Decoding Home Services: Franchising, Branding, and Trust

This is episode number 352 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We are so glad you could join us for another episode here in the studio. How you doing, Kev?

Man, I'm, I'm doing pretty good. It's, uh, a little bit different We don't normally record in the mornings. Here we are in the morning.

Got my coffee and we're ready to go.

Yeah, I'm feeling excited and new, or sometimes it's like, man, it's already 11.

Geez.

Which happens sometimes. But no, I'm doing good, man. It's a beautiful time of year. I absolutely love the spring and it's busy. I'm sure you are just ramping up like crazy too.

Oh dude, it's nuts already.

I mean, I've been just around my house. I'm like, first of all, I don't know how many dead June bugs I've seen.

Uh-huh.

There's about 4 billion around my porches and, uh, there's mosquitoes coming out everywhere. Mm-hmm. And I've seen, I haven't seen any termites, but I know they're rampant.

Well, we, we've already done a bunch of weird termite jobs already. And really it, part of it was there, we had a really mild winter. And so a lot of them were able to like stay established in the houses that they were eating.

Oh, perfect.

And so they haven't, they haven't, we haven't even had a big swarm yet, but we've been finding lots of actives just eating houses that they were able to do throughout the winter. Um, and so, ugh, it was, it's not been good for the people that have them.

You sure?

Um, I, I did one of the worst ones I've ever, I've ever seen. It was, there was like 4 or 5 pillars underneath the house. And it was just like solid mud on the outside of concrete blocks going up. And it basically ate the entire floor out of this kitchen. So it's, you know, and we're just getting started because we haven't had— we've had a couple of little swarms, but we haven't had like the big breakout where everyone's like, oh my gosh, it's snowing.

Oh yeah.

You know, like, that's, you know, so, you know, we'll, we'll see what happens.

Yeah. Well, the other thing I've seen is like tons of fire ants around, which I've, I've already been like hitting those things, which I don't know, like a lot of people think that they're gonna go kill their fire ants by putting stuff on them. And I think you've educated me well enough to know that those things are resilient and they just move.

Yep. Pretty much.

So that my goal at this point is just to move all the fire ants from my yard to everybody else's. Everybody else's yard.

Yeah.

So that's—

That happens in neighborhoods a lot.

I like to win in that way.

And it creates a Hatfield and McCoy situation.

That's right. Well, I, I don't know which one I am, a Hatfield or a McCoy, but I'm winning right now.

That's right.

Right now I'm winning.

So, so, but anyway, we got a, we got a lot of cool stuff coming up on the show. Uh, you know, you'll, you'll notice some big differences in the show in, in weeks to come. We're, we're fixing to like gut the studio.

Yeah.

Uh, and, and put in some new equipment that we're pretty excited about. Um, so hopefully we'll be increasing the, the, the quality of the, the output of the show. Like it should have better video images, should have, I mean, just all around better.

Yeah.

Stuff. So we're excited about that. Um, and then we're gonna have some fun episodes coming up. I know we're gonna, I just got back from a wilderness adventure. Uh, we're gonna, we're gonna go over, 'cause I learned all kinds of crazy stuff about how to live off the grid while I was there.

Really?

Oh yeah.

Okay.

Uh, the place I went and stayed in Arkansas, there's no electricity. And so these people have developed like their own, like cisterns and electrical grids and it's, it was impressive.

Sounds awesome.

Yeah. So we'll, we'll get into all that, but I mean, today, Yeah, we, we got the, the boys over at Storm Guard.

That's right.

That are jumping on the, on the line from the DFW area.

That's right. So we've got, we've got guys from Storm Guard and they are Derek and Shane. So I'm gonna bring them in, let them introduce themselves. Shane, I'll, I'll lead things off with you. Let you go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us whatever you want us to know, and then we'll move on to over to Derek.

Awesome. Thanks for having us on the show and doing this in the morning. Uh, I know it's a change for y'all and we really appreciate it. Um, I'm Shane Lynch. I'm president of Storm Guard. I've been with Storm Guard for over a decade. Um, we're a franchise system, so we're the franchisor and, uh, we've got 30-some-odd franchisees in about 20 states. Um, and we really do anything on the exterior of a home. Um, specialize in roofing and gutters, but we also do, uh, windows, siding, painting, all of that.

Okay. Awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. That's a, that's a wide range of, uh, of things, but they do all kind of fit. If, if you're familiar with contractors, they do kind of all fit under it.

