphalt. There is a bit of membrane roofing, but generally just in the commercial space. While there are similarities, there’s quite a big void between what we do in New Zealand and what happens in America, and I think that comes down particularly to climate.” When the entire continent is an island, it’s critical to keep houses safe and waterproof. 

This also helped spark the founding of NZWiR. After having attended a National Women in Roofing Day in New Orleans in 2018, Jenny went back to spread the word and start her own association. She explained, “All I wanted to do was get people excited about what this could do and how we could achieve some stuff to support women in roofing. And New Zealand’s not a big place, and it goes to stand for the fact that because we are small, we all become a little bit isolated. We’ve got people all over the country in small towns that don’t necessarily know a lot of people.” 

Borrowing the four pillars from National Women in Roofing (NWiR), they have been successful in education, networking and mentoring. Recruitment has been a struggle, but they’ve expanded to other trade organizations as well and have been gaining some traction. While they won’t attend IRE 2024, they look forward to making it in 2025 and continue to share ideas and  borrow from other organizations around the world. 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast episode to hear more about NZWiR’s latest initiatives and how it’s connecting women in New Zealand and across the globe!

NZWiR is an independent organization empowering women in the roofing industry to reach the next level of excellence.  

RoofersCoffeeShop®, the place where the industry meets for technology, information and everyday business, is pleased to welcome New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR). 

Incorporated in 2019, NWZiR is a volunteer-based organization focused on supporting the careers of women in the roofing industry. Their work is based in creating spaces for women in the industry, whether they are in the office or on the roof. Overall, they are guided by their key pillars, which are: 

• Education - Create high-quality learning programs and experiences for men and women to build successful businesses and careers in roofing. 
• Mentoring - Mentor and empower women in the roofing industry to achieve excellence in their chosen careers 
• Networking - Provide opportunities to inter-act with women in the roofing industry, creating strong, long-lasting and supportive networks. 
• Recruiting - Reach beyond traditional recruitment strategies to attract and hire women who will bring diverse backgrounds, talents and experiences to the roofing industry. 

They encourage people of all genders to join in order to grow and strengthen the roofing industry in general in New Zealand. By connecting their community and raising up voices, NWZiR is raising the bar for professionalism and pushing the entire industry forward.  

NWZiR is also celebrating the industry and how far it has come! They host a nomination-based scholarship called the Ranz Scholarship that celebrates a woman working in the roofing industry. The recipients get to attend the Roofing Association of New Zealand (RANZ) conference to further their experience and knowledge in the field. 

Membership is open to women who want to join a community of energized women in the industry and men who support their goals. Becoming a member gives access to the events and programs that NWZiR runs to support their pillars. A member can access special learning opportunities, mentoring from industry leaders and seasoned professionals, networking sessions and recruitment channels.  

RoofersCoffeeShop is proud to welcome New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR)!

By New Zealand Women in Roofing.

In a traditionally male-dominated industry, New Zealand Women in Roofing is highlighting the women that worked alongside the men in the Fletcher Living's BuildHers Project 2023.

The BuildHers Project, based in New Zealand, is a house-building project specifically for women in the industry. It is led by women from the architectural drawings to the construction and the sales of the home. With more than forty women working on it, the project showcases the capability of women and the skills and perspectives they lend to the larger industry. Liz Watson, the managing director at Stone Roofing, gave an update on the progress of the project, saying that the women working "conquered the challenges of stage two with sheer determination and passion. Despite enduring two rainy days, photo shoots and mentoring moments, the team stood tall and strong."

Meet the remarkable team:

• Tina Marie Potter from The Roofing Specialists Ltd in Hamilton (five year's experience)
• Tarquala Whittaker-stone from Douglas Roofing in Whangarei (apprentice)
• Aiesha Thalia from @mohanwaterproofing in Auckland (apprentice)
• Elizsabeth Watson from Stone Roofing Limited in Hamilton (12 year's experience)

Why this team

Liz chose this team based on the principles of New Zealand Women in Roofing - mentoring and education. We had a perfect mix: an experienced professional, an intermediate expert, and two dedicated apprentices, one of whom is exploring iron roofing for the first time, transitioning from membrane roofing.

Special thanks to our behind the scenes team

By Debbie Wickliffe, New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR).

With a letter from their committee chair, the New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR) prepare to move forward.

Greetings to all our members, sponsors and supporters, as this is our first newsletter since the new board has been established I thought I would introduce myself and the board members. My name is Debbie Wickliffe and I have taken on the position of chair of NZWiR, alongside me I am very lucky to have a great team of dedicated, talented and amazing women that make up the committee.

Vice chair: Olivia Larson
Secretary: Levern Thomas
Treasurer: Marina Ralph
Assistant treasurer: Sophia Kahakura
Other current members: Liz Watson, Marcia Hintz, Rebekah Fraser, Genia Znarok and Deborah Brown

Previous members Jenny Maxwell and Jade Thomas have been appointed as the Board Advisors for the 2023 – 2024 term.

We are all excited to be part of this organization and we are committed to continuing the great work that has already been done by the previous committee. NZWiR aims to support and empower women in the industry by providing networking opportunities, professional development, mentoring, recruitment and education.

One of our key objectives for the year is to increase membership and create more opportunities and offerings for our members to engage in.

We are grateful for the support of our sponsors and supporters who help us to make these initiatives possible. We encourage all members to spread the word about NZWiR and invite other women in the industry to join us.

Thank you for your ongoing support and we look forward to working with you and growing our organization.

By Adam Cabrera. 

NZWiR’s initiatives reflect a commitment to long-term development and empowerment within the roofing community. 

When it comes to the roofing industry, the presence of women is sometimes overlooked. However, in New Zealand, Jenny Maxwell, President of the Roofing Association of New Zealand and the Chairperson of New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR), is changing the narrative. 

During a conversation on the Roofing Road Trips® podcast, Jenny unpacked the history and the role of NZWiR, an organization that is connecting and empowering women across the roofing sector. The New Zealand roofing landscape, dominated by metal due to the country’s unique climate, offers distinct challenges and opportunities, something Jenny knows well since founding her own roofing company in 2009. 

Inspired by the National Women in Roofing conference in the US, Jenny brought the idea of a women’s roofing association back to her home country. “It really stirred something in me,” Jenny said, recalling her experience in the US and her determination to create similar supportive structures in New Zealand. 

NZWiR's mission is to unite women, especially those in smaller companies, and provide a support network and resources to foster their growth in the industry. Under Jenny’s guidance, the organization is making big strides with initiatives like scholarships to national conferences and leadership courses, designed to develop essential skills for women in roofing. 

Recruiting, mentoring, education and networking are pillars of the organization along with seeking to foster long-term growth throughout the industry. Jenny is passionate about mentoring, emphasizing the value of passing the torch by bringing in new women to help run the association. “Better that we actually let these girls get in and get themselves some experience, what we can do is actually sit there in the back and actually mentor them,” Jenny said. 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast to learn more about NZWiR and what they are doing to help empower women in the New Zealand roofing industry.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Kristina Hill from Home Shield Roofing and Exteriors, Wendy Marvin from Matrix Roofing and Home Solutions and Steve Little from KPost Roofing and Waterproofing. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the webinar.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: SRS, Thank you so much. We've brought these amazing contractors together and we're going to hear what they think, what's happening in the industry, what's trending, and then we're going to kind of compare it to what they talked about yesterday with the manufacturers and distributors. So it should be a pretty.

Kristina Hill: Hello everyone. I am Kristina Hill out of Lincoln, Nebraska, and I own Home Shield Roofing and Exteriors. I'm also the founder of Harness & Heels, Women in Roofing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'm so glad you said that because I was going to nudge you if you didn't. All right. Wendy.

Wendy Marvin: I'm Wendy Marvin. I'm with Matrix Roofing and Home Solutions out of Vancouver, Washington.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Steve?

Steve Little: And I have the privilege of being with these lovely ladies in roofing. My name is Steve Little, I'm the president of KPost Roofing and Waterproofing here in Dallas, Texas. And also the CEO of National Roofing Partners.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome. I am humbled and flattered and so much for all of you to be here. I love you all and this is going to be a great conversation. So let's start with the show. How has the show been for you all? And Steve, I'm going to start with you. How's it been?

Steve Little: The best IRE I've been involved in 20 years.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Steve Little: Yeah, it's spectacular. The folks that put the show on have such a difficult time of coordinating everything all year long. And finally, it's here and there were lines to get in. All the aisles are busy. Usually you see by the second day, one part of the show being slow, whether you went left or right, the aisles are busy. People are hungry. They want to talk to you. We're fortunate it's here in town. So KPost took a booth and we've had suppliers come to us at one place. We've had people interested to come to work for us. It's great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Lee: Fantastic.

Steve Little: It's been a great show.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: How smart to have your own booth.

Steve Little: Well, it's in our town. I don't know that we would do it if it was in Denver, or Atlanta, or someplace, but here in our own town, it's great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it's great. So how's the show been for you, Wendy?

Wendy Marvin: I feel like it's Disneyland. I know we're waiting in lines a little bit, which is fine, but it's like you just look at people are-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: If that is like Disneyland.

Wendy Marvin: Right? But I know that people are everywhere. And to Steve's point, I'm so excited about... We've been around them when they've been a little slower in these past couple of years and we won't talk about why, but it's just so refreshing that we're all here, we're gathering around. I'm listening to conversations of people sitting at tables that I don't even know and I'm like, "That sounds really cool. That's kind of exciting."

Steve Little: They're engaged.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah, yeah. That's the fun part of being here too, is just all that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And it really started for us on Sunday.

Wendy Marvin: Oh, totally. Yeah. National Women in Roofing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So much going on. So Kristina, how's it been for you?

Kristina Hill: So this is actually my very first IRE that I've been into.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Wendy Marvin: Oh my gosh. The bar is set.

Steve Little: Oh, the bar is set.

Kristina Hill: I know.

Steve Little: The bar is set.

Kristina Hill: And you're saying it's the best. I'm like, "Oh my goodness."

Wendy Marvin: So high, yes.

Kristina Hill: So it's been amazing. So I don't think I've made it through even half of the expo hall, to be honest with you.

Wendy Marvin: So many booths.

Kristina Hill: There's so people and so many things. And I think the reoccurring theme for me is, I'm so excited to actually meet you in person. All of these online relationships with everybody and you could have put a face to a name.

Wendy Marvin: But you've done such an amazing job cultivating all of those relationships. You did such a great job. I love it. I love our pretty game.

Steve Little: Just say yes, because it's true. Good job.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You created thank online space for us all to meet.

Lee: Very much so.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I mean, there is also Roofers Coffee Shop, but we love both.

Wendy Marvin: That's right.

Kristina Hill: We do. It's good for all of us.

Wendy Marvin: Another online space, yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. That's what's so great, when we do. We all use it and we go through there. So Lee, besides the beautiful hat that you got, how's the show been for you?

Lee: It's good. So this is my 10th show.

Wendy Marvin: Oh my.

Lee: And I totally agree with you guys. It is amazing. I was thinking Sunday...

Steve Little: England, it was just France, Canada. It was amazing. They were there and what they were telling us was happening to them in their countries, the same thing happened to us in our country. And they are hungry to be here. They're excited to be at IRE.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow. That's great.

Lee: I took an Uber. I wanted to go to a country Western store in town, Cavender's.

Steve Little: Yes.

Lee: And so I took an Uber with another female in the roofing industry and we're like, "Let's go to the Western store." We were trying on boots and this woman from New Zealand...

Steve Little: Yes, Jenny.

Lee: ... Different, different woman.

Wendy Marvin: Oh, it's different. We have more than one.

Lee: Yeah. There's 12 of them here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh my gosh.

Wendy Marvin: Oh my gosh.

Lee: We started talking in the middle of the aisle at a random store in Dallas about the roofing show, International Roofing Expo, and I thought it was hilarious. We were just doing the same thing, trying to get boots.

Wendy Marvin: I was going to say, how cool it was. We had the New Zealand person from NWIR.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And that was Jenny. And Jenny owns her own company in New Zealand, her and her husband. She's the president of the New Zealand NRCA and she's also the president of the New Zealand Women in Roofing, and she got National Women in Roofing. So yeah, that's why I was like, "Jenny?"

Lee: Yeah, just random. No, it wasn't Jenny, it was another woman.

Steve Little: So you realize that you had a part of this because Roofers Coffee Shop-

Wendy Marvin: Could you please say that again?

Steve Little: Roofers Coffee Shop has gotten out-

Lee: Through the people in the back.

Steve Little: ... into the entire industry. And what you've done with the Roofers Coffee Shop and you're our voice that's out here. And starting National Women in Roofing, there are 500 women at the event on Sunday.

Lee: It was crazy.

Steve Little: But more importantly, I was with... And I'm not name dropping here, but I was with McKay Daniels, who told me he believes his next article is going to be about all the fathers and daughters that are walking the show. And I have to agree with him. We have seen him.

Lee: Yeah, there's a lot.

Steve Little: And this is the succession that's happening in our industry. It's not just happening grandpa to grandfather to grandson. It's to granddaughter, it's the daughters that are happening. So it excites the hell out of me to see what's happening in our industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yesterday, Chicago Metal was on here and Alina is the new president of Chicago, and her dad is Brogan Huel who started it. So we're seeing this not just-

Wendy Marvin: Generational.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... in contractors, but also across the manufacturing, distribution-

Wendy Marvin: And you guys are still in your 20s. I just don't know how that works. Right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. Yeah.

Steve Little: You're so kind.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. Great, great entry to our next question which is, what do you see trending? So Lee, you were saying brand new business. I'm so proud of you. It's so cool, your business. What do you see trending that you kind of want to bring into your business here, but overall? It doesn't have to be just here.

Lee: I think for me, I'm an owner operator. I don't have any other employees, so I'm doing everything on my own. And as I grow and come into that, I'm all about efficiency right now. And so technology is huge. We were talking about earlier how there's a lot of tech companies that have now infiltrated the roofing industry, which I love. They're bringing us up to speed in this amazing world of-

Wendy Marvin: Kicking and screaming.

Lee: ... of possibilities. Whether we like it or not, it's here. And so I'm really focused on what kind of technology can I bring into my business to make me as efficient as possible to keep my profits going and growing and growing. So technology all the way.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And that's the trend, you're right, with all contractors.

Lee: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. What are you seeing, Kristina?

Kristina Hill: Kind of that same thing, I want to say. But I mean, I went by a booth and you can fly a drone and it will help you use AI to spot damage on there. So you know if it's too steep or too high. You don't have to get on the roof. You can use AI technology to really do the work for you. And it's so neat to see the progression of that and how advanced technology has become. But I will say kind of in my market, in the Nebraska market, we're seeing more and more of the Class 4 shingles, the Class 3 shingles really coming to the forefront and just learning from the different manufacturers about these now Class 3 shingles that weren't really a thing. I think Malarkey was the only one for a while that had a Class 3, and now everybody has one. So it's cool to see that evolving and just the changing of the shingle world actually seeing some new products come out.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They're meeting the needs.

Kristina Hill: Yes, absolutely.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Because the weather's crazy and we are seeing so much out there.

Wendy Marvin: We just got snow again day. Washington, what?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know.

Kristina Hill: I think it's snowing back home for me too.

Wendy Marvin: Well, you're in Nebraska though. Come on.

Kristina Hill: It's 80 degrees here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. I know.

Wendy Marvin: It's like you're in Nebraska College, don't you guys complain about snow, they have this all the time. We just shut down.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You should complain then, snowing all the time.

Kristina Hill: Yeah, I can complain. I have the right to complain.

Wendy Marvin: You have a right to say whatever you want because you're my favorite human.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay.

Wendy Marvin: Did you put us strategically? Do you laugh at this? Because I'm like, we as owners, would be run over by these type. Right?