It makes— Yeah. When you're doing the roof, it makes sense to kind of like, okay, we can also do this.

That's exactly right. Yeah. All right, Derek, what's up, man?

Hi, how are you? Thank you guys for having me. Um, uh, Derek Hummelgarn, so Director of Marketing for Storm Guard. I've been with Storm Guard for, uh, 3 years, but I always tell Shane it feels like 10, which is a good thing.

Yeah.

Um, I've been in franchising for 12 years now, so, uh, just being able to come on board here 3 years ago and, um, as with franchise background and kind of help franchisees and Um, get them, uh, squared away and settled with, uh, kind of the, the new marketing direction. So just really happy to, to be here and, um, and yeah, appreciate you guys having us on.

No, I, we, we're excited about it. One, we talk about roofs a lot. I mean, we do, uh, just because like we, we have pretty good relationships with a lot of, you know, insurance agents and, and different things like that. And so it, it's a subject that comes up a lot. Um, and, and I think part of it is, You know, there's, there's a lot of, particularly in our area, there's a lot of mistrust around contractors and roofers in particular. You know, that, you know, you have like the whole storm chaser persona that gets put on, on companies like yours. And, and so like, we're in, in, in an industry where like homeowners tend to have like an initial feeling of, okay, I'm gonna have to be

suspicious of these guys. looking at my house, you know. And how, how do you guys, how do you guys deal with that?

Yeah, I mean, you're, you're right. There's— the whole industry has, um, kind of a bad reputation, and that's, that's actually why we got into it. Um, you know, my family and our owners, we were in other businesses, and we had the opportunity— we actually bought Storm Guard from franchise system back in 2014, I think it was.

Okay.

And when the opportunity came to us, we bought it because of the opportunity created by dishonest contractors. You know, so we wanted to take it, you know, get into something where we could kind of change the perception of contractors. And so, um, you know, how do we specifically deal with it? I'll leave Derek to talk a little bit about, about our branding and why we're branded the way that we are. But ultimately, um, you know, we're not storm chasers, notwithstanding our name Storm Guard. Um, all of our franchisees are local to the communities that they serve.

Mm-hmm.

Um, every location is locally earned, uh, locally owned. And one of our Our core tenets of Storm Guard is giving back. So we have a program that we call Storm Guard Cares, where at the home office we will support franchisees who want to do charitable work in their communities. And so, you know, the first way is by being part of the community that we serve, and then the second way is that national presence by being part of the Storm Guard system, our franchisees can say that they're nationally backed. And that's not just lip service.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, ultimately in franchising, a fact of life is that you lose franchisees sometimes. Um, but when we lose a franchisee, the homeowner shouldn't suffer for that. So nationally backed to us means that when your local Storm Guard puts on a roof or does work for you, that we're here to, to back that warranty if something happens to 'em. And so, you know, that's part of our sales process is to explain to homeowners, hey, look, we're local, but we're also national. You get the best of both worlds. Derek, you want to talk a little bit about our branding and how that plays into it?

Yeah. So one of the things that we kind of looked at, you know, when I first started was our branding position. You know, we look at, you know, kind of like what you said is, you know, you know, shady, you know, roofers are shady. And so we have to build a breaking barrier. And, um, how do we do that? And it's like, all right, well, we need to have a consistent brand, not only in their market, but just nationally as well. And, uh, what we wanted to do is we wanted to kind of identify where there's opportunities for it. So, you know, 2 years ago I came to Shane and, um, Jason, our executive vice president, of, hey, we got to work on this brand. We got to be able to showcase what we

do because we have a really big vision and our current branding at the time just focused on the now versus the future. So I'll get into it based off a lot of y'all's questions, but we really wanted to make ourselves stand out, but also kind of hit the reset button with the brand. That makes sense.

Yeah. And, and how many, how many different states are you guys in right now?

About 20.

20 different states. It has, has that been a, a struggle at all? Because like, I know, I know here in Texas, you know, it's, it's, it's still kind of the Wild West where you don't really have to have a license to be a roofer. But like, that's, that, I know that that's not the case in all the rest of the states. I mean, how are, how are you guys managing that? So, or is that, is that, is that part of your responsibility as, as the franchisor?

You know, we see our responsibility as a franchisor as doing everything we can to help support franchisees. And so that's going to include helping them figure out a path to licensing if their state requires it.

Right.

So the challenge of it comes at the beginning of the process when we're trying to— when we have somebody interested in buying a franchise in a state where licensing is required. So a good example is Florida. Florida has probably the hardest licensing laws in the country.

Right.

And so there's a challenge that we have to overcome. And usually the way that we overcome that is we explain to the franchisee, here's what it takes to become licensed. And in Florida and Virginia and several other states, part part of that path to licensing is experience. And we generally don't sell to roofers. Um, in fact, we don't have a single—

You mean like existing, existing roofers? Is that what you're—

Exactly.

Right. Okay.

Exactly. We don't have a single franchisee in our system that was a roofer before they joined StormGuard.

Interesting.

Um, they're business people. Um, and so we, we explain that to them and then we help them get over that initial hump, um, because we have a strong staff that has, you know, really deep, really deep experience in roofing, by using one of our staff members to help qualify their business, um, and help oversee them while they get the experience that they need to become licensed themselves. So there's the challenge part of it. But we also see licensing, um, as a good thing because, like you said, in Texas, it's the Wild West. People You know, you, you go buy a ladder, um, and say, I'm a roofer, and you're a roofer now, right?

Yep.

Um, but that, that doesn't mean that you know anything. It doesn't mean that you're honest. It doesn't mean that, uh, you know, a background check has been done or anything. So we actually like licensing. Um, licensing helps create an even playing field where everybody's working from the same knowledge base, or at least a minimum knowledge base. Everybody, um, has complied with some sort of requirements to go out and service homeowners. And, you know, frankly, if there was some minimal level of licensing across the country, um, I think that that reputation for, for bad roofers and bad contractors would probably go away because a lot of those people that, that are taking advantage of homeowners are doing it because it's easy to do.

Yeah, I think, I think that's one of the things that, you know, we, we definitely talk about Regularly is just this idea that any, you know, way I say it is any guy with a hammer can go put on a roof around here. And, you know, what, what a lot of people wind up seeing happen is they, they see a guy come around, oh, we're doing all these roofs in the area, and they take deposits and then they, they bolt. Right. And so there's a lot of that kind of stuff that happens. And, uh, it's, it's why we're— It's why we exist, honestly, as a podcast, is to help people come out and go, look, I don't

want to get scammed by anybody, any contractors out there. So how can I make sure that I know how to do due diligence really well so that that sort of thing doesn't happen to me? Uh, and, and I think one of the other things that a lot of homeowners are just concerned about right now truly is not just, I mean, I, I love the fact that, that y'all are trying to do things so well. within the industry, knowing that it, it has a scammy feel to it if you're not working with the right people. But the other thing that a lot of people tend to be worried about right now is insurance and how insurance companies are removing roofing

from, uh, from some of their—

From the underwriting.

From the underwriting.

Yeah.

And not only that, um, if they keep it in there, it's like, oh, we, we insure your roof for like as low as, we've seen it as low as 3 years. And that's just, kinda one of those things that's got a lot of people on edge. I'm curious what your understanding is about all that and where you kinda y'all, how, how do y'all deal with any of those sorts of things? And maybe even, like, have you thought about how do we mitigate that problem in the future and those sorts of things? I'm just kinda curious your thoughts on that.

Yeah.

Because we, we know, like, specifically, you mentioned Florida. We know that that's happening in Florida already. Yeah. We know things like that are happening in California, not necessarily with roofs, but with other things. So like the insurance industry is changing and, and, you know, like, yeah, like Kevin said, how are you guys pivoting, I guess?

Yeah.

To, yeah.

Yeah. You know, um, I'm gonna let Derek talk about the, the branding piece of pivoting because we're, we're definitely, when we first got into the business, um, and bought StormGuard a little over 10 years ago, about 12 years ago, um, insurance was probably pretty close to 100% of the work that we did.

Yeah.

Um, you know, it was insurance paid, it was restoration after a storm. And over the last 12 years, that's, that's changed because, um, of what you're talking about, you know. So insurance companies, they have increased deductibles, um, and then they have changed a lot of policies that are no longer you know, they, they no longer fully cover a roof. Their, their actual cash value policy is where they'll only pay the depreciated value of a roof as it sits, um, you know, whenever they, they go out and, and do their adjuster meeting.

Mhm.

Um, and so the way that we're pivoting is to realize that, look, we're, we're not an insurance restoration company. Um, we are an exterior home services company And so, if you need services at your home, we're here to help regardless of how it's being paid. If insurance is paying for it because there was a storm event, that's great. We are, we are happy to accept payment that way. But if you have a leak and it's not covered, or you have a high deductible and you don't want to file an insurance claim, that's fine with us. We'll come out.