Steve Little: Big time.

Wendy Marvin: I just love this, but I love this because we've talked so much about technology over the years and our involvement with our T3 and I just think about, like Steve said, they found us. Technology has found and they are everywhere. And it's not always a good thing. And I'm excited that we have all this new innovation and everything, but it's also so much. It's so overwhelming. And I'm really excited just not to pop RT3, but RT3 is really working hard on trying to put together some questions to ask what stage you are at your company and how to understand what API is versus EPS, or ESP, or whatever.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Sorry.

Wendy Marvin: You're good. You're good.

Lee: Every other acronym.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. There's so much. There's so much here, but so much to be excited for. We are a growing, changing, amazing industry that is just... We have such a bright future. I'm not trying to be cliche, but we really do.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's really true. It's really true. We've been watching it. Steve?

Steve Little: So you can tell that with PEs getting involved in our industry now and there's trending, there's a lot of private equity money coming into our industry's, there's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines that our industry is... They found us, is what I said before. RT3 started years ago. We found Pointivo in an RT3 event in Atlanta that was droning the solar industry and the technology, the telecom industry. We've brought them into the roofing space. And now, plug the National Roofing Partners, were doing AI drone technology with assessments. And it goes right back to cutting time on the roof for the contractor. And we have a labor problem in our industry, so technology is helping us in labor.

Kristina Hill: That and safety. Safety is a huge-

Wendy Marvin: It's helping us, but that's a big one.

Steve Little: Bingo. There are companies that are actually here, sell you the drone, sell you the technology. It downloads into your software. It produces a report for you for not just the commercial side, but also the residential side. And then it ties into the estimating programs. So it's like, bada bing, bada boom and you're done.

Wendy Marvin: And you're such a disruptor in our industry. I love it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. It's great.

Wendy Marvin: You're such a forefront and mover...

Steve Little: And so money chases opportunity. So private equity is chasing opportunity.

Wendy Marvin: The fact that they're here means something.

Steve Little: Right. So that's what I see trending. I see big business getting involved in our business. They should. We're part of food, water, shelter. It's what we do. Roofing protects.

Wendy Marvin: That's a good analogy.

Steve Little: They should be involved in what we're doing. So technology tie, there's some new safety stuff's coming out too with lanyards and...

Wendy Marvin: AI and the safety vests, to be able to pinpoint where they are. And to beep at them if they get close to an open surface.

Steve Little: And it also is taking their sweat and breaking it down. It's analyzing it. It's reporting back to the company if somebody is dehydrated, which is a safety issue. I mean, it's really some cool stuff, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And the Roofing Alliance, you're wearing that pin, is on the forefront of doing a lot of this research.

Steve Little: They really are.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And putting stuff out there.

Steve Little: Just like the Women in Roofing, you came to the Roofing Alliance, it said, "Hey, I got a good idea. We have a labor issue. We have this huge opportunity of a workforce that's out there. Let's go tap it." They invested in it and they continue to invest. And that is an idea that started 20 years ago.

Wendy Marvin: Probably over a cocktail.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And look what's happening.

Steve Little: It probably did over a napkin, a cocktail napkin. I'm sure it was.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. I know.

Wendy Marvin: I love it. And that's all coming to fruition. So exciting.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. And I want to go back on your mergers too, and just mention it's not just roofing companies that we're starting to see roll ups. We are seeing... To me, it goes back to the '90s with the amount of acquisitions and mergers that are going on in manufacturing and distribution.

Steve Little: So I'm old enough to be in the industry in the '90s, but I didn't join until 2000. Let me tell you what I know. What I know is that in the '90s, it was roofing companies trying to get together to better position themselves. And then they may decide to go public, so that they could all get a big cash windfall. It's not what's happening now. The subcontracting industry that is either servicing healthcare, industrial, reoccurring income with assessment programs that are happening, this is an established business. It's a generational business. And so they're wanting to put their money in a business that's a generational business that's modernizing with technology.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes.

Wendy Marvin: They know where we're headed.

Steve Little: I get goosebumps talking about this because our industry is so cool.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah.

Wendy Marvin: But they wouldn't have done that 10, 15 years ago. And that's what's fantastic too.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And a lot of that has come through the progressiveness of people in the roofing industry saying, "We've got to lift." Right?

Steve Little: Well, and we brought younger people in. So as younger people have come into our industry, they're forcing us baby boomers, they're forcing us up to participate. And it's very cool, the ones that are listening. I promise you, there's a lot of my friends out there, they're not participating in this because they haven't gotten out of the old guard. Go talk to your daughters and your sons and listen to what's going on. You need to participate.

Wendy Marvin: Don't be a dinosaur.

Lee: That's why we're here.

Steve Little: Yes.

Wendy Marvin: Because this is going to run us over if you don't get on the train. That's seriously.

Steve Little: I like being on their train though.

Wendy Marvin: I do too.

Steve Little: I think Kristina did a great job of best success that she really woke the audience up. There was 400 people there. She had him right there the whole time. You did a great job.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yay.

Kristina Hill: Thank you. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Okay, along these lines, we're kind of going the same thing, but I want to talk about highlights. And some of them we've hit on already, but some of the big highlights that you're seeing here on IRE. But also in the industry that is starting to make changes maybe more... When I'm saying highlights, more progressive. Where are we going in the future? What's really important? So Lee, maybe start with you.

Lee: Yeah. I was shaking my head yes, because in our world as contractors, we want efficiency. And I talked about that earlier with the technology, but now it's more so tech stacking and tech integration and what integrates with what. And so that's something that's kind of coming down the pipe of from manufacturers. How can I order through my CRM, get an aerial image, order through my CRM, get it to the manufacturer, and then have it delivered and invoice and all of that? So what kind of technology can I stack in to be more efficient is what I see coming down the pipe. And that's huge right now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: When you see the big distributors, that's all they're showing right now, right? They're Roof Hub, Pro Plus. Yeah, I know.

Kristina Hill: That's what I'm seeing too. And I kind of piggyback on that. So we are branching and doing residential and commercial. There's not a lot of technology that you can do both very efficiently in. And I would love... And I think the Roofing Think Tank, that's something that they've taken on. And so I'm excited to see what the future is for the integration of both of them to have a good CRM and ordering system and just across back and forth, because being a smaller company, I don't have separate departments. We are the department, so we have to be able to be efficient in that and it has to be able to communicate to each other. Otherwise, you're losing valuable time, and hours, and leads.

Lee: Yep.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And I think the highlight that I have to put on with both of you is 10 years ago, if they had a problem like that, our commercial and residential are not speaking 10 years ago, they wouldn't even have thought to say, "Well, what's a tech stack?" I mean, that wasn't even a word. But now as you have both started your own companies, you go to technology every time for the solutions. That is a huge progression.

Lee: But we're also finding that we have a voice. And so if we have a problem and maybe have an idea, the tech companies now are listening to us. They're taking our advice and saying, "Oh, this would be better for the contractor. Let's figure out how to do that," is what I'm finding, is that they're listening to the small business owners and really changing and customizing their program to reach more people.

Kristina Hill: They want that feedback so that they can adapt and change.

Wendy Marvin: Some of them.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: The ones that are going to stick around are doing that. Yes.

Wendy Marvin: Well, a total segue into what I was going to make a point of is just that I think we're in this new phase where we're sexy again.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Little: I've wanted to make roofing sexy for years, and now people I've heard in three different conversations. You're the fourth [inaudible 00:16:31].

Lee: You have. What do you mean? You're the definition of...

Steve Little: We have to make roofing sexy. We have to attract people to our market. We have to attract companies to want to pay attention to us. So you were saying that you were segueing into a point.

Wendy Marvin: Oh just talking about, so we're getting noticed, which is good. But when you're in early adoption of being noticed, what happens is you get flooded. And I think we're in a flood phase of tech. And I feel like what happens in that world is that they come in and they want to get so fast to market with a product that they don't put the time and energy into all of them. And I'm using this loosely. They don't put the time and energy into making sure they work correctly.

So they may have an API where they talk to each other, but they're dumping garbage into both systems or they don't have an API at all. I mean, we still have people that are like, "No, my system is my system." And it's like when you get to Steve's level and you've got three different systems to handle residential, that was one of my...

Lee: You can only imagine.

Wendy Marvin: No, but listen, that was one of my most profound first RT3 meetings, was we went to KPost. He was all shining. I was like, "I want to be Steve when I grow up and all these things."

Steve Little: Oh please.

Wendy Marvin: And we got there.

Steve Little: Heidi, I'm going to have to leave this. This is terrible.

Wendy Marvin: And we got there though.

Steve Little: I'm flattered. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's a highlight.

Wendy Marvin: And he was so amazing, but also experiencing the exact same problem I was having, which is tech doesn't talk to each other. And he's got extra people to bring all of those data from all three of those things into the parent company to try to figure out financials as an owner.

Steve Little: Well, to listen to you talk about starting your company and your first thought is efficiency. So we were plugging people. You were right into this.

Wendy Marvin: For production.

Steve Little: A little history lesson, but I'm thinking, do you remember Richard Rusk? He held the pole up for GPS and he had the... I think, it was a Blackberry in front.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, I do remember that.

Steve Little: And he was doing assessments on the roof and he sold that.

Kristina Hill: Oh my goodness.

Steve Little: And roofers bought it like the cow were coming in. It was great. Daryl Maronic had a roofing company. He started Dataforma. He was really one of the first trailblazers that went out here to try to become more efficient because his roofers or his staff were spending so much time doing things.

Wendy Marvin: Because they had the pain and he needed to fix it. Yeah, he had the pain points.

Steve Little: Yeah. And then it just keeps going. Well, today there are two really cool things happening. Brad Belden took Salesforce, created a partnership with Salesforce, one of the leading CRMs in the world, and they built Osby, which is incorporating all sorts of project management. It has all sorts of connectivity to Sage and to the edge and a lot of different things that are out there. Greg Walling did FollowUp. He created FollowUp and he incorporated a project management tool in there. These are roofers, but to have somebody like a Belden get Salesforce involved. Or Ken Kelly, he went and got Microsoft. And Microsoft Dynamics, we went out there for RT3.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's what I'm doing with mine, yeah.

Steve Little: And they built the program for the roofing industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Josie Wells.

Steve Little: Oh, Josie Wells with that...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know.

Steve Little: So when you see that kind of integration coming into our industry, you know we're a hot market, you know we're somewhere there. And to see the contractors reach out to Microsoft, to Salesforce, those types of things, and create partnerships, I want to be 40.

Wendy Marvin: Right? I want to live this again.

Steve Little: I do. I want to do it again with all this knowledge.

Lee: In a couple of years, you'll be 40.

Steve Little: You are way too sweet.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. Okay.

Steve Little: Let's get back to what we're...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We're going to kind of go a little bit on the other side, which I think is really important. So Steve, I want to start with you. What are the biggest pain points right now for contractors in the industry?

Steve Little: You hear a lot. And it's good because we need to have those checks and balances because we all have contracts we sign. As you start to go into the commercial business, you're going to find the contracts for commercial are a lot different. The regulatory on commercial, it's a lot different and the pressures are all different. So they say labor, but labor's starting to get a little organized. We're going to talk a little bit later about education programs and apprenticeship programs and things like that, that are coming to the market. So I'll wait to talk about then. This is kind of funny, but I forgot the question.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, pain points.

Wendy Marvin: Pain points for the industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, you were going. You were good.

Steve Little: Oh, so pain points. Regulatory.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I do that all the time.

Steve Little: Regulatory. Okay?

Wendy Marvin: Changes in that.

Steve Little: OSHA three years ago, and I learned this at the National Roofing Partners event leadership that we had on Monday that United Rentals spoke. And you think, "Oh, here comes United Rentals. Dennis is going to get up here and start talking about all the equipment and they're going to sell you better and service you better." Not at all. Three years ago, OSHA put things in to affect equipment that we own, that we need that are mandates, that now the OSHA inspectors are going out, and not just getting you for the things that are important by getting our men and women back home. So there are fall protections in place, ladders are tied off, but they're not looking at equipment. Okay? So that's like, "Oh wait a second. That's a part of regulatory I didn't expect to be in place." Under the new administration, they've hired 87,000 IRS agents. So I don't know if you remember, but during the Obama administration-

Wendy Marvin: It makes my head hurt.

Steve Little: ... there were 600 companies, construction companies that got audited for I-9. Now we're going to have the IRS coming in and doing audits. And none of this has to do anything with roofing. It has to do with running a day-to-day business.

Wendy Marvin: It's more challenges for us as owners as well.

Steve Little: So I could spout out the common things we're hearing, the material shortage, raw materials, all those kinds of things. I'm telling you, regulatory is a big deal. It's a big deal.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow. That's it then. No one had brought that up yet.

Wendy Marvin: No, and this is why we sit in these circles. I'm just like, I love this stuff.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. Pain points.

Wendy Marvin: I mean, it's all the same stuff. It's labor, it's material. And it's been interesting to meet some of the people in here, the people... Excuse me, of the communications that are going on out there and people are like, "I don't even know what tech is." Excuse me. I don't know how to hire people. I always have a job description that looks like this. I don't even know how to think about something different.

Steve Little: The way you did business yesterday is not how you're going to be doing business five years from now. Listen to me when I tell you dinosaurs, it will pass you up.

Wendy Marvin: Dinosaurs run you over. Yeah.

Steve Little: And your competition. We have a couple of competitors in this marketplace and we're pretty strong in this marketplace. We have a couple of competitors that are younger than Keith and Jane and I, and they're doing some really great things and they're innovative. So I'm telling you, I'm scared of you all. Okay? I'm glad on one side of it that I'm in the fourth quarter of my career, but on the other side of it, I'm excited because we're becoming more efficient. We have to pay attention to our business work.

Wendy Marvin: There's the part for me.

Steve Little: It is. We have to pay attention to every aspect of our business now.

Wendy Marvin: So we're running, right? We're taking off on the run, which is great. We're growing, we're changing, we've got tech, we've got all these things. I'm worried we're going to lose quality. I'm worried we're losing the craftsmanship of the people who came up through the world as... Because people are opening roofing businesses that have never been a roofer before. They do that with me all the time. "Oh yeah, babe, have you've been on the roof?" "Well, yeah, actually I have." But the attention to quality, the attention to detail, I just want to help keep that all in place while we continue running.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: But that is also a differentiator, right? The companies that do have the quality.

Wendy Marvin: Quality installation.

Steve Little: So let just add one more thing. The Frankensteining that happened during the material shortage where you're putting Carlisle's ISO with JM's material on top of it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Frankenstein roofs.

Steve Little: The Frankenstein roofs. Mark Graham at the NRCA has warned us.

Wendy Marvin: Yep, we're in trouble.

Steve Little: Okay? And Trent Cotney has warned us, our industry attorney, has made it very clear that five, maybe 10 years from now, that people will be knocking on your door. They're going to be ambulance chasing lawyers, they're going to know that these systems are in place and they're going to come after you. Hell, they do it now in the school systems. There are lawyers that started in San Antonio, Texas, has gotten all the way up to Dallas and they brought consultants on the roof, so that they can cut out and do core cuts in the roof to see if the assemblies are right or things like that. It's like they're looking for something.

Wendy Marvin: They are.

Steve Little: We've created a Frankenstein situation because we all wanted to stay in business. And the manufacturers approved it. So whoever the top five manufacturers are-

Wendy Marvin: But they didn't always approve it in writing.

Steve Little: Thank you.

Wendy Marvin: That's the other side of it.

Steve Little: Our employees don't work for us if they didn't get their submittals approved in writing from the manufacturer. And that's part of the stuff as you get in the commercial business, it's a lot of paper trail. It could be digital.

Wendy Marvin: They told me it was okay.

Steve Little: It's okay for it to be digital, but they just need to have it. Sorry to be so talkative, but I think Frankenstein is going to be a problem.