We'll—

Um, You know, we'll investigate the leak and we'll tell you our honest assessment of what needs to be done, whether it just needs to be a repair or whether it's something that's more extensive that needs replacement on one slope, or whether, hey, you know, you've got this leak and it could turn into something much, much worse because your roof is old. And so we really recommend that you do a full roof replacement. And, you know, so, Payment doesn't matter to us. What matters to us is answering homeowners' questions and making sure that they understand, um, what they need and why they need it. And then, you know, we'll figure out payment at the end. If you need to file an insurance claim and that's the best thing

for you, great. But if you'd rather, um, pay us cash, obviously we're happy to accept cash.

But who isn't?

We'll provide financing as well.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I, I think that's— I, I, I think that's one of the things, by the way, that doesn't get talked about enough is the financing side of things.

Mm-hmm.

Because for years, most of us, if we needed a new roof, we were able to call up our insurance company and go, hey, um, I need a new roof. They bring a, uh, an adjuster out. If the adjuster agrees, Then we put the process in, you pay your deductible, which depending on, you know, what your deductible is, uh, it's, it's a fraction of what it costs to get the roof done typically, and then you're good to go. But now if, you know, people are having to pay $25,000 for a roof and it's not being covered by insurance, now we're getting into how am I going to afford this?

Mm-hmm.

I don't wanna put it on a credit card, clearly. So what are my options? So I appreciate the fact that You know, there, there are starting to become some financing options. I think that's really important.

Yeah. Are, are you, and, and on that side of it, are you guys, are you guys trying to partner with companies that offer that or are you guys trying to do that in-house?

So, um, we, we partner with, uh, Regions Bank and, okay, have a, a, a branded, um, financing program called StormGuard FlexPay, uh, StormGuard FlexPay, um, and it's up to each individual franchisee which options they want to offer to homeowners because there's 20 or 25 different plans, everything from, um, you know, 6 months same as cash to— I think that they go out to 8 or 10 years, um, monthly payments. Um, and so we do that, but then there, there are a bunch of financing companies out there.

Sure.

And some of our franchisees use FlexPay and another financing company.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so, you know, there, there are plenty of options out there for homeowners beyond, hey, put it on your credit card or go take, uh, a personal loan from your bank. Um, and if you're, you're looking to do something where you're gonna self-pay, um, it really behooves a homeowner to find a company that offers financing. And that very act of finding a company that offers financing Is something that they can do to protect themselves because in order to offer financing, that company has to go through thing with the finance company. They have to do KYC know your customer stuff. And so if you're able to offer financing, especially branded financing, a bank I don't want to phrase it wrong and get

in trouble, but a bank has done. Done some diligence into your company.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Do you guys know—

you know, oh, go ahead, touch on that too.

Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Oh, no worries. I mean, it's like kind of what you guys have talked about. It's all about the trust and really the education piece behind it for the, for the homeowner. And so part of the, the branding and what we decided, you know, we— when we started this process about a year and a half ago with the rebrand was, um, how do we stand out? How do we— how are we standing out from the competition? Because each, each market has well over 400 to 500 roofing contractors in their market.

Mm-hmm.

And so, you know, historically before, you know, Storm Guard Roofing and Construction, that was our tagline, um, we were red and black and a little bit of yellow. And, um, that was predominantly most of what roofing and contracting companies are, red and black. And so we were, we were fitting in with everybody else. And so we kind of had to sit back and realize, you know, are you talking about the color scheme for like the company? Yeah. Well, yeah, in general, for that part.

Is there a reason they're all mostly red and black?

I, you know, I don't know, to be honest with you, as far as why everybody else is, but I firmly believe we just kind of fit in with everybody. And one of the things that we were looking at too was you know, the hero brands, the cartoons. You know, I think you guys see the big superhero. You know, we're here to save the roof.

Yeah.

You know, our old logo kind of fit into that. You know, our lightning bolt was very cartoonish. And so that we kind of just fit in with everybody else. But again, it's being in marketing, you gotta figure out how do we make ourselves look different?

Yeah.

Right? It's not only about the logo. The logo is just the logo, right? It's the tone, how we communicate to customers, how we educate them, how are we talking. It's all the, the fun things, the psychology behind it, and being able to help the homeowner in a time of need. Because at the end of the day, if they have water coming in their house and they have a holiday party that they're hosting, they're freaking out. And so we want to be able to help them and guide them through that process.

So.

All in all, with the brand, we kind of had to make a pivot and a shift to, again, what do we do? You know, we have to look at our color scheme. You know, how do we stand out? Well, we didn't change our colors. We actually just pivoted the primary to yellow versus red. So we're still red, black, and yellow, but predominantly we're yellow and black versus red. And that's kind of how we stand out, because when you look at a yellow truck, It, it definitely stands out in the market compared to the red, red truck.

Yeah, no, and I, that's, I, I think that's critical. And I, I know in my business, if, I mean, like, if you, if you go out and you see like a, a pest control truck, like you're like 90% of the time they're gonna be white.

Mm-hmm.

Like just, just across the board. And they're probably gonna have like different color logo, but most of the trucks are gonna be white. And so we made just the decision a long time ago to buy nothing but black trucks. To put our, to put our logo on. And like everyone like that we talked to is like, man, I, I can always find your truck because it looks different from the rest of 'em. So I think you guys probably made a, I mean, a yellow truck. I mean, one, you're appealing to like the, the, the kid and every boy out there that had a Tonka truck for sure.

That's right.

Well, and, and along with that, I, I think there is something to what you just said, that cartoony type of, uh, feel. Um, there, there is psychology behind that, and I think it's worth noting. And there's nothing wrong with anybody that has a logo that is cartoonish at all. They're probably great people. Um, but you do communicate with everything that you do, every interaction that you have, and that could be human interaction or non-human interaction. Everything communicates. And so I, I appreciate the branding Side of things. And so I guess, uh, part of what I'm curious is like, how has that like influenced the direction that y'all are moving into your company? Because you said that at one point y'all were

just very much, uh, you know, insurance claim only. And now, like, it's clear that y'all are into so many other things other than roofing because most people aren't doing insurance claims for painting. Or insurance claims for windows, right? Uh, maybe for their gutters if they're getting a, uh, a roof as well. Maybe they try to tie in an insurance claim somewhere. But has your branding influenced anything as you're trying to shift that momentum?

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, like I said before, our, our tagline was roofing and construction. So really what that means, and I'm gonna take this from Shane, I like, I know he likes to say this. When you think about Apple or Nike, their tagline's not what they do. Our tagline, Roofing Construction, is what we do. Their tagline is really more about how the customer should feel. For Apple, it's Think Different. And so, kind of what we wanted to do is we didn't want to just say what we did. We wanted to talk about how the customer should feel. Exterior is part of what we do. Roofing is our bread and butter. We all know that, roofing and gutters. But we wanted to kind

of talk about the entire exterior of the home because a lot of locations do all 5 services.

But we—

the confidence part is, again, trying to have the customers feel confident in the decision that they made working with Storm Guard, but also confident in knowing that we're taking care of their home outside so they can focus on what's important inside with their family. And really kind of tying in really more of the lifestyle brand. lifestyle photos and imagery. Um, again, where they can focus on what's important to them and knowing that they're confident in the decisions being made and the education that we're giving them to make sure that everything outside their home is being taken care of. And that kind of helps with the other services. And I know kind of Shane might want to talk about kind of the whole retail program, but, um,

that really kind of ties in and the messaging behind everything Talking about all the other services.

Yeah, you know, when it comes to branding, Derek talked a little bit about this. Branding is a lot more than your colors and your logo. There's this concept in marketing of archetypes, and it's a very old concept that goes back a long, long way, but The concept basically says that everybody communicates, everyone in every company communicates from a place that they're kind of comfortable in, and you have to figure out what that place is. So our archetype for StormGuard is called the Sage, and the Sage is a teacher who wants to explain things and share knowledge. To give example of another archetype, there's the jester. So, the jester makes jokes and tries to have a lot of fun. And so, if you think back to the old Budweiser commercials

with the frog and stuff, that's a jester way of communicating, right? You're trying to be funny and that's how you connect with your audience. Or think about Coca-Cola. They have the bear and Santa Claus. And so Coca-Cola was the innocent. And it's all about being innocent and creating warmth through innocence. And so we know that we're a sage brand. And so we communicate with homeowners by trying to teach them and explain to them. A lot of roofing companies and home services companies, they communicate from the hero position. And the hero position is, we're here to save the day, right? That's a great way to communicate, but it's very common in the home services industry. And