Wendy Marvin: Oh, go ahead.

Kristina Hill: Sorry. So with something like that where if you're a larger company and you do have some lawsuits that come after you or whatever, if you're a larger company, you can take maybe a couple of those.

Wendy Marvin: You can navigate a couple of those.

Kristina Hill: But when you're a brand new company, you can't. That will put you out of business. So that's scary to me too.

Steve Little: So work with your surety company first if it's a bonded job, but also work with your insurance group and Maybe get some catastrophic put in place. It's very affordable.

Wendy Marvin: Almost.

Steve Little: Yeah, it's almost like DNO to our clients. But get some insurance put together for something catastrophic, something that is a force majeure, something that's... nothing that you could possibly expect to happen.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You mean, like COVID?

Wendy Marvin: Yeah, right.

Steve Little: Well, we actually had in our captor, we had business interruption and we are just getting the claim, paid for the claim for the business interruption.

Kristina Hill: And that's why when you come to places like this and you learn about that, it will pay for itself-

Steve Little: Now, it's on your radar.

Kristina Hill: ... time and time again. But if you're sitting at home trying to run your company, you don't learn about this, you don't know about it.

Wendy Marvin: It's when you get kicked in the teeth, right? When you get the service letter.

Kristina Hill: Yeah, when it happens, but that's too late. But it's important to connect and to learn this stuff because as business owners, you don't know everything and there's no way that you can until you're learning from others with experience.

Wendy Marvin: I will throw one more word of caution out is the board of directors, so we just had an instance where we have a condo association, I have condo coverage, I have specific for... My insurance agents are amazing. And the board got inspected. The attorney group came in and said, "We've been hired by an owner to come in and inspect your properties." So they inspected the properties. They didn't find issue, but the board refused to hire them to finish the full inspection and they sued the board. They sued the board of a director for not doing their fiduciary duty because they're at that six-year window. So the legalities are going to... They're out there, they're the raptors, so we've got all that great attention. We're also getting this other attention, so we got to be careful. People

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, people coming in. Okay. No, you're good. But I want to keep... because there's different pain points, which we're kind of talking about. So what are you seeing?

Kristina Hill: I would kind of say what I mentioned a little bit before, is the ability to weed through the information to find the correct information. Because we are so digital and so online, everybody has a voice. And you don't necessarily always know that it's the correct information that you're getting or where to go to find the right information or just along those lines as being new and not having the background in this industry. I'm relying on other people to learn from them. And I'm not always given the best information or the correct information. So that's a major pain point for me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's really good to know because that's one of the things we try to do. Right? We try to bring the information, we try to bring these voices and all these things because you need people who aren't... It's not about a competitor or about getting your business, you just want-

Kristina Hill: The industry as a whole.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Whole, right.

Wendy Marvin: Best practices, best of success.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Lee, how about you?

Lee: I'm going to be honest, I don't have any pain points right now because I have 16 years of experience in this industry. It's my 10th IRE. I've met wonderful people like you and Steve, and I have a-

Steve Little: And Wendy.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. You don't have to worry about me.

Lee: I looked at both of you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: He was pointing at you, not me.

Lee: I have these arrows in my quiver of people who I can call if I have an issue.

Steve Little: You phone a friend.

Lee: I phone a friend all of the time. And so with where I am in my business and the growth, I don't have a pain point. I have great people in my back pocket to help me through those. So I don't have the same struggles yet. I hope one day I will be a Steve Little and have those struggles, but maybe in two years. Right?

Steve Little: Okay. That'll be good.

Lee: You did it very quickly. So right now, it's just I'm very, very fortunate to be in the industry for a while and get to know people like yourselves, all three of you, and have you in my pocket. And then Kristina, Kristina and I met a year ago? No. Oh my gosh. We just met in person in December for the first time.

Kristina Hill: In person, yeah.

Lee: Online. Right? And we have now a group of women business owners around the country and we text almost every single day about what's going on and...

Kristina Hill: Sometimes at 5:30 in the morning when we should not be.

Lee: Yep.

Wendy Marvin: I turned off my notifications for that group. We're all up to early.

Lee: I had 53 missed text messages at 6:00 AM from other women business owners and we were talking-

Wendy Marvin: Granted they're East Coast sometimes.

Lee: I know. We were talking business, we were talking commissions, and insurance, and subcontracts, and all of this. So I honestly, I'm definitely in the honeymoon phase, which I hope continues for a long time, but I cannot say that I don't really have pain points right now.

Kristina Hill: But don't discredit yourself because you put in that work prior to starting your business and you filled those seats at your table to help you be successful. You did that.

Lee: Yeah. That's true.

Steve Little: They're smarter than us.

Wendy Marvin: I know. I love it. I just love it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's being, yeah, putting together the technologies. Yeah.

Lee: I did. I took a lot of time before this.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. You do a lot beyond the roof. I mean, you're doing a lot of the exteriors and everything.

Lee: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And Kristina, I think you do too, but I'm curious and material shortage. I know everybody's tired of it because we're going to compare this to yesterday. I want to know, what are you seeing on material? What are you having a hard time getting and what do you see on material shortage?

Lee: Yeah. So for me, I do residential exterior, a lot of asphalt shingles. And I also have an OC plant in my town and I use OC for the most part. I don't really have a roofing material shortage, but I also do siding and I do windows and that is still... If you want upgraded windows, we're looking at 22 to 32 weeks out siding. I am doing a steel siding house and I had to order it from Canada because they don't have it anywhere in the US, so it's being freighted in from Canada and that's not going to get here until middle of May. And so there's no shortage, but I'm finding that people will wait. We as the younger generation, we're very much now. We want it instant. Amazon has made us that way, I think. And so we're finding that if you set the proper expectation, people will wait. They'll wait for you, they trust in you and they want a good product. So even with that shortage, it has not affected my business at all, but it's out there, still there.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it is there. How are you seeing?

Kristina Hill: Very similar that it's more the delays in it than really the shortage issues. And we have great relationships with every supplier that's in our town, and have accounts at each of them, and have been very fortunate that if we can't get something at one place, I can get it at the next one. We did have some time period where we were selling the colors of shingles instead of the actual brand because it was hard.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You can have black, you can have gray.

Kristina Hill: Which one do you want here? Which one do you want? And I will give a major shout out to the suppliers. We had the ISO issue, but got on the phone with our suppliers and instead of them just saying, "Sorry, we don't have it," hang up, they took it upon themselves to make many, many, many phone calls to other branches and other people and really get it sorted out for us. And we got material from Kansas that was ready available. It was already booked, but they didn't need it. Just really moving mountains because the suppliers understood that this is our livelihood as well. And I mean, we're a smaller company like I said, but it's so cool to see that recognition from the other people.

Wendy Marvin: But you did that by the relationship you have.

Kristina Hill: Yes, the relationships that you have for sure. But really recently, same thing. As long as you are communicating to the homeowners and don't just wait until week 17 of an 18-week delay to say, "Hey, we're ready to go," follow up every four weeks. "Hey, nothing's changed. We're still on track." That's what they want. They just want to be kept in the loop.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Communications, yeah.

Lee: And I got to say really quick, I don't know how it was in your states, but Colorado during that time where we couldn't find material for anything, we banded together as owners and bartered and traded. And I don't don't know if you guys did that in Texas and Washington, but it was so cool to see you talking to your competitor and saying, "Hey, I have this, I have that too," not have the Frankenstein roof and I feel like our industry-

Wendy Marvin: We support each other.

Steve Little: But that's how we got the Frankenstein roofs, because this person had Firestone and this person had JM, and somebody else had this, because we had to build the roofs.

Lee: It was really cool to see those egos checked at the door and just all of us owners helping everyone else out and trying to stay, because we were essential, but our material was so backed up. So I just wanted to mention how wonderful this industry is in that regard.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Material shortages for you. You do a lot of the the whole exteriors too.

Wendy Marvin: Ton of resi, yeah. Windows are a joke right now. It's really hard. I liked what we did initially was we really narrowed our color selection offerings. We kind of haven't come back from that. I'm not going to lie. So you really don't get offered a green roof and we're not doing the whole color portfolio. And I just think we got gun shy because then, once they pick an abnormal color, then you got to make 20 phone calls, and then they might have 10 squares. And so we just kind of moved away from that for efficiency.

Steve Little: Different color batches.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. And I think what's going to be interesting is to watch what the manufacturers do with that because maybe we don't need 25 color choices. Maybe we really do need to kind of cut back that, which they would love. And then, yeah, we're still smaller things every now and then. Fasteners have been a little bit of an issue, but we're still... I've been around 15 years, so I've got the buying power a little bit to buy a pallet of something or two pallets of something. So that's helpful. To get things delivered on the roof at times is a bit of a challenge, but it's so much better. So much better.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: What are you seeing?

Steve Little: Well, what I have not heard in this show was unprecedented, that word.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank God.

Steve Little: If I heard that word one more time, "Unprecedented in an entire history of our company," and then you go look at all of the public companies, 10-Qs, and see how much money they made through this whole process. Not that I'm angry, not that I'm holding anybody accountable, but...

Wendy Marvin: Prices aren't coming back down either.

Steve Little: So the industry waited for this for a long time. In the 20 years that I've been in it, there were people who would do price increases once a year and it would be like Southwest Airlines and Delta. And somebody said, "I'm going up $5 a seat." The other person said, "I'm going up $5." But American said, "I'm going down $2," And everybody would drop back down, just to give an example. No antitrust conversations going on.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. I was just going to say, we need to be a little careful in talking about pricing.

Steve Little: We're not doing antitrust. But in reference to supply, we brought in over $4 million worth of inventory over the time period by Frankensteining and doing whatever. If somebody had a truck, a distributor truck, a manufacturing truck, somebody canceled, we took it on. And it changed the way we looked at the business. We narrowed our selection. We offered six roofing systems, three of them with lightweight, three of them with rigid insulation, two of them in single ply, two of them modified, and that's all we sold.

And it has been amazing. The specifiers agreed to the changes, architects, consultants, et cetera, because we were able to lock in the pricing during a quarter of a period. So if you want to wait 22 weeks and get your product, just go ahead and do it. I can't guarantee the price and I can't guarantee it's actually going to come in, but if you'll switch to one of these six systems..." So what it's done for us, Heidi, and for a lot of my friends in the industry, we now are carrying inventory. So we're going to carry $2 million in inventory as a company. That's about a one-month supply of our billings for that and for that one purpose, because it's uncertain. Not unprecedented, but I'm certain where the industry's going.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah, still a little rocky.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: When you think about it, when you do a comparison... I mean, when I first started, everybody had their own warehouse. Everybody was bringing in and warehousing and keeping, and controlling everything.

Steve Little: Controlling their destiny, buying the product down.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And then over the years, everybody just in time delivery, just in time-

Steve Little: Toyota just in time-

Wendy Marvin: They trained us to do that.

Steve Little: They did.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And they got rid of their warehouses. And now everybody's bringing them back because they're like, "We're not going to get caught that way again." I'm glad you brought that up. It's really interesting to see.

Steve Little: There's been so many paradigm shifts in our industry over the last 18 months. Now you kind of train contractors to think about, "Well, wait a second, you can flip." I don't mean disrespectfully, "but you can navigate the system," number one. And because of the change in the warranties, there's a program that people are [inaudible 00:37:43]. Catastrophic insurance policies are on warranties. They're covered by Citibank, Zurich, Lloyd's of London.

Wendy Marvin: Same.

Steve Little: So you have a situation that contractors are trying to take control of their destiny because they live through COVID. They live through supply chain.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, yes.

Lee: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Little: Why not live through that same situation with warranties? I know I've talked to a couple of manufacturers and I know my phone's going to ring after this because all of them watch your program.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I hope so. They better be.

Steve Little: But you're asking about trends and you're asking about-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's the trend.

Steve Little: ... supply chain. I'll bet you yesterday when you had the suppliers here, they didn't talk about contractors controlling their destiny.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, they did not. No, they did not.

Wendy Marvin: Because that terrifies them.

Kristina Hill: Did you back off of offering only those six roof systems or simplifying your business? Are you kind of expanding that now or...

Steve Little: Okay. A great question. We're probably up to 10 because distribution is getting full again. In fact, during the show when you ask manufacturers how things are going, they're going, "Well, I'm not sure. We're at full capacity and the distributors now are full capacity." And so the spring orders that they normally were shipping, they're not shipping right now. And so it's kind of a wait and see. We believe the market's going to be strong second, third, and fourth quarter. What they're saying is because in different areas of the country, it's not coming back as strong. California, they're having rain. They're not roofing right now.

Wendy Marvin: We've got weird weather things going on.

Steve Little: That's snow.

Wendy Marvin: Tell me.

Steve Little: Okay? My gracious.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This was going to say that is it really the weather for Q1?

Steve Little: It's affecting it. Q1 is kind of affecting it. Then now Q2, well, all these distributors have inventory. So I'm suggesting to the manufacturers, "Maybe you need to take on some inventory like the contractors did and you built some warehouses and you put some stuff into it, because if we're going to be as busy in three and four as they say we're going to be, then we don't need you running out of shit." Excuse me. FTC. There's seven-second delay where you can... Oh, sorry. We're passionate about our business.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I want to make sure too that we get to that next topic because I know we kind of talked about at the beginning about the labor shortage and what we're doing on the labor front. And really interesting when you were talking about crews, right? We're seeing crews being used more and more and more where seriously, 20 years ago, it was all employee W-2s, but-

Steve Little: Well, this is one of those unprecedented situations that are transpiring that has the NRCA and other associations really worried because we fought against this. If you weren't brick and mortar, you didn't have trucks, you didn't put your own stuff down, you didn't control your safety, then you weren't really a roofer. Right? I mean, really, that was out there. There's a number of organizations that came out, Roof Connect came out, NRP came out, those companies and they were all deemed brokers, but they really aren't. Because if you look at the business, we're paying by the square instead of paying by the hour. If you have them provide the same insurance, if you take them through your safety program, if you put your own personnel on site while they're doing the work, you're paying by the square instead of by the hour.

Jason Stanley at IB has a company called Labor Central, and he is trying to professionalize that side of the business. And I love what he's doing. I told him, and I'll tell him to his face saying it publicly, "I hate what you're doing because you're putting people in business that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on safety. We spend millions of dollars on trucks and equipment all the time and you're allowing people to get in business that you can say are as good as," because he's promoting pro certification. So he's professionalizing that industry and is going to affect our business one way or another. Now we use subs, we'll use them on non-occupied buildings or we use them on projects that we're doing at night. We don't use them on live buildings.

Wendy Marvin: Lower risk.

Steve Little: But the same guy, two of the three subs that we use were superintendents of ours that have created business. So they're like KPost companies, but that isn't an ongoing scenario.

Wendy Marvin: But that's a trusted provider.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's a total change in the industry.

Wendy Marvin: Well, it scares me. It scares me because you as an owner, you are still liable. And that's the thing that they don't realize. It's like, "Oh yeah, you can use all these subs and they did their..." "Well, I didn't do the roof, you did." You are the contract. If they don't pay their taxes, you pay it. If they don't do L&I right, they don't do safety right, you could be fined. And that's what we're seeing. OSHA is going after that.

Steve Little: OSHA now has said, because the industry's going to subs, OSHA's now is changing some of their association and it's guilt by association. The fine goes to them and to you.

Lee: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Steve Little: And the fines just moved $15,000.

Lee: Colorado is that way, for sure.

Steve Little: 15,000 a pop.

Wendy Marvin: Our fines in Washington are exponential, six years. Look back.

Steve Little: Oh. My gracious.