so we kind of did an audit of how we think, um, at the home office, how our franchisees think, and realized this is a differentiator for us. And so being that sage changes how our sales process works And changes how we talk to homeowners. So our sales process is based around doing an inspection and figuring out what's wrong, but then not coming to the homeowner and saying, this is what you need to do, but coming to the homeowner and saying, we hear your problem. Um, we, we understand it, restating it to them, and then saying, here are solutions, and here's why these solutions should work. It's up to you. You're the homeowner to figure out, you know, to choose which one you want to do. But we

want to make sure that you have all of the information that you need. And so this whole process ultimately changes the direction of the company. For a long time, we've known that insurance was changing.

Mm-hmm.

And that we needed to focus more on retail and, um, homeowner-paid or financed services. And that's one of the things that led to our rebrand. So we knew where we wanted to go. We just needed to figure out the best way to go there in a kind of a go-to-market strategy. And that's where we figured out, hey, the sage, that's us. We can share knowledge. We can try and educate. And so, It's not that the branding changed the direction, it's that we knew the direction needed to change and that branding is a key, key part of how do you change direction.

Yeah.

Are you guys familiar at all with, uh, the author Donald Miller?

Off the top of my head, I'm not.

So several years ago he wrote a book called StoryBrand Marketing. Um, and, and so he, He, he helps train businesses on how to basically rebrand themselves. And what the way you're talking about the sage, he calls the guide.

Okay.

And he's, and he says the biggest mistake most businesses make is exactly what you just said, is that they try and position themselves as the hero. And, and he comes at it from a storytelling perspective, right? And, and he says he pisses his wife off all the time because he watches a movie and he can always tell what's gonna happen because he understands how stories work. Um, and because typically the guide dies in the, like, so then when you think about, and the example he gives that is the classic example is the Star Wars example, you know, like everyone knows who the hero of the story is, but the guide is Kenobi, you know? And so he's helping Luke along the journey to succeed.

Um, but that comes at a cost in the story. Um, and so, but like he, what he says is the most powerful position that a business can be in is the guide or the sage, as you guys are talking about, but like, it doesn't work unless it's genuine, right? You like, because if you're pretending to be the sage, like you're, you're gonna become a fraudster.

Mm-hmm.

But like, but you have to be genuinely helping. And so like, I, I think it's a, it's a, it's a really powerful position you guys are coming at and one that's really needed because, you know, one of the things Kevin talked about earlier is part of the reason we exist is to help people avoid getting scammed.

Yep.

You know, um, and, and so with you guys coming from that position in the, in the marketplace, I mean, like, what are you guys seeing that are telltale signs? What are like the biggest corners that are being cut? What are like the, the signs that you're like, you're not dealing with a company that's not like yours?

Man, there's, um, there's so many. I, I, I think that what I talked about earlier, Not offering financing—that's that's a key one. You know, and then really showing up to a home and not listening, not engaging with a homeowner, and just saying, "Hey, you know, I'm here to inspect your roof and just giving you a price." Really, a good company that that cares about its customers is going to listen before speaking. They're going to ask questions to understand what a homeowner cares about.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I think that, that feeling, feeling like you're heard as a homeowner is really, really important. And so if you have, it's very common, as we know, for homeowners to get 2 or 3 companies to come out.

Sure.

If you have one company that comes out and they listen to you and they ask you, what's bothering you? What's the most important thing to you? And then they respond to that and they address those concerns. And then you have another company that comes out and they say, hey, here's a price. And the company that comes out and says, here's a price, is cheaper. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the best way for you to go. And so I think that Really engaging with the company that can show meaningfully that they care about A, the outcome, and B, your homeowner's desires is really, really important.

Derek? Yeah, no, I agree. That's the big game changer is really just helping the homeowner. And at the end of the day, if they decide to go with someone else, I mean, I want our salesmen and franchisees to know that we gave everything to that customer that we could. possibly do. Um, and that's just the education piece and just walking through it. And I think a lot of, um, a lot of things that we have to battle too are the people, like you said in the beginning, was, um, they, they come in, they, they take a check and they, they run. Um, and that's just something that we all have to kind of combat. But again, if

we're doing our, our jobs correctly in the beginning, um, we're helping, we're working, you know, with that customer, then they, you know, every customer knows what lot more people. So the referrals come in from that way as well. And so if we're being honest with one, we're going to be honest with all. And, um, that's just kind of what we, we are, are doing. And that's just going to be the big difference between us and, um, someone that doesn't even have a license.