Wendy Marvin: So if you've had a safety glasses violation in the last six years and you've had two of those, and then you do get a real fine, you're in deep doo-doo. And I worry about that because again, we're in that production, right? We're doing it, we're hurrying. We want to get going and this is a great way to do it and it's great, except we need to be the voices of reasons to kind of slow things down a little bit and say, "Okay, if you're going to use subs, that's great, but here are the things you need to talk to. And number one, first and foremost, talk to Trent. Just get ahold of a good legal and get your paperwork figured out."

Steve Little: So Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes?

Steve Little: I hate to do this to you, but we started late and I'm speaking at two o'clock.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. So hold on, hold on.

Steve Little: So I just wanted to give you a two-minute warning.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. We're going to get a wrap up. I knew this. So real quick, labor, because I was...

Wendy Marvin: And you've got to walk there too.

Steve Little: It's just right there.

Wendy Marvin: Okay.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You use subs, right?

Kristina Hill: Yes, we use subs, but kind of like you were saying, they have to be trusted subs if they're going to be on your jobs because it's my name on that project. It's my company's name. And because we are newer, if I have a job fail or something happened, my company will suffer greatly from that. So we did go through a period where we had to interview subs and look at their work and really talk to our suppliers too to get the information from them who's certified, who do you recommend and go that route instead of just taking somebody's card who comes up to me at the Casey's gas station and says, "Hey, I'm a crew. Can I work?"

Wendy Marvin: "Hey lady, you need a roofer?"

Kristina Hill: Yeah, happens all the time, all the time.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So are you having a hard time or do you kind of have your crews in line?

Kristina Hill: We have our crews in line, which we're very, very grateful for. I am having an issue with gutter crews at the moment.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay.

Kristina Hill: It is so hard to come by a good gutter crew. That's where I'm seeing the hardest part right now. We need gutter crews.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hey, so if you're out there, you're looking... gutter crews, gutter crews. And you have a good gutter crew, I heard.

Lee: I have a great gutter crew.

Wendy Marvin: She's amazing.

Lee: The thing about being in the industry for so long, and then starting your company, I've had that availability to subcontractors already who I've known. My roofers, I've watched their kids grow up, so I have that relationship with them already. My gutter crew, the same thing. My painting crew was a cousin of the guy that I knew 10 years ago, and so that's amazing. And I'm very fortunate in that to have that relationship with them. But I have a really great siding crew now and I met them at a supplier's training. So I went to a siding training and that's where I met my subcontractor. And I had talked to him prior and just happened to see this person and thinking, "I feel like you're my sub," because I hadn't used him yet. And I met him and I was like, "This is amazing. If you are taking the time to learn about a product more and I'm doing the same thing, I want to work with you because you care about how it's installed."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yep. And this is probably pretty obvious, but I'm going to note, this is a new way. It's happening right here. The barrier to entry into roofing, this is making it possible for all these brilliant young entrepreneurs to come in and do things different than we are.

Steve Little: And they're out marketing us old dogs and the buyers are becoming younger. And so they relate to you. There's a transition. The consulting business is the same thing. The consultants that started years ago, 20, 25 years ago, are now retiring and the next group that's coming through is younger. But the hold that they have on accounts is going away and you guys are doing a great job of coming into market.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And it's really as it should be, right?

Steve Little: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It is as it should be.

Steve Little: There's supposed to be a generational change. I mean, some of us is staying in this too long.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is what is happening.

Wendy Marvin: But I just want to be the baby. I just just don't want to go back to where I was the babysitting with these guys.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We have to get Steve to his next speaking engagement.

Steve Little: I'm really sorry about that, but we started a little behind and...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. So what I'm going to just do final round is just 2023, what are you most excited about this year? What's happening? What are you looking forward to? And I am going to say one thing. I saw you Steve seeing this. This is what I'm excited about. I'm excited about the Para Latinos and everything that's on there.

Steve Little: Oh, yeah. This is great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So I'm putting that one out there.

Wendy Marvin: And that lounge is just packed. So fun.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, it's packed. The inclusiveness and diversity to me... Sorry, I probably just took your thunder. I didn't mean to, but I'm so excited about it.

Wendy Marvin: In a world we need it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So Steve, we'll start with you, in case you try to escape.

Steve Little: Good. And then I could leave? Okay. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes. Okay. What are you most excited about?

Steve Little: I think in 2023 that I see solar becoming more integrated into our business commercially, as well as through the residential side of the business. But I'm really concerned that the solar... Solar is a renegade. You've got a selling group that's selling it and they pass it off to somebody else to go install it, and you're tied to electricians and city permits and all sorts of things. We've got to be careful that we don't put a blemish on the roofing industry because we have a bunch of renegades out here selling solar. So that's what I see going forward in that end of it. I think we're going to have a blip on the interest rates. I think the interest rates are going to stay up. So for some of us that have credit lines and things like that, it's going to affect our pricing. For people that don't have the same type of debt or have the same breadth of company that we might have, they're going to be a competitive advantage. So we have to watch our margins along those lines.

I also think we have to be careful of not just the blue collar labor that we have, but we've got to be careful of losing our white collar labor. Okay? Because our interior companies are aging and they're leaving the industry, they're retiring.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Steve Little: And if we don't continue to make our business sexy, we're going to not be able to recruit people. And listening to Chris yesterday on our keynote address, I'm going to put a plug in for the NRCA IRE, you need to come to the next one. Our keynote addresses are awesome and you always take away a nugget. Every one of them we've had a nugget taken away. Even when Charlotte Jones was here from the Cowboys, she gave some great information.

Lee: That was wonderful.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That was awesome.

Steve Little: It was inspiring.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It was good.

Steve Little: So thank you for letting me be part of your panel. If I can do anything for you, I'm sorry I've got to go run.

Wendy Marvin: You're so fun.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you for presenting and thank you for everything you do. Thank you for being an influencer. It's awesome. Thank you.

Steve Little: Love you mean it. Appreciate it. Bye ladies.

Lee: Bye.

Kristina Hill: Bye, Steve.

Wendy Marvin: Love you mean it. He said that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. Wendy?

Wendy Marvin: I'm just feeling like 2023 is just going to be filled. We're going to blow right through it. I don't feel like I'm worried about recession or those kinds of things. I think our industry is strong and needed and all those things. I'm worried about again, back to that there's so much money to be made and I think that companies that are good companies like these two ladies sitting here and myself, we just need to be sure we're being protected as we go and looking out for each other and sharing contract language. And that's part of what I'm so excited about, about some of these things that are innovative that are coming out.

You used to have to email and phone a friend and try to set up a meeting and all these things. And now it's just like, "Hey, I have a contract. Let me send it to you and let's figure this out." And I just want us to continue to be respectful and respected. And as we continue on this breakneck pace, I don't think we're really going to slow down until mid 2024. I really feel [inaudible 00:49:25]. And listening, I listen so much with those groups, I just don't see us slowing down.

Kristina Hill: Do you feel that for both residential and commercial?

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. I think residential is probably going to be big, but it's just scary because again, I've been the one that had the papers served, and I was like, "Oh my God, I didn't even know this was an issue." And I'm so thankful we have that protection now, but now there's new threats out there. I just feel like there's a lot of lions in the field here and we just got to figure out how to protect each other and keep the good companies going. Because the fast track, the guys that sit in our meetings and say, "I don't care how I install a roof because I charge so much, I can put three roofs on that." I hope they go away and that the rest of us that are left at the end of it are going to be good.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I swallowed wrong.

Wendy Marvin: That's all right.

Kristina Hill: Oh, you're fine.

Wendy Marvin: Kristina, let's talk about yours.

Kristina Hill: Yeah. So I think similar to what Heidi was saying, I'm so excited to kind of be a part of the roofing industry right now when we're seeing some phenomenal change. I've heard time and time again, I've seen so many women here. There's so many faces here. How cool is it that this is my first experience, my first IRE to see that. 500 women at NWIR Day is phenomenal. That's so great. And what if they said like there's 0.5% of women make up the construction industry?

Lee: 3%. 3% of women, and then 0.5 or owner something, some of that 3%, 0.5 are owners.

Kristina Hill: I feel like all of them were here, are here right now, honestly.

Wendy Marvin: How empowering is that and how amazing? Yeah.

Kristina Hill: I mean, we all laughed. So many of us said, "I never thought I would be a contractor." But how many little girls now and daughters are seeing this change? And really, what's going to happen down the road? And so the growth is so exciting for me, just to see what that looks like for the next year as we can really pour into and develop this next generation. That's what I'm most excited about. Obviously as a business owner, I'm excited for the growth that we're seeing in the residential markets, and the new construction that's happening, and the growth on that side of things, and really just growing my business and getting into the commercial world. Commercial scares me a little bit because with all the regulations and everything that's happening, but I think I have enough people and enough seats at my table to fill with the correct people that we do it the right way.

Wendy Marvin: You're so smart. You know you'll ask the right questions.

Kristina Hill: But the opportunity is there for people like me who are wanting that opportunity and wanting to do it the right way. That's what's exciting.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And it hasn't always been that way. There were times, believe it or not, where companies in a town would actually...

Kristina Hill: Brands that is quality focused is huge because not everybody does that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's so true. Lee, take us home.

Lee: Yeah. I will take you Home. (Singing).

Wendy Marvin: We're singing that last night, I'm just going to say.

Lee: I'm excited. Very similar, right? I love how many women were at the event on Sunday. Steve was talking about... I think it was Brad Belden who's maybe going to do something for the fathers and daughters. I cannot wait to see the mothers and daughters. I feel like we are so close to that right now to where it's like, "Oh, you're taking over the company for your dad." "No, I'm taking over my mom's company."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. Exactly.

Lee: So I'm really excited to see how that changes in our industry going forward. Personally, I'm excited for growth and evolution. And 2023 is going to be amazing. I've told you guys before that I manifested something-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, exactly.

Lee: ... on New Year's Eve and it's really coming to fruition. But I'm excited to see growth, women in the industry, diversity just in and of itself. And I feel like last year was really heavy on kind of new construction started, but we couldn't get materials to do that and now we have them. And so I feel like 2023 is going to be a big build year for that because now, we have the materials coming in and so things are going to be...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Amazing. This has been so much fun. And Steve, thank you. He's not here anymore. Thank you all. Coffee Conversations, I mean, I'm telling you what, this is so great. So the next Coffee Conversations is going to be back at our regular format and it's going to be on Roofing Day, which we didn't even talk about here, the importance of that industry.

Wendy Marvin: And today's International Women's Day. Did you know that? International Women's Construction.

Kristina Hill: International Women's Construction week.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Week, yes. Oh, yes.

Wendy Marvin: [Inaudible 00:53:48] anything with that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There's so much going on. So we will be back in two weeks with Coffee Conversations. We're going to be here the rest of the show. We have more interviews. Megan Ellsworth is playing at three o'clock in the SRS Day. And we also have interviews all day tomorrow. So stay with us. We are live from Dallas, Texas, and we'll be bringing you the International Roofing Expo and all the great stuff. So we'll see you next time.

Wendy Marvin: Love it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Bye.
 

By Adam Cabrera. 

An organization working to pave the way for women in the traditionally male-dominated industry. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips, Heidi J. Ellsworth takes a trip across the globe to speak with Jenny Maxwell, chairperson of New Zealand Women in Roofing (NZWiR). A unique organization in the male-dominated roofing industry of New Zealand, the organization provides opportunities and support for women in this sector. Together, Heidi and Jenny discuss the role and impact of NZWiR as well as what the future has in store for it. 

Jenny, who started a roofing company with her husband in 2009, has been leading the Roofing Association of New Zealand since 2020. "I was approached to put my hand up and looked to actually go on to the executive, which I did in 2016. So here I am, all those years later, and just about to go into another two-year term as president," she says. 

The idea of NZWiR was inspired by Jenny’s visit to the National Women in Roofing Day event in the U.S. It sparked a passion in her to foster a similar supportive network for women in the roofing industry in New Zealand. "It really made me passionate. It really stirred something in me," Jenny says. Despite New Zealand's small size and the isolation many in the industry might feel, Jenny believes that the NZWiR has the potential to bring people together. 

To further encourage women in the industry, NZWiR introduced a scholarship for first-time attendees to the Roofing Association of New Zealand’s annual conference, providing them an opportunity to see the industry as a whole. Along with this, they're launching a new scholarship this November for a leadership and adventure course called Outward Bound, promoting both personal and professional growth. 

The NZWiR follows the four pillars of recruiting, mentoring, education and networking, similar to its U.S. counterpart. Jenny’s vision and the initiatives of NZWiR not only seek to empower women in the roofing industry but also significantly contribute to the industry's growth and development in New Zealand. 

Listen to the podcast to hear more about NZWiR and what the organization is doing to change their industry for the better.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Heidi J. Ellsworth from RoofersCoffeeShop and Jenny Maxwell from New Zealand Women in Roofing. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro/Outro: 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 J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from Roofers Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth and I am road-tripping today, let me tell you, clear across the globe. I am so lucky today to have Jenny Maxwell, who is the President of the Roofing Association of New Zealand, and who is the Chairperson of New Zealand Women in Roofing, on this Roofing Road Trip.

Jenny, welcome.

Jenny Maxwell: Hi, how are you?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I am good. I am so excited. You and I have known each other for many years now because you came to National Women in Roofing in the US and then went and started New Zealand National Women in Roofing, but you and I really kind of connected again this year and I'm just so excited about that.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, it was awesome to make that reconnection. The friendships that you make around the world within the roofing industry are amazing, and they're important to have as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They are. And you've been helping me get out there and you and I were just talking, we're talking to some folks in the UK now, and Argentina, and it's pretty exciting.

But today, I want to talk about New Zealand, and so let's start with, if you wouldn't mind, introduce yourself and tell us about your roofing company.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah. I'm Jenny Maxwell and I live in a small village just outside of Christchurch, which is in the Central South Island of New Zealand. And my husband and I have got a roofing company that we started up in 2009, best time of the world to actually be starting a business in the middle of the GFC, so that was a rude awakening for us right at the beginning.

And so yes, we live here in Canterbury and we've got our own roofing company, and we do predominantly commercial work, but we are also in the high-end architectural space for residential roofing as well. We've got a nice mix there. We've got, at the moment, about 35 staff on, which is keeping us super busy and we've got some really exciting projects ahead of us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, yeah. And it was interesting when we were visiting Jenny, about this, but a good share of the roofing product that you install is metal, right?

Jenny Maxwell: Yes, yeah. New Zealand is 80% metal, so very few tiles, hardly any asphalt. There is a bit of membrane roofing, but generally just in that commercial space. So it's quite a different dynamic to the US and we've found that when we have gone to the International Roofing Expo, we've been there three times, and while there are similarities, there's also quite a great big void between what we do in New Zealand and what happens in America and I think that comes down, particularly to climate.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, and you and I were just talking about that, the differences in climate and what we're dealing with.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, just a different dynamic really in what we need to keep our houses safe and waterproof.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, wow. Well, okay. I mean, this is just so cool, but you are Chairperson, or President, I'm not sure what the title is, but of the Roofing Association of New Zealand. So similar to our National Roofing Contractors Association, you're the chair and in charge of the New Zealand RCA. Tell us about the association and tell us about your role.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah. I've been the President of the Roofing Association since 2020. I was introduced to the Roofing Association when I first started. So getting back to my career, I'm actually not a roofer by trade or career. I actually started in banking and spent the first 25 years of my life being a banker. But when we started up the business, things got really busy and my husband, Nathan, said to me, he said, "Oh, can you come on board and help me because I know you've got a skillset that's good for a business?" So that was great. Started doing that.

And every year, he encouraged me to go along to the Roofing Association Conference, and just getting to network and connect with those people and starting to realize that I actually did have a skillset that I could actually use to put back to the Roofing Association and to roofing in general in New Zealand. So I was approached to put my hand up and looked to actually go on to the executive, which I did in 2016. So here I am, all those years later, and just about to go into another two-year term as President, so I'm here until 2025.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, so that-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, congratulations.

Jenny Maxwell: Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They're lucky to have you.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, so the things that we are there to do is just to support. So we are a member organization, very much like the NRCA, and also we have associate members as well too, so all the suppliers to the industry. So we're there to just help make sure that the regulations are there, make sure that we are there supporting training for staff, opportunities, all of those sorts of things that actually help the business because the business owners are too busy to having to do that sort of stuff. And it's nice for us to step in and to be able to be an advocate for them in the industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's excellent. Wow. And I mean, we are just getting, just this year, Lisa Sprick, who you may have met at National Women in Roofing, but anyway, she is the Chairperson of NRCA and only the second woman ever to be chair of the National Roofing Contract Association. So having you in New Zealand just shows how progressive you all are. That's great.

Jenny Maxwell: Exactly, yeah. I'm the second president as well, and when the Association was started 29 years ago, the first president was actually a woman, a woman by the name of Sue Harkin.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome!

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, and that's really cool. And we've also got her daughter who is very seriously thinking about coming onto the board and she'd like to follow in her mother's footsteps in the time to come. So that's really, really exciting.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, that's cool. Wow. I love it. Okay, so along with that, I think it was in 2019, '18? I can't even remember.

Jenny Maxwell: '18.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: When you came to your first National Women in Roofing, '18? Okay. And we met and you were like, "I want to take this back and I want to start this in New Zealand." So tell us a little bit about coming to National Women in Roofing and really your inspiration for starting National Women in Roofing in New Zealand.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah. Well, it was a bit of a funny story really because when I was looking at the registration, we decided that we were going to go to the conference in New Orleans it was, and didn't really know too much about the area or what to expect or anything else. So I was having a look-in, saw something that said that it was a Women in Roofing Day, and I thought, "Oh, that sounds quite interesting." And Nathan decided that he'd go fishing for the day so he booked himself a fishing tour, and I went off, which is somewhat a little bit daunting when you go somewhere by yourself in a country you don't know, in an area and what have you.

But honestly, it was the most amazing day, a real turning point for me and my thoughts about how the industry in New Zealand can actually grow and succeed. And yeah, I went along there, connected with you, connected with the likes of Jennifer Stone and Renae-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Stone? Yeah.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, and it was amazing. And the women that I met were just so friendly and welcoming and I could see that there was something very special in the essence of what Women in Roofing was. And it really made me passionate, I guess. It really stirred something in me.

So I came back to New Zealand and I annoyed an awful lot of people. I would talk to anybody who would actually listen because all I wanted to do was actually get people excited about what this could actually do and what it could look like and how we could achieve some stuff to actually help support women within in roofing in New Zealand. And New Zealand's not a big place, and it goes to stand for the fact that because we are small, we all become a little bit isolated. We've got people all over the country in small towns that don't necessarily know a lot of people. And I could actually see that Women in Roofing was something that would actually bring people together.

Often, they're in small companies where it might only be a couple of guys and the lady at the front desk who's doing the wages and the administration and what have you, and she might find herself in a position where she's the only one in the office and the phone's ringing and people are asking about, say, different profiles of metal or some technical stuff, and she might not know the answer. And I could actually see that having those connections meant that if Sally got rung up and she didn't know the answer, she could pick up the phone, talk to Mary because the guys were out of the office, and actually say, "Hey, I've got a question and I don't know how to answer it. Can you help me?" And it means everybody's taking their hats off at the door, they're forgetting about the fact that they may be competing for jobs against each other, but in actual effect, they can bring the industry together and actually help form that support.

And that's the sort of thing that is going on, and I'm really proud of the way that the women in New Zealand have actually got behind it. But more importantly, the way that the men have actually supported it. I think because I'd annoyed so many of them, they decided to say, "Okay, let's have a go." And at the time, the President of the Roofing Association, Mark Bishop, he was totally behind me and gave full support and here we are and with a pretty strong presence.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I love that. I love that story and I love that when you said you first went back and annoyed a few people, I can relate to that. I think I did the same thing. But now to hear where you're at and how far you've come, tell us a little bit about what is happening in National Women in Roofing in New Zealand? Tell us just like what are some of the initiatives? What are some of the events? What are you doing?

Jenny Maxwell: Really exciting. So a week from today, we're all gathering in a small place called Nelson, which is a lovely little seaside resort for the Roofing Association's Conference. And we've actually signed a contract with the Roofing Association that forms our partnership in-kind and how we will support them and how they will support us, so it means that we always have a presence at the conference. We always have a booth there. And very kindly, we're there in that partnership in kind without actually having to have a whole lot of money behind us to be able to do that, which is really lovely.

With that, when we first started in 2019, we decided that because the conference is that one national thing where everybody connects, that we wanted to make sure that we could actually connect our women with the conference as well, and a lot of them don't get the opportunity to go to conference. So we actually started a scholarship, and every year, we pay for two women to come along to conference.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, I love that.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, yeah. So they have to be first-timers, it has to be that they've never been, but they actually do want to come along and have the opportunity to see what the industry's like as a whole when you come together. And it's been great because there have been some employers put their staff forward who would never normally actually be able to afford to take their staff to conferences. So it's been amazing.

So we've got two awesome conference winners coming along with us next week. One girl works for a membrane company in Auckland, and another one is actually an owner of her own roofing business, so she's on the tools, so nice to have a spread with two completely different women in their jobs, but both are very, very important to the industry. So it'll be good. It'll be nice to have them there.

And while we're at conference, we're actually going to be launching our next scholarship that we've got coming up in November, and that's for a scholarship to an organization called Outward Bound. And it's a little bit like it's an adventure, but it's a leadership course as well. So there's a little bit of sailing, there's a little bit of rock climbing, a little bit of tramping, a bit of running, all those sorts of things in there. And it's a five-day course that we're actually providing fully funded. So one lucky girl or woman will actually get to go along and really deep dive into leadership and hopefully come back with some amazing stuff that they can actually do for not only their employer but for the industry as well

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. What a great idea. That is excellent. And we do scholarships too, the IRE, the International Roofing Expo too. And we've seen, Jenny, that the scholarship winners come back and they are on committees, they're active in their local council, they're getting involved. It's such a great way to uplift the industry by getting people who normally couldn't go to be able to attend. I love it.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, it's definitely an initiative that we'd actually, a little bit, beg, borrowed and stolen from Woman in Roofing. But no, it does create that sense of belonging and it's like the girls actually start to really own Women in Roofing, and as you say, they do start to want to actually get involved on a deeper level, like committees and what have you. So you're definitely right. There's a payback for everybody on it, and that's important.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think National Women in Roofing US should steal your idea about Outward Bound scholarship because I love that idea. That's what's so nice is we can collaborate back and forth and share ideas.

Jenny Maxwell: Yes, you're more than welcome to grab that and run with it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, perfect. I'm going to tell them.

Now, on National Women in Roofing in the US, we have our four pillars of recruiting, mentoring, education and networking. I'm curious, do you have those same pillars in New Zealand or did you change them up a little bit?

Jenny Maxwell: No, we didn't. We did stick to that formula. It seems to just fit really well with the narrative of what it is that we're actually trying to do. So no, we've stuck very closely to that.

Of course, because we're pretty new and kicking off in 2019, dare I say, I don't like to talk too much about it, but 2020 hit and we'd only been going for six months as a national organization. And so we were stifled quite a lot for about 18 months to two years. So, it slowed us down a lot.

I would say definitely in the education space, we're doing really well. We've got podcasts happening every month on a technical level, and so we've got our sponsors who actually come on board and do that for us. And in terms of networking, that was stifled as well, obviously not being able to do face-to-face and what have you, but that's definitely back up and running, and going in that networking space is going really, really well.

Recruitment, we're struggling a little bit with that one I guess. It's hard to actually find that right forum in New Zealand to actually connect employers with women within the industry. But we are actually working with other trade organizations, Women in Trades and National Women in Construction, and we're starting to get some traction on that as well too.

And in the mentoring space, we're really just sort of moving along on that quite quickly. At the moment, I'm actually stepping back a little bit, so I'll still be attached to the committee, but I'll actually be holding an advisory role to the committee rather than actually being on the committee. And Jade Thomas, who is the chair at the moment, she's also stepping back and we've got an amazing woman, Debbie Witcliff, who's going to step up and become our chair. And Jade and I are just going to sit in the background. We've actually got five new women coming onto the committee this year.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome!

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, it's really cool. And we've thought, well, there's no point in the old girls sitting there, better that we actually let these girls get in and get themselves some experience, but what we can do is actually sit there in the back and actually mentor them. And all of those are governance-type things because it's quite new for a lot of them to actually know and understand what it is to be in their governance role. So, it's exciting.

So I think for me, stepping into that mentoring role is actually a nice new experience to actually have created, and I think Jade and I can actually put an awful lot back in, probably actually put more back in by doing the mentoring and actually sitting there doing the work ourselves.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yep, I feel the exact same way. That's exactly my role with National Women in Roofing now. I go to the board meetings whenever they need me, whenever they need help, whenever they need that person, I'm there. But it is so great to have all these new women taking over and it makes the organization sustainable because it can't just be around one or two people. It has to be a lot of people.

Jenny Maxwell: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, an organization is not one or two people. It has to be bigger than the sum of all of the people. It's a good space to be in.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know, I know! That's the thing. And to have... I mean, when you think of all the members and everybody and how much it's empowered them when I talk to people, it's just amazing.

So I'm curious, are you going to be at the IRE Show in 2024 in Las Vegas?

Jenny Maxwell: I would love to, but unfortunately, no.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, bummer!

Jenny Maxwell: I know. So over the last few years, we've sort of come every second year along to it, so maybe 2025, wherever it might be in 2025. But we've got a trip coming up this year where we're going to Italy and France doing a sporting tour, so unfortunately, you can't do everything, can you?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, you can't.

Jenny Maxwell: So hopefully 2025 and I'll be looking to see if I can actually bring somebody else or maybe a couple of women along with me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome. Yeah, that would be great. Well, in the meantime, we are so honored that we have RANZ, Roofing Association of New Zealand and National Women in Roofing, or NZWIR, New Zealand Women in Roofing, on Roofers Coffee Shop. We have full directories and we have been working with you so that people can find out more information. And Jenny, I'm so excited to have you on Roofers Coffee Shop and some international flavor.

Jenny Maxwell: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's just so inspiring to actually have those connections and to think that we've taken it further than it ever was. And if I hadn't have gone to America and met you and the other ladies, I think, where would we be? We'd still be sitting treading water and not being out there getting stuff done. So it's my privilege to have actually met you and to have been inspired by you to get on and get this stuff done.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You are amazing. I have to tell you, I'm inspired by you. And so we got to just keep it up. We're just going to keep pushing the buttons, right, Jenny?

Jenny Maxwell: Oh, absolutely. And I think the experiences that we share, but also the experiences that we will gain by working together, we'll come up with some really great ideas together.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much for being on this podcast. What a special podcast. I can't wait to share this with all the National Women in Roofing here in the States, and Jenny Stone and Renae, and all of your friends, they're going to love this.

Jenny Maxwell: Oh, thank you so much, Heidi. It's been a real pleasure.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So good. So thank you, Jenny, and thank you all for listening. This is pretty exciting stuff when we start going around, road-tripping around the globe, and meeting people who are so inspiring, who also are passionate and love roofing across the globe. And we're going to keep doing this. And I'm just so happy to have Jenny as such a great friend.

So Jenny, one last time, thank you, and we're going to see you again back on the podcast.

Jenny Maxwell: Will do. Thank you so much.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you all for listening. Please check out all of our podcasts under the Read, Listen, Watch under podcasts for Roofing Road Trips. Of course, check out the New Zealand Directories too, one for National Women in Roofing and one for the RCA. Check those both out. Lots of great information. And be sure to subscribe and set your notifications on your favorite podcast channel so you don't miss a single episode.
We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Intro/Outro: Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from RoofersCoffeeShop.com.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with industry leaders and experts from across the country at IRE 2023. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you so much. We've brought these amazing contractors together and we're going to hear what they think, what's happening in the industry, what's trending, and then we're going to compare it to what they talked about yesterday with the manufacturers and distributors, so it should be pretty... Intros.

Kristina Hill: Hello, everyone. I am Kristina Hill, out of Lincoln, Nebraska, and I own HomeShield Roofing and Exteriors. I'm also the founder of Harness & Heels - Women in Roofing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'm so glad you said that because I was going to [inaudible 00:00:28] if you didn't. Wendy?

Wendy Marvin: I'm Wendy Marvin. I'm with Matrix Roofing and Home Solutions out of Vancouver, Washington.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Steve?

Steve Little: And I have the privilege of being with these lovely ladies in roofing. My name is Steve Little, I'm the president of KPost Roofing & Waterproofing here in Dallas, Texas, and also the CEO of National Roofing Partners.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome. I am humbled and flattered and so much for all of you to be here. I love you all and this is going to be a great conversation. So let's start with the show. How has the show been for you all? And Steve, I'm going to start with you, how's it been?

Steve Little: The best IRE I've been involved in 20 years.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Steve Little: Yeah, it's spectacular. The folks that put the show on have such a difficult time of coordinating everything all year long. And finally it's here, and there were lines to get in. All the aisles are busy. Usually you see by the second day, one part of the show being slow. Whether you went left or right, the aisles are busy, people are hungry, they want to talk to you. We're fortunate it's here in town, so KPost took a booth. And we've had suppliers come to us at one place. We've had people that interested come to work for us. It's great. It's been a great show.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: How smart to have your own booth?

Steve Little: Well, it's in our town. I don't know that we would do it if it was in Denver or Atlanta or someplace, but here in our own town, it's great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it's great. So how's the show been for you, Wendy?

Wendy Marvin: I feel like it's Disneyland. I know we're waiting in lines a little bit, which is fine, but it's like you just look at [inaudible 00:01:55].

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is like Disneyland.

Wendy Marvin: Right. But I know that people are everywhere and like to Steve's point, I'm so excited about... we've been around when they've been a little slower in these past couple years and we won't talk about why. But it's just so refreshing that we're all here. We're gathering around I'm listening to conversations of people sitting at tables that I don't even know and I'm like, "That sounds really cool. That's kind of exciting."

Steve Little: You're engaged.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. Yeah. That's the fun part of being here too, is just all that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And it really started for us on Sunday.

Wendy Marvin: Oh, totally. Yeah. National Women in Roofing.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So much going on. So Kristina, how's it been for you?

Kristina Hill: So this is actually my very first IRE that-

Wendy Marvin: Oh my gosh.

Steve Little: The bar is set.

Kristina Hill: I know.

Steve Little: The bar is set.

Kristina Hill: You're saying it's the best, and I'm like, "Oh my goodness." No. So it's been amazing. So I don't think I've made it through even half of the expo hall to be honest with you.

Wendy Marvin: So many things.

Kristina Hill: There's so many people and so many things. And I think the reoccurring theme that for me is I'm so excited to actually meet you in person. All of these online relationships with everybody, and you could have put a face to a name.

Wendy Marvin: But you've done such an amazing job cultivating all of those relationships. You did such a great job. I love it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You-

Steve Little: Just say yes because it's true. Good job.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You've created the online space for us all to meet.

Wendy Marvin: Very much so.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There is also Roofers Coffee Shop, but we [inaudible 00:03:08].

Wendy Marvin: That's right. Another online space, yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's what's so great. When we do, we all use it and we go through the... So Lee, besides the beautiful hat that you got, how's the show been for you?

Lee Lipniskis: It's good. So this is my 10th show, and I totally agree with you guys, it is amazing. I was thinking like Sunday...

Steve Little: England, it was just France, Canada. It was amazing, they were there. And what they were telling us, what's happening to them in their countries, the same thing happened to us in our country. And they are hungry to be here. They're excited to be at IRE.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great. Yeah.