Yeah. How, how are you guys implementing that, like, across all of your franchises then? I mean, like, is it specific training that you guys are doing? Do you have systems in place that are, you know, creating quality control, uh, for for your franchisees? I mean, what, how, how do you guys control that?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the challenge of being a franchisor is knowing something that will work and then selling it to your franchisees because they're independent business owners, right? Right. Yeah. So we've found that the best way to spread something like this across the system is to first find a couple of franchisees that believe in the concept and put that concept into practice with them, and then get them to essentially go out and sell it for you to the rest of the system and sing the praises of whatever it is. And so for this specifically, What we did is we worked with 2 of our top franchisees who were kind of pioneers for our system in doing retail sales, customer-paid

sales, to build our sales model and our communication model, and went through numerous iterations of it to get it, you know, to where we really thought it was something that was repeatable across our entire system. And then we did multiple in-person trainings with franchisees and their salespeople. In fact, we're still doing those. We've got a couple more of them scheduled. And when those are done, we are going to do a basically a summer sales summit where we've already taught you everything. You've gone home and you've practiced it and you've put it into practice. And now it's time to revisit it and sharpen the knife and make sure that everything's working the way that it should and that everything's being presented the way that it should. And

if you're having problems, to problem solve those issues. And so the way that you really do this in a franchise system is through repetition and training and communicating when there are issues. And then trying to help franchisees and their salespeople solve those issues.

So y'all are, y'all are doing these in-person meetings, like you're having everybody like show up to Fort Worth or y'all going to them? How is that? Like every, all the franchises come to you or y'all meeting in, in a central location or is this individual for per branch, per franchise? So Yeah, yeah, great question.

So we've done multiple in different geographic locations to make it easy for a franchisee to have easy access. So the way that we designed it geographically is that every franchisee that would attend one and their salespeople that would attend one didn't have to fly. They could drive. It would be close enough that they could drive. And so, you know, it— the convenience factor is huge. We do a— we do an annual meeting that changes location in January, but that annual meeting is not really conducive to truly in-depth training where you want to do role play and that sort of thing. There's too many people there. It's, it's frankly not long enough to be able to

teach in detail. something like this considering the number of attendees. And so that's why we broke them off into separate trainings and why we did them in geographically dispersed locations.

Yeah, I really, uh, again, I, I think what you're talking about also, this is an intangible for a homeowner. This is one of the things that we were talking about, about like, how do you, how do you as a homeowner know that you're like, how can you be confident? And I, and I realize that y'all are Um, you know, even in your branding, you're saying, you know, we are going to give you that confidence.

Yeah.

But, you know, you, you're talking about the way that you care for homeowners, the way that you walk into a scenario and you go, look, here's a problem and here's the best way that we can find to help you solve that issue. And it's not just give me your money and we'll come out tomorrow, which is what most roofers frankly, are doing. They're just so busy trying to get to the next dollar, get to the next roof, that they're just— they're, they're slapping stuff up on a roof. One of the things that I appreciate about that is that you are truly taking the time to do further education, continuing education, help people see like, here's the latest trends, because there— I guarantee I guarantee there are plenty of people out

there putting roofs up in Texas that have no clue what's going on with insurance. They have no clue. And they probably have got their, their Tom, Dick, or Harry insurance guy that's gonna do whatever for them that they want 'em to do. Right? So it's, uh, there, there's a lot of potential risk that you put yourself at. But, uh, man, a, a company that's doing things really well. is they do stand out. And I, I think it, it's something that I can, I can clearly tell y'all are working towards.

So, um, yeah, and you kind of nailed it on the head there too. It's, um, you know, there's a lot of people that are fly by the night or they'll, they'll come in and they'll, they'll disappear. And we're, we're in it for the long term. You know, our franchisees are in it for the long term. We're not trying to, to, we're trying to fix the roof today, but we also want to have that relationship for years to come because That's the experience we want to have. A lot of roofers, you know, like I said, are just, we'll fix it and then move on. But we want to fix it and then follow up and work together. And if a storm does happen or something, or they need an addition, you know, they need siding or whatever the

case is, we want to have that long-term relationship with them. Um, just like, wow, we want to have long-term relationship with franchisees and owners. And so, um, at the end of the day, A typical franchise system, you know, they're our customer as a franchisor, our customers are the franchisees. But in this system, our customers are both the franchisee and their customers. And that speaks volumes to kind of what we're trying to do and bring to this system.