Lee Lipniskis: I took an Uber, I wanted to go to a country Western store in town, Cavender's, and so I took an Uber with another female in the roofing industry and we're like, "Let's go to the Western store." We were trying on boots and this woman from New Zealand-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, Jenny.

Lee Lipniskis: Was different. [inaudible 00:04:02].

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We have more than one.

Lee Lipniskis: Yeah, there's 12 of them here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh my gosh.

Wendy Marvin: Oh my gosh.

Lee Lipniskis: We started talking in the middle of the aisle at a random store in Dallas about the roofing show, International Roofing Expo, and I thought it was hilarious. We were just doing the same thing, trying to get boots-

Wendy Marvin: Just to say how cool it was we had the New Zealand person at NWIR. It's so crazy.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And that was Jenny. And Jenny owns her own company in New Zealand, her and her husband. She's the president of the New Zealand NRCA, and she's also the president of the New Zealand Women in Roofing. And she got National Women in Roofing, so yeah, that's why [inaudible 00:04:37].

Wendy Marvin: No, it wasn't Jenny, it was another woman.

Steve Little: So you realize that you had a part of this because Roofers Coffee Shop-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Please say that again.

Steve Little: Roofers Coffee Shop has gotten out-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: For the people in the back.

Steve Little: ... into the entire industry. And what you've done with the Roofers Coffee Shop and you're our voice that's out here, and starting National Women in Roofing, there are 500 women at the event on Sunday,

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's crazy.

Steve Little: But more importantly, I was with, and I'm not name-dropping here, but I was with McKay Daniels, who told me he believes his next article is going to be about all the fathers and daughters that are walking the show. And I have to agree with him, we have seen them-

Kristina Hill: Yeah, there's a lot.

Steve Little: ... and this is the succession that's happening in our industry. It's not just happening grandpa to grandfather to grandson, it's to granddaughter, it's to daughters that are happening. So it excites the hell out of me to see what's happening in our industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yesterday, Chicago Metal was on here and Alina is the new president of Chicago, and her dad is Brogan Huel who started it. So we're seeing this not-

Wendy Marvin: Generational.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... just in contractors, but also across manufacturing, distribution [inaudible 00:05:46].

Steve Little: You're so kind.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. Great entry to our next question, which is what do you see trending? So Lee, you were saying brand new business. I'm so proud of you. So core of your business. What do you see trending that you want to bring into your business here, but overall it doesn't have to be just here?

Lee Lipniskis: I think for me I'm an owner operator, I don't have any other employees, so I'm doing everything on my own. And as I grow and come into that, I'm all about efficiency right now. And so technology is huge. We were talking about earlier how there's a lot of tech companies that have now infiltrated the roofing industry, which I love. They're bringing us up to speed in this amazing world-

Wendy Marvin: Taking and screening

Lee Lipniskis: ... of possibilities. Whether we like it or not, it's here. And so I'm really focused on what kind of technology can I bring into my business to make me as efficient as possible to keep my profits going and growing and growing? So technology all the way.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And that's the trend, you're right, with all contractors.

Lee Lipniskis: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. What do you see, Kristina?

Kristina Hill: Kind of that same thing I want to say, but I went by a booth and you can fly a drone and it will help you use AI to spot damage on there. So if it's too steep or too high, you don't have to get on the roof, you can use AI technology to really do the work for you. But it's so neat to see the progression of that and how advanced technology has become. But I will say in my market, in the Nebraska market, we're seeing more and more of the Class 4 shingles, the Class 3 shingles really coming to the forefront, and just learning from the different manufacturers about these now Class 3 shingles that weren't really a thing. I think Malarkey was the only one for a while that had a Class 3, and now everybody has one. So it's cool to see that evolving and that just the changing of these shingle worlds actually seeing some new products come out.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They're meeting the needs.

Kristina Hill: Yes, absolutely.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Because the weather's crazy and we are seeing so much out there [inaudible 00:07:47].

Wendy Marvin: We just got snow again today.

Lee Lipniskis: I know [inaudible 00:07:49].

Kristina Hill: I think it's snowing back home for me too.

Wendy Marvin: Well, you're in Nebraska.

Kristina Hill: It's 80 degrees here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know.

Wendy Marvin: It's like you're Nebraska College, don't you guys complain about snow [inaudible 00:08:00]. We just shut down.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You shouldn't complain then since you get it all the time.

Kristina Hill: I can complain. I have the right to complain.

Wendy Marvin: You have a right to say whatever you want. [inaudible 00:08:10]. Did you put us strategically? Do you laugh at this? Because I'm like, we as owners would be run over by this type. But I love this because we've talked so much about technology over the years and our involvement with RT3. And I just think about, like Steve said, they found us. Technology has found and they are everywhere, and it's not always a good thing. And I'm excited that we have all this new innovation and everything, but it's also so much, it's so overwhelming. And I'm really excited just not to pop RT3, but RT3 is really working hard on trying to put together some questions to ask what stage you are at your company and how to understand what API is versus EPS or ESP or whatever.

Lee Lipniskis: Yeah [inaudible 00:08:55].

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Every other acronym.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. Well, there's so much here but so much to be excited for. We are a growing, changing, amazing industry that is just... We have such a bright future.

Lee Lipniskis: I know.

Wendy Marvin: I'm not trying to be cliche, but we really do.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's really true. It's really true. We've been watching it. Steve?

Steve Little: So you can tell that with PEs getting involved in our industry now and there's trendy, there's a lot of private equity money coming into our industry, it's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines that our industry, they found us, is what I said before. RT3 started years ago. We found Pontivo at an RT3 event in Atlanta, that was droning the solar industry and the technology industry, the telecom industry. And we've brought them into the roofing space. And now they're National Roofing partners, we're doing AI drone technology with assessments. And it goes right back to cutting time on the roof for the contractor. And we have a labor problem in our industry, so technology is helping us in labor-

Kristina Hill: And safety, it's helping us [inaudible 00:10:04].

Steve Little: Bingo. There are companies that are actually here, sell you the drone, sell you the technology, it downloads into your software, it produces a report for you for not just the commercial side but also the residential side. And that ties into the estimating programs, and so it's like... and you're done.

Wendy Marvin: And you're such a disruptor in our industry. I love it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's great.

Wendy Marvin: You're such a forefront and mover.

Steve Little: And so money chases opportunity. So private equity is chasing opportunity.

Wendy Marvin: The fact that they're here means something.

Steve Little: Right. So that's what I see trending. I see big business getting involved in our business. They should. We're part of food, water, shelter. It's what we do. Roofing protects. They should be involved in what we're doing. So it's technology tie. There's some new safety stuff's coming out too with lanyards and-

Wendy Marvin: AI and the safety vests to be able to pinpoint where they are, and to beep at them if they get close to an open surface.

Steve Little: And it also is taking their sweat and breaking it down, it's analyzing it and reporting back to the company if somebody's dehydrated [inaudible 00:11:07] which is a safety issue. It's really some cool stuff.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And the Roofing Alliance, you're wearing that pin, is on the forefront of doing a lot of this research-

Steve Little: They really are. I mean-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... and putting stuff out there.

Steve Little: And just like the women in roofing, you came to the Roofing Alliance and said, "Hey, I've got a good idea. We have a labor issue. We have this huge opportunity of a workforce that's out there, let's go tap it." They invested in it and they continue to invest. And that is an idea that started 20 years ago, and now it's-

Wendy Marvin: Probably over a cocktail.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And look what's happening.

Steve Little: Probably did it over a cocktail napkin, I'm sure it was.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know.

Wendy Marvin: I love it. And now it's all coming to fruition, so exciting.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. And I want to go back on your mergers too and just mention it's not just roofing companies that we're starting to see [inaudible 00:11:50]. We are seeing... To me it goes back to the '90s with the amount of acquisitions and mergers that are going on in manufacturing and distribution.

Steve Little: So I'm old enough to be in the industry in the '90s, but I didn't join until 2000. Let me tell you what I know. What I know is that in the '90s, it was roofing companies trying to get together to better position themselves. And then they [inaudible 00:12:11] decide to go public so that they could all get a big cash windfall. It's not what's happening now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Mm-mm. It's different.

Steve Little: The subcontracting industry that is either servicing healthcare, industrial reoccurring income with assessment programs that are happening, this is an established business. It's a generational business. And so they're wanting to put their money in a business that's a generational business that's modernizing the technology.

Lee Lipniskis: Yes.

Wendy Marvin: They know where we're headed. They know where we're headed.

Steve Little: I get goosebumps talking about this because our industry is so cool.

Wendy Marvin: But they wouldn't have done that 10, 15 years ago, and that's fantastic too.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And a lot of that has come through the progressiveness of people in the roofing industry saying, "We've got to lift," and all that.

Steve Little: Well and we've brought younger people in. So as younger people have come into our industry, they're forcing us baby boomers, they're forcing us up to participate, and it's very cool the ones that are listening. I promise you there's a lot of my friends out there that are not participating in this because they haven't gotten out of the old guard. Go talk to your daughters and your sons and listen to what's going on. You need to participate. [inaudible 00:13:14]

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's why we're here.

Wendy Marvin: Because she's going to run us over if you don't get [inaudible 00:13:18].

Steve Little: I like being on their train though.

Wendy Marvin: I know.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I do too.

Steve Little: I think Kristina did a great job with best of success and she really woke the audience up, there was 400 people there. She had them. So she had them right there the whole time. You did a great job.

Kristina Hill: Thank you. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. Along these lines, we're going the same thing, but I want to talk about highlights, and some of them we've hit on already, but some of the big highlights that you're seeing here at IRE, but also in the industry that is starting to make changes maybe more... when I'm saying highlights, like more progressive. Where are we going in the future? What's really important? So Lee, maybe start with you.

Lee Lipniskis: Yeah. I think the thing that I... I was shaking my head yes because in our world as contractors we want efficiency, and I talked about that earlier with the technology, but now it's more so tech stacking and tech integration and what integrates with what. And so that's something that's coming down the pipe from manufacturers, how can I order through my CRM? Get an aerial image, order it through my CRM, get it to the manufacturer, and then have it delivered and invoiced and all of that? So what kind of technology can I stack in to be more efficient is what I see coming down the pipe, and that's huge right now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: When you see the big distributors, that's all they're showing right now. They're Roof Hub [inaudible 00:14:40]. Yeah, I know. Is that-

Kristina Hill: That's what I'm saying too. And I kind of piggyback on that. So we are branching and doing residential and commercial. There's not a lot of technology that you can do both very efficiently in. And I think Roofing Think Tank, that's something that they've taken on. And so I'm excited to see what the future is for the integration of both of them to have a good CRM and ordering system and just the cross back and forth because being a smaller company, I don't have separate departments. We are the department. So we have to be able to be efficient in that, and it has to be able to communicate to each other, otherwise you're losing valuable time and hours and leads.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And I think the highlight that I have to put on with both of you is 10 years ago people, if they had a problem like that like, "Our commercial and residential are not speaking," 10 years ago they wouldn't even thought to say, "Well, what's the tech stack?" That wasn't even a word. But now as you have both started your own companies, you go to technology every time for the solutions. That is a huge progression.

Lee Lipniskis: But we're also finding that we have a voice. And so if we have a problem and maybe have an idea, the tech companies now are listening to us. They're taking our advice and saying, "Oh, this would be better for the contractor, let's figure out how to do that," is what I'm finding is that they're listening to the small business owners and really changing and customizing their program to reach more people.

Kristina Hill: They want that feedback so that they can adapt and change.

Wendy Marvin: Some of them.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Lee Lipniskis: The good ones.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: The ones that are going to stick around are doing that.

Lee Lipniskis: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes. Yes.

Wendy Marvin: Well, and total segue into what I was going to make a point of is just that I think we're in this new phase where we're sexy again, and-

Steve Little: I've wanted to make roofing sexy for years, and now people are... I've been in three different conversation, you're the fourth [inaudible 00:16:31]. It's like, we have to make roofing sexy. We have to attract people to our market. We have to attract companies to want to pay attention to us. So you were saying that you were segueing into a...

Wendy Marvin: Oh, I just talking about, so we're getting noticed, which is good. But when you're in early adoption of being noticed, what happens is you get flooded. And I think we're in a flood phase of tech and I feel like what happens in that world is that they come in and they want to get so fast to market with a product that they don't put the time and energy into all of them, and I'm using this loosely. They don't put the time and energy into making sure they worked correctly. So they may have an API where they talk to each other, but they're dumping garbage into both systems, or they don't have an API at all.

We still have people that are like, "No, my system is my system." And it's like when you get to Steve's level and you've got three different systems [inaudible 00:17:22].

Steve Little: Oh, please.

Kristina Hill: You can only imagine.

Wendy Marvin: No, but listen, that was one of my most profound first RT3 meetings was we went to KPost and I was just like... he was all shiny and I was like, "I want to be Steve when I grow up," and all these things and we got there.

Steve Little: I'm going to have to leave this. This is terrible.

Wendy Marvin: And we got there though.

Steve Little: I'm flattered. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's a highlight.

Wendy Marvin: And he was so amazing, but also experiencing the exact same problem I was having, which is tech doesn't talk to each other and he's got extra people to bring all of those data from all three of those things into the parent company to try to figure out financials as an owner.

Steve Little: Well, to listen to you talk about starting your company and your first thought is efficiency. So we were plugging people, you're right, into this. So I'm going-

Wendy Marvin: For production.

Steve Little: A little history lesson. But I'm thinking, do you remember Richard Rusk? He held the pole up for GPS, and he had the... I think it was a Blackberry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, I do remember that.

Steve Little: He was doing assessments on the roof and he sold at it. And roofers bought it like the cows were coming in, it was great. Daryl Maronic had a roofing company, he started Dataforma, he was really one of the first trailblazers that went out here to try to become more efficient because his roofers or his staff were spending so much time doing things.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Because he had the pain and he needed to fix it. Yeah, he had the pain point.

Steve Little: And then it just keeps going. Well, today there are two really cool things happening. Brad Belden created a partnership with Salesforce, one of the leading CRMs in the world, and they built Osby, which is incorporating all sorts of project management, it has all sorts of connectivity to Sage and to the edge and a lot of different things that are out there. Greg Walling, he created FollowUp and he incorporated a project management tool in there. These are roofers, but to have somebody like a Belden to get Salesforce involved. Or Ken Kelly, he went and got Microsoft, and Microsoft Dynamics we went out there for RT3.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's what I'm doing with mine, yeah.

Steve Little: And they built the program for the roofing industry.

Lee Lipniskis: Jesse Wells.

Steve Little: Oh, Jesse Wells with that...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know.

Steve Little: So when you see that kind of integration coming into our industry, you know we're a hot market, you know we're somewhere there. And to see the contractors reach out to Microsoft, to Salesforce, those type of things and create partnerships it's... I want to be 40.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. I want to live this again.

Steve Little: I do, I want to do it again with all this knowledge.

Kristina Hill: In a couple of years you'll be 40. You'll get there.

Steve Little: You're way too sweet.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. Okay. So-

Steve Little: Let's get back to where we're...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We're going to go a little bit on the other side, which I think is really important. So Steve, I want to start with you. What are the biggest pain points right now for contractors in the industry?

Steve Little: You hear a lot and it's good because we need to have those checks and balances because we all have contracts we signed. As you start to go into the commercial business, you're going to find the contracts for commercial are a lot different. The regulatory on commercial, it's a lot different, and the pressure is a lot different. So they say labor, but labor's starting to get a little organized. We're going to talk a little bit later about education programs and apprenticeship programs and things like that that are coming to the market, so I'll wait to talk about then. This is kind of funny, but I forgot the question.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, pain points.

Wendy Marvin: Pain points for the industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, you were going, you were good.

Steve Little: So pain points. Regulatory. [inaudible 00:20:40]. Regulatory. Okay.

Lee Lipniskis: Changes in that.

Steve Little: OSHA three years ago, and I learned this at the National Roofing Partners leadership event we had on Monday that United Rentals spoke, and you think, "Oh, here comes United Rentals. Dennis is going to get up here and start talking about all the equipment and they're going to sell you better and service you better." Not at all. Three years ago, OSHA put things in to affect equipment that we own, that are mandates, that now the OSHA inspectors are going out, and not just getting you for the things that are important by getting our men and women back home, so there are fall protections in place, ladders are tied off.

But they're not looking at equipment. And so that's like, "Oh, wait a second. That's a part of regulatory I didn't expect to be in place." Under the new administration, they've hired 87,000 IRS agents. So I don't know if you remember, but during the Obama administration-

Wendy Marvin: It makes my head hurt.

Steve Little: ... there were 600 construction companies that got audited for I-9. Now we're going to have the IRS coming in and doing audits, and none of this has to do anything with roofing, it has to do with running a day-to-day business.

Wendy Marvin: It's more challenges for us as owners as well.

Steve Little: So I could spout out the common things we're hearing, the material shortage, raw materials, all those kind of things. I'm telling you, regulatory is a big deal. It's a big deal.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow. That's it then. No one had brought that up yet.

Wendy Marvin: No. And this is why we sit in these circles, I'm just like, I love this stuff.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Pain points.

Wendy Marvin: I am really... It's all the same stuff, it's labor, it's material... and it's been interesting to meet some of the people in here that the people, excuse me, of the communications that are going on out there and that people are like, "I don't even know what tech is." Excuse me. "I don't know how to hire people. I don't know. I always have a job description that looks like this. I don't even know how to think about something different

Steve Little: The way you did business yesterday is not how you're going to be doing business five years from now. Listen to me when I tell you dinosaurs, they will pass you up.

Wendy Marvin: Dinosaurs run you over.

Steve Little: And your competition.... We have a couple of competitors in this marketplace, and we're pretty strong in this marketplace. We have a couple of competitors that are younger than Keith and Jane and I, and they're doing some really great things and they're innovative. So I'm telling you, I'm scared of you all. I'm glad on one side of it that I'm in the fourth quarter of my career. But on the other side of it, I'm excited because we're becoming more efficient, we have to pay attention to our business world.

Wendy Marvin: There's the part.

Steve Little: It is, we have to pay attention to every aspect of our business now.

Wendy Marvin: And I worry. I worry as we... So we're running, we're taking off on the run, which is great. We're growing, we're changing, we've got tech, we've got all these things. I'm worried we're going to lose quality. I'm worried we're losing the craftsmanship of the people who came up through the world as... Because people are opening roofing businesses that have never been a roofer before. And they do that with me all the time, "Oh yeah, babe, have you been on the roof?"

"Well, yeah, actually I have."

But the attention to quality, the attention to detail, I just want to help keep that all in place while we continue running.

Lee Lipniskis: But that is also a differentiator, the companies that do have the quality.

Wendy Marvin: Quality [inaudible 00:23:53].

Steve Little: So let me just add one more thing. The Frankenstein that happened during the material shortage where you're putting Carlisle's ISO with JM's material on top of it.

Wendy Marvin: The Frankenstein roofs.

Steve Little: The Frankenstein roofs. Mark Graham at the NRCA has warned us.

Wendy Marvin: Yep. We're in trouble.

Steve Little: And Trent Courtney has warned us, our industry attorney, he's made it very clear that five, maybe 10 years from now, the people be knocking on your door. There're going to be ambulance chasing lawyers. They're going to know that these systems are in place and they're going to come after you. Hell, they do it. Now in the school systems, there are lawyers that starting in San Antonio, Texas, it has gotten all the way up to Dallas and they've brought consultants on the roof so that they can cut out and do court cuts in the roof to see if the assemblies are right or things like that. It's like they're looking for something.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They are.

Steve Little: We've created a Frankenstein situation because we all wanted to stay in business and the manufacturers approved it. So whoever the top five manufacturers are-

Wendy Marvin: But they didn't always approve it in writing.

Steve Little: Thank you.

Wendy Marvin: That's the other side of it.

Steve Little: Our employees don't work for us if they didn't get their submittals approved in writing from the manufacturer, and that's part of the stuff that you get in the commercial business, it's a lot of paper trail.

Wendy Marvin: They told me it was okay.

Steve Little: It can be digital. It's okay for it to be digital, but they just need to have it. So I think, sorry to be so talkative, but I think Frankenstein's going to be a problem.

Wendy Marvin: Oh, go ahead.

Kristina Hill: Sorry. So with something like that where if you're a larger company and you do have some lawsuits that come after you or whatever, if you're a larger company, you can take, maybe a couple-

Wendy Marvin: You can navigate a couple of those.

Kristina Hill: But when you're a brand new company, that will put you out of business. So that's scary to me too.

Steve Little: So work with your surety company first if it's a bonded job. And also work with your insurance group. And maybe get some catastrophic put in place, it's very affordable.

Wendy Marvin: Almost.

Steve Little: Yeah, it's almost like DNA to our clients. But get some insurance put together for something catastrophic, something that is a force majeure, something that's not... nothing that you could possibly expect to happen.

Wendy Marvin: Do you mean kind of like COVID?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, right.

Steve Little: Well we actually had, in our captive, we had business interruption, and we are just getting paid for the claim in the business interruption.

Kristina Hill: And that's why when you come to places like this and you learn about that, it will pay for itself-

Wendy Marvin: Now it's on your radar

Kristina Hill: ... time and time again. But if you're sitting at home trying to run your company, you don't learn about this. You don't know about it, so-

Wendy Marvin: It's when you get kicked in the teeth when you get the service letter.

Kristina Hill: But it's important to connect and to learn this stuff because as business owners, you don't know everything. And there's no way that you can until you're learning from others with experience.

Wendy Marvin: I will throw one more word of caution out is the board of directors. So we just had an instance where we have a condo association. I have condo coverage, I have specific for... my insurance agents are amazing. And the board got inspected. The attorney group came in and said, "We've been hired by a owner to come in and inspect your properties." So they inspected the properties, they didn't find issue, but the board refused to hire them to finish the full inspection, and they sued the board. They sued the board of a director for not doing their fiduciary duty because they're at that six-year window.

So the legalities, they're out there, they're the raptors. So we've got all that great attention. We're also getting this other attention, so we've got to be careful.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, people coming in. Okay. No, you're good but I want to keep... because there's different pain points, which we're kind of talking about. So what are you seeing?

Kristina Hill: I would kind of say what I mentioned a little bit before is the ability to weed through the information to find the correct information. Because we are so digital and so online, everybody has a voice and you don't necessarily always know that it's the correct information that you're getting or where to go to find the right information or just along those lines is being new and not having the background in this industry. I'm relying on other people to learn from them, and I'm not always given the best information or the correct information, so that's a major paid point for me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's really good to know because that's one of the things we try to do. We try to bring the information, we try to bring these voices and all these things because you need people who are, it's not about a competitor or about getting your business, you just want...

Kristina Hill: The industry as a whole.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Whole. Right.

Wendy Marvin: Best practices. Best practices.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Lee, how about you?

Lee Lipniskis: I'm going to be honest, I don't have any pain points right now because I have 16 years of experience in this industry, it's my 10th IRE, I've met wonderful people like you and Steve, and I have a-

Steve Little: Wendy.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah, don't worry about me.

Lee Lipniskis: I looked at both of you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: He was [inaudible 00:28:25].

Lee Lipniskis: I have these arrows in my quiver of people who I can call if I have an issue phone when I-

Steve Little: You phone a friend.

Lee Lipniskis: When I phone a friend all of the time. So with where I am in my business and the growth, I don't have a pain point. I have great people in my back pocket to help me through those. So I don't have the same struggles yet. I hope one day I will be a Steve Little and have those struggles, but maybe in like two years. You did it very quickly.

Steve Little: That's right.

Lee Lipniskis: So right now it's just I'm very, very fortunate to be in the industry for a while and get to know people like yourselves, all three of you, and have you in my pocket. And then Kristina. Kristina and I met a year ago? No. Oh my gosh, we just met in person in December for the first time.

Kristina Hill: Yeah, in person.

Lee Lipniskis: Online, right? And we have now a group of women business owners around the country, and we text almost every single day about-

Wendy Marvin: We have chats. I love it.

Lee Lipniskis: ... what's going on and...

Kristina Hill: Sometimes at 5:30 in the morning when we should not be.

Wendy Marvin: I turned off my notifications for that group. We're all up too early.

Lee Lipniskis: I had 53 missed text messages at 6:00 AM from other women business owners, and we were talking [inaudible 00:29:44] business, we were talking commissions-

Wendy Marvin: Contracts.

Lee Lipniskis: ... and insurance and subcontracts, and all of this. And so I'm definitely in the honeymoon phase, which I hope continues for a long time, but I cannot say that I don't really have pain points right now.

Kristina Hill: And don't discredit yourself because you put in that work exactly prior to starting your business and you filled those seats at your table to help you be successful. You did that.

Lee Lipniskis: That's true.

Steve Little: They're smarter than us.

Wendy Marvin: I know. I'm like I just love it. [inaudible 00:30:14].

Lee Lipniskis: I did. I took a lot of time before this.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. You do a lot beyond the roof. You're doing a lot the exteriors and everything. And Kristina, I think you do too. But I'm curious, and material shortage. I know everybody's tired of it, but I want... because we're going to compare this to yesterday, I want to know what are you seeing on material? What are you having a hard time getting and what do you see on material shortage?

Lee Lipniskis: Yeah. So for me, I do residential, exterior, a lot of asphalt shingles, and I also have an OC plant in my town, and I use OC for the most part, I don't really have a roofing material shortage, but I also do siding and I do windows, and that is still... if you want upgraded windows, you're looking at like 22 to 32 weeks out. Siding. I'm doing a steel siding house and I had to order it from Canada because they don't have it anywhere in the US, so it's being freed in from Canada and that's not going to get here until middle of May. And so there's shortage.

But I'm finding that people will wait, they are not... we, as the younger generation, we're very much now, we want it instant. Amazon has made us that way, I think. And so we're finding that if you set the proper expectation, people will wait. They'll wait for you, they trust in you, and they want a good product. So even with that shortage, it has not affected my business at all. But it's out there. It's still there.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it is there. How are you seeing

Kristina Hill: Very similar that it's more the delays than really the shortage issues. And we have right great relationships with every supplier that's in our town of... and have accounts at each of them and have been very fortunate that if we can't get something at one place, I can get it at the next one. We did have some time period where we were selling the colors of shingles instead of the actual brand because it was hard [inaudible 00:32:07]. "Which one do you want here? Which one do you want?"

And I will give major shout out to the suppliers. We had the ISO issue, but got on the phone with our suppliers and instead of them just saying, "Sorry, we don't have it," hang up, they took it upon themselves to make many, many, many phone calls to other branches and other people and really get it sorted out for us. And we got material from Kansas that was already available. It was already booked, but they didn't need it. Just really moving mountains because the suppliers understood that this is our livelihood as well. And we're a smaller company, like I said, but it's so cool to see that recognition from the other people.

Wendy Marvin: But you did that by the relationship [inaudible 00:32:47].

Kristina Hill: Yes, the relationships that you have, for sure. But really recently, same thing, as long as you are communicating to the homeowners, and don't just wait till week 17 of an 18-week delay to say, "Hey, we're ready to go," follow up every four weeks. "Hey, nothing's changed. We're still on track." That's what they want. They just want to be kept [inaudible 00:33:05].

Wendy Marvin: Communication, yeah.

Lee Lipniskis: And I've got to say really quick, I don't know how it was in your states, but Colorado during that time where we couldn't find material for anything, we banded together as owners and bartered and traded. And I don't know if you guys did that in Texas and Washington, but it was so cool to see you talking to your competitor and saying, "Hey, I have this, I have that," to not have the Frankenstein roof. And I feel like-

Wendy Marvin: To support each other.

Steve Little: And that's how we got the Frankenstein roofs.

Lee Lipniskis: Oh, god.

Steve Little: Because this person had Firestone and this person had JM and somebody else had this, and so that's how we... because we had to build the roofs.

Lee Lipniskis: It was really cool to see those egos checked at the door and just all of us owners helping everyone else out and trying to stay. Because we were essential, but our material was so backed up. So I just wanted to mention [inaudible 00:33:53] how wonderful this industry is in that regard.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Material shortages for you. You do a lot, the whole exteriors too.

Wendy Marvin: A ton of resi, yeah. Windows are [inaudible 00:34:03] right now. It's really hard. I liked what we did initially was we really narrowed our color selection offerings. We haven't come back from that, I'm not going to lie. So you really don't get offered a green roof and we're not doing the whole color portfolio. And I just think we got gun shy because then once they pick an abnormal color, then you've got to make 20 phone calls and then they might have 10 square. And so we just kind of moved away from that [inaudible 00:34:27].

Steve Little: Different color batches and...

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. And I think what's going to be interesting is to watch what the manufacturers do with that because maybe we don't need 25 color choices. Maybe we really do need to cut back that, which they would love. And then yeah, we're still smaller things every now and then, fasteners have been a little bit of an issue, but we're still... I've been around 15 years, so I've got the buying power a little bit to buy a pallet of something or two pallets or something. So yeah, that's helpful. To get things delivered on the roof at times is a bit of a challenge, but it's so much better, so much better.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: What are you seeing?

Steve Little: Well, what I have not heard this show was unprecedented. If I heard that word one more time-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank god.

Steve Little: "Unprecedented in the entire history of our company." And then you go look at all of the public companies 10-Qs and see how much money they made through this whole process. Not that I'm angry, I'm not going to hold anybody accountable, but-

Wendy Marvin: Yeah, prices aren't coming back down either, so that's true.

Steve Little: So the industry waited for this for a long time. In the 20 years that I've been in it, there were people who would do price increases once a year and it would be like Southwest Airlines and Delta. And somebody said, "I'm going up $5 to see." The other person said, "I'm going up $5." But Americans said, "I'm going down $2," and everybody would drop back down, just to give an example. No antitrust, no recessions going on.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I was going to say you'll get a little careful talking about pricing.

Steve Little: We're not doing any antitrust. But in reference to supply, we brought in over $4 million worth of inventory over the time period by Frankensteining and doing whatever. If somebody had a truck, a distributor truck, a manufacturing truck, somebody canceled, we took it on. And it changed the way we looked at the business. We narrowed our selection. We offered six roofing systems, three of them with lightweight, three of them with rigid insulation, two of them in single ply, two of them in modified. And that's all we sold.

And it has been amazing. The specifiers agreed to the changes, architects, consultants, et cetera because we were able to lock in the pricing during a quarter of a period. "So if you want to wait 22 weeks and get your product, go ahead and do it. I can't guarantee the price can and I can't guarantee it's actually going to come in. But if you'll switch to one of these six systems..." So what it's done for us, Heidi, and for a lot of my friends in the industry, we now are carrying inventory. So we're going to carry $2 million in inventory as a company, that's about a one-month supply of our billings for that, and for that one purpose because it's uncertain, not unprecedented, but uncertain where the industry's going.

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. Still a little rock...

Heidi J. Ellsworth: When you think about it, when you do a comparison... When I first started, everybody had their own warehouse. Everybody was bringing in and warehousing and [inaudible 00:37:05].

Steve Little: Controlling their destiny, buying the product down.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And then over the years, everybody just in time delivery, just in time [inaudible 00:37:09].

Steve Little: Toyota, just in time... They did.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And they got rid of their warehouses and now everybody's bringing them back because they're like, "We're not going to get caught that way again." So I'm glad you brought that up. It's really interesting to see.

Steve Little: There's been so many paradigm shifts in our industry over the last 18 months. Now you've got to train contractors to think about, "Well, wait a second, you can flip," I don't mean it disrespectfully, "but you can navigate the system," number one. And because of the change in the warranties, there's now a program that people... catastrophic insurance policies are on warranties. They're covered by Citibank, Zurich, Lloyd's of London.

Wendy Marvin: Same.

Steve Little: So you have a situation that contractors are trying to take control of their destiny because they lived through COVID, they lived through supply chain. Why not live through that same situation with warranties? And I know I've talked to a couple of manufacturers, and I know my phone's going to ring after this because all of them watch your program.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I hope so. They better be.

Steve Little: But you're asking about trends, and you're asking about-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, and that's what I was going to say, that's a trend-

Steve Little: ... supply chain.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... that's what's going to happen.

Steve Little: I'll bet you, yesterday when you had the suppliers here, they didn't talk about contractors controlling their destiny.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, they did not. No, they did not.

Wendy Marvin: Because that terrifies them.

Kristina Hill: Did you back off of offering only those six roof systems or simplifying your business, or are you kind of expanding that now?

Steve Little: Okay. Great question. We're probably up to 10 because distribution is getting full again. In fact, during the show, when you ask the manufacturers how things go, and they're going, "Well, I'm not sure, we're at full capacity,," and the distributors now are full capacity, and so the spring orders that they normally were shipping, they're not shipping right now. And so there's kind of a wait and see. We believe the market's going to be strong second, third, and fourth quarter. But they're saying it's because in different areas of the country, it's not coming back as strong. California, they're having rain, they're not roofing right now. There's snow.

Wendy Marvin: We've got weird weather things going on. Tell me. [inaudible 00:39:00].

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is to say that really the weather was Q1.

Steve Little: It's affecting it. Q1 is kind of affecting it. Then now Q2, while all these distributors have inventory, so I'm suggesting to the manufacturers, "Maybe you need to take on some inventory like the contractors did, and you build some warehouses and you put some stuff into it because if we're going to be as busy in three and four as they say we're going to be, then we don't need you running out of ship." Oops. Excuse me. FTC, is there a 7-second delay? Oh, sorry. [inaudible 00:39:29]. We're passionate about our business, so.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's okay. Let's talk about, I want to make sure too that we get to that next topic because I know we kind of talked about at the beginning that the labor shortage and what we're doing on the labor front, and really interesting when you were talking about crews. We're seeing crews being used more and more and more, and where, seriously, 20 years ago it was all employer W-2s, but-

Steve Little: Well, this is one of those unprecedented situations that are transpiring, that has the NRCA and other associations really worried because we fought against this. If you weren't brick and mortar, you didn't have trucks, you didn't put your own stuff down, you didn't control your safety, then you weren't really a roofer. Really, that was that. There was a number of organizations that came out, Roof Connect came out, NRP came out, those companies, and they were all deemed brokers, but they really aren't because if you look at the business, we're paying by the square instead of paying by the hour. If you have them provide the same insurance, if you take them through your safety program, if you put your own personnel on site while they're doing the work, you're paying by the square instead by the hour.

Jason Stanley at IB has a company called Labor Central, and he is trying to professionalize that side of the business. And I love what he's doing. I told him, and I'll tell him to his face and publicly, "I hate what you're doing because you're putting people in business that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on safety. We spend millions of dollars on trucks and equipment all the time, and you're allowing people to get in business that you can say are as good as," because he's promoting pro certification. So he is professionalizing that industry, and is going to affect our business one way or another.

Now we use subs, we use them on non-occupied buildings or we use them on projects that we're doing at night. We don't use them on live buildings.

Wendy Marvin: Lower risk.

Steve Little: But two of the three subs that we use, were superintendents of ours who created business, so they're like KPost companies. But that isn't an ongoing-

Wendy Marvin: But that's a trusted provider.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's a total change in the industry.

Wendy Marvin: And it scares me. It scares me because you as an owner, you are still liable. And that's the thing that they don't realize, it's like, "Oh yeah, you can use all these subs and they did the, 'Well, I didn't do the ref, you did.' You are the contract. If they don't pay their taxes, you pay it. If they don't do L&I right, they don't do safety right, you could be fined." And that's what we're seeing, OSHA's going after that.

Steve Little: OSHA now has said, because the industry's going to subs, OSHA's now changing some of their association and it's guilt by association, the fine goes to them and to you.

Lee Lipniskis: Oh absolutely, yeah. Colorado's that way.

Steve Little: And the fines just moved to $15,000 a pop.

Wendy Marvin: Our fines in Washington are exponential, six years, look back.

Steve Little: Oh my goodness.

Wendy Marvin: So if you've had a safety glasses violation in the last six years and you've had two of those, and then you do get a real fine, you're in deep doodle. And I worry about that because again, we're in that production, we're doing it, we're hurrying, we want to get going. And this is a great way to do it, and it's great, except we need to be the voices of reasons that kind of slow things down a little bit and say, "Okay, if you're going to use subs, that's great, but here are the things you need to talk to... Number one, first and foremost, talk to Trent. Just get a hold of a good legal and get your paperwork figured out."

Steve Little: So, Heidi?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes.

Steve Little: I hate to do this to you, but we started late and I'm speaking at two o'clock.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. So hold on. Hold on.

Steve Little: So I just wanted to give you a two-minute warning.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. We're going to get a wrap-up, I knew this. So real quick, labor, because I was [inaudible 00:42:56].

Wendy Marvin: And you've got to walk there too.

Steve Little: It's just right there.

Kristina Hill: Yes, we use subs, but kind of like you were saying, they have to be trusted subs if they're going to be on your jobs because it's my name on that project. It's my company's name, and because we are newer, if I have a job fail or something happened, my company will suffer greatly from that. Yes. So we did go through a period where we had to interview subs and look at their work and really talk to our suppliers too, to get the information from them, "Who's certified? Who do you recommend?" And go that route instead of just taking somebody's card who comes up to me at the Casey's gas station and says, "Hey, I'm a crew. Can I work for you?"

Wendy Marvin: "Hey, lady, do you need a roofer?"

Kristina Hill: Yeah. It happens all the time. All the time.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So are you having a hard time or do you have your crews in line?

Kristina Hill: We have our crews in line, which we're very, very grateful for. I am having an issue with gutter crews at the moment. It is so hard to come by a good gutter crew. That's where I'm seeing the [inaudible 00:43:54] right now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay. So if you're out there, you're looking-

Kristina Hill: We need gutter crews.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Gutter crews. Gutter crews. And you have a good gutter crew, I heard.

Lee Lipniskis: I have a great gutter crew.

Wendy Marvin: She's amazing.

Lee Lipniskis: The thing about being in the industry for so long and then starting your company, I've had that availability to subcontractors already who I've known my roofers, I've watched their kids grow up, so I have that relationship with them already. My gutter crew, the same thing. My painting crew, it was a cousin of the guy that I knew 10 years ago, and so that's amazing. And I'm very fortunate in that to have that relationship with them. But I have a really great siding crew now, and I met them at a supplier's training.

So I went to a siding training and that's where I met my subcontractor. And I had talked to him prior and just happened to see this person and thinking, I feel like you're my sub, because I hadn't used them yet. And I met him and I was like, "This is amazing. If you are taking the time to learn about a product more and I'm doing the same thing-"

Wendy Marvin: That's a good place. Training.

Lee Lipniskis: "... I want to work with you because you care about how it's installed."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And this is probably pretty obvious, but I'm going to know this is a new way that's happening right here [inaudible 00:45:07] the barrier to entry into roofing because this is making it possible for all these brilliant young entrepreneurs to come in and do things different than we are.

Steve Little: And they're out marketing us old dogs and the buyers are becoming younger, and so they relate to you. And so there's a transition. The consulting business is the same thing. The consultants that started years ago, 20, 25 years ago are now retiring and the next group that's coming through is younger, but the hold that they have on accounts is going away, and you guys are doing a great job of coming into market.

Kristina Hill: Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And it's really as it should be, right? It is as it should be.

Steve Little: There's supposed to be a generational change, some of us stay in this too long.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is what is happening.

Wendy Marvin: But I just want to be the baby. I just don't want to go back to where I was the baby sitting with these guys.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We have to get Steve to his next speaking engagement.

Steve Little: Yeah, I'm really sorry about that, but we started a little behind.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. And so what I'm going to just do final around is just 2023. What are you most excited about this year? What's happening? What are you looking forward to? And I am going to say one thing, I saw you, Steve, seeing this. This is what I'm excited about. I'm excited about the Para Latinos and everything that's on there.

Steve Little: Oh, yeah. Just great.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And so I'm putting that one out there.

Wendy Marvin: And that lounge is just packed, it's so fun.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: The inclusiveness and diversity to me... Sorry, I probably just took your thunder, I didn't mean to, but I'm so excited about it.

Wendy Marvin: In a world we need it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Steve, we'll start with you in case you try to escape.

Steve Little: Good. And then I could leave.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes.

Steve Little: Okay. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: What are you most excited about?

Steve Little: I think in 2023 that I see solar becoming more integrated into our business commercially as well as through the residential side of the business. But I'm really concerned that solars are renegade, you've got a selling group that's selling it and they pass it off to somebody else to go install it, and you're tied to electricians and city permits and all sorts of things. We've got to be careful that we don't put a blemish on the roofing industry because we have a bunch of renegades out here selling solar. So that's what I see going forward on that end of it.

I think we're going to have a blip on the interest rates. I think the interest rates are going to stay up. So for some of us that have credit lines and things like that, it's going to affect our pricing. For people that don't have the same type of debt or have the same breadth of company that we might have, they're going to be a competitive advantage. So we have to watch our margins along those lines.

And I also think we have to be careful of not just the blue collar labor that we have, but we've got to be careful of losing our white collar labor because our interior companies are aging and they're leaving the industry, they're retiring. And if we don't continue to make our business sexy, we're going to not be able to recruit people.

Wendy Marvin: Reatin talent, yeah.

Steve Little: And listening to Chris yesterday in our keynote address, I'm going to plug in for the NRCA IRE, you need to come to the next one, our keynote addresses are awesome, and you always take away a nugget. Every one of them we've had a nugget to take away. Even when Charlotte Jones was here from the Cowboys and she gave some great information.

Lee Lipniskis: That was wonderful.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That was awesome.

Steve Little: It was inspiring.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It was good.

Steve Little: So thank you for letting me be part of your panel [inaudible 00:48:16] I'm sorry I've got to go run.

Wendy Marvin: It was so fun.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: But thank you. And thank you for presenting and thank you for everything you do. Thank you for being an influencer.

Wendy Marvin: It's awesome.

Steve Little: Love you, man.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you.

Steve Little: Bye, ladies.

Lee Lipniskis: Bye.

Kristina Hill: Bye, Steve. [inaudible 00:48:27].

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, Wendy?

Steve Little: Okay, fine.

Wendy Marvin: I am just feeling like 2023 is just going to be filled. We're going to blow right through it. I don't feel like I'm worried about recession or those kinds of things. I think our industry is strong and needed and all those things. I'm worried about, again, back to that there's so much money to be made, and I think that companies that are good companies like these two ladies sitting here and myself, we just need to be sure we're being protected as we go, and looking out for each other and sharing contract language.

And that's part of what I'm so excited about some of these things that are innovative that are coming out is you used to have to email and phone a friend and try to set up a meeting and all these things. And now it's just like, "Hey, I have a contract, let me send it to you, and let's figure this out." And I just want us to continue to be respectful and respected. And as we continue on this breakneck pace, I don't think we're really going to slow down until mid 2024, I really feel... and listening, I listen so much with those groups, I just don't see us slowing down.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Do you feel that for both residential and commercial?

Wendy Marvin: Yeah. I think residential is probably going to be big, but it's just scary because again, I've been the one that had the papers served and I was like, "Oh my god, I didn't even know this was an issue." And I'm so thankful we have that protection now, but now there's new threats out there. I just feel like there's a lot of lions in the field here and we just got to figure out how to protect each other and keep the good companies going. Because the fast track... the guys that sit in our meetings and say, "I don't care how I install a roof because I charge so much, I can put three roofs on," I hope they go away and that the rest of us that are left at the end of it are going to be good.

Lee Lipniskis: I swallowed wrong.

Wendy Marvin: That's all right.

Kristina Hill: You're fine.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Kristina, let's talk about yours.

Kristina Hill: Yeah, so I think similar to what Heidi was saying, I am so excited to be a part of the roofing industry right now and we're seeing some phenomenal change. I've heard time and time again, I've seen so many women here, there's so many faces here. How cool is it that this is my first experience, my first IRE, to see that? 500 women at NWIR day is phenomenal. That's so great. And what have they said? There's 0.5% of women make up the construction industry?

Wendy Marvin: 3%.

Kristina Hill: And I think-

Wendy Marvin: 3% of women and then 0.5 are owner or something [inaudible 00:50:47].

Kristina Hill: I feel like all of them are here right now, honestly.

Wendy Marvin: And then how empowering is that, and how amazing? Yeah.

Kristina Hill: Because we've all laughed. So many of us said, "I'd never thought I would be a contractor." But how many little girls now and daughters are seeing this change and really what's going to happen down the road? And so the growth is so exciting for me just to see what that looks like for the next year as we can really pour into and develop this next generation. That's what I'm most excited about.

Obviously as a business owner, I'm excited for the growth that we're seeing in the residential markets and the new construction that's happening and the growth on that side of things. And really just growing my business and getting into the commercial world. Commercial scares me a little bit because all the regulations and everything that's happening, but I think I have enough people, enough seats at my table to fill with the correct people that we do it the right way.

Wendy Marvin: You're so smart. You'll ask the right questions.

Kristina Hill: But the opportunity is there for people like me who are wanting that opportunity and wanting to do it the right way. That's what's exciting.

Lee Lipniskis: And it hasn't always been that way. There were times, believe it or not, where companies in a town would actually-

Kristina Hill: A brand that is quality focused is huge because not everybody does that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. That's so true. Lee, take us home.

Lee Lipniskis: Yeah, I will take you home. (singing). [inaudible 00:52:15].

Wendy Marvin: We sang that last night, I'm just going to say.

Lee Lipniskis: I'm excited. Very similar, right? I love how many women were at the event on Sunday. Steve was talking about, I think it was Brad Belden is maybe going to do something for the fathers and daughters. I can't wait to see the mothers and daughters. I feel like we are so close to that right now to where it's like, "Oh, you're taking over the company for your dad?"

"No, I'm taking over my mom's company."

Wendy Marvin: Right, exactly.

Lee Lipniskis: So I'm really excited to see how that changes in our industry going forward. Personally, I'm excited for growth and evolution, and 2023 is going to be amazing. I've told you guys before that I manifested something on New Year's Eve and it's really coming to fruition. But I'm excited to see growth, women in the industry, diversity just in and of itself. And I feel like last year was really heavy on new construction started, but we couldn't get materials to do that and now we have them. And so I feel like 2023 is going to be a big build year for that because now we have the materials coming in and so things are going to be-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: [inaudible 00:53:25]. This has been so much fun. And Steve, thank you. He's not here anymore. Fun. Thank you all. Coffee Conversations. I'm telling you what, this is so great. So the next Coffee Conversations is going to be back at our regular format and it's going to be on Roofing Day, which we didn't even talk about here [inaudible 00:53:41].

Lee Lipniskis: And today's International Women's Day. Did you know that? [inaudible 00:53:45].

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There's so much going on. So we will be back in two weeks with Coffee Conversations. We're going to be here the rest of the show, we have more interviews. Megan Ellsworth is playing at three o'clock in the [inaudible 00:54:00]. And we also have interviews all day tomorrow. So stay with us. We are live from Dallas, Texas, and we'll keep bringing you the International Roofing Expo and all the great stuff. So we'll see you next time.

Wendy Marvin: Love it.

Lee Lipniskis: Bye.