Yeah, I think— I'm sorry, Shane, want to slip in real quick, this idea of with all of that, that context that you're, that you're providing through that, It then opens doors to, oh, my windows need replaced. Oh, my gutters need replaced. And now you're, you're talking about the lifetime of a customer rather than a moment of a customer. And I think that's a, that's a huge thing for the customer because I, look, if I'm a homeowner and I find someone I'm, I trust and I bring them in to remodel my home and I figure out they can also do this and they can also do that, I'm like, wow. Please, you've done such a great job

for me. I welcome you back and I'll pay your cost because it's worth it to me. And I don't have to worry, uh, if, oh, maybe I find a cheaper price, but it's gonna take me 3 weeks to find that person and I'm gonna have to vet it. It's just so much work. And so to, to find someone I trust is just a massive, massive opportunity. So sorry for the interruption, Shane.

No, no, no problem. And, and I think you actually, you hit, you hit something really important. there. It's, we build this relationship with a customer and they call us later for more work. That's great. We love that. But, and I think that this is what some, some companies miss in not building a relationship with a customer. It's not just about that follow-on work from that customer. It is about creating a customer who is excited to recommend you. Who is excited to give you an excellent review? If you think about something that we've all done, we've all gone to a restaurant and been like, "Wow, that was an amazing experience! Food was awesome. I had the best waiter. I can't wait to tell some friends that they've got to go try this place."

And what that restaurant doesn't do is say, "Hey, when you leave, if you send some customers our way, we're going to give you a fifty dollar gift." gift card to our restaurant. Because those restaurants know that if you create an exceptional experience, in fact, creating exceptional experiences is one of our core values, that customers will be excited to recommend them. And that is our goal. Our goal is to create customers who are just, they leave feeling joyful about they have this new roof or siding or whatever. Um, and it was a great communications experience. And if there were any problems, we were responsive and we dealt with them. And hey, I know, um, Tom down the street has been looking to get something done. I'm gonna tell him, I'm gonna tell Tom that Storm Guard did a great job and he should, he

should give them a shot.

Yeah, I, I think that, I think that's huge. I, I, I love it. And it, and to me, those types of, we all know the power of a, of a personal referral. We all know it personally. I mean, I, if, if you tell me that you had a great, great experience and I'm looking for the same type of thing, I, that's the first person I'm going to call and I may not call anybody else. So that, that personal referral is so very, very important. So. Um, I, I love that, uh, that idea of things. Now, I, I am curious. I'm— I don't wanna move off of this conversation too quickly if either one of you

have anything else to say, but I am curious. Tell me a little bit about the other industries that you're in with windows and siding and some of those other things.

Yeah, sure. So, um, there is one other thing I wanted to add to an answer I had earlier about how can you tell if you're working with a legitimate business. Um, if, if you're doing something that is going to be insurance paid, the homeowner intends to file an insurance claim and see if insurance will pay for it. Um, if the company that you're working with is either in their advertising they're saying free roof, that's, that's a big warning sign. Yeah. Um, nothing is free. And if in their sales process they're saying, hey, don't worry about your deductible, we're going to waive it, you know, it's going to be nothing out of pocket for you, that's also a huge warning sign. First, it's not legal to waive deductibles.

Nope.

Um, but second, when you think about especially states like Texas where a deductible is going to be a percentage of home value, so let's just say that you live in a $250,000 home And you have a 2% deductible, so you're talking about a $5,000 deductible. Do you really think that the roofing company that's willing to waive $5,000 can use quality materials, quality workmanship, that they are really, really going to inspect the roof and make sure that the job is up to standards and that it complies with the manufacturer's installation instructions. I mean, that's a ton of money to discount. You know, there's, there's a big difference between, hey, you know, if you do an upgrade, I'm able to give you

$500 off the upgrade today, versus I'm going to give you $5,000 off the job. There's a huge difference there.

Yeah, yeah. And, and the— I, I appreciate that because I used to— I mean, I— very first roof I had to replace, I had heard of people getting, oh, free— I, I'd heard of that. And because what was happening is insurance fraud is what was happening is people were coming in there and people are saying, oh, it's gonna cost, I'm just gonna throw a number out. It's gonna cost $20,000 to replace your roof, but I'm gonna tell the insurance company it's gonna cost $25,000 to replace your roof. And therefore I'll eat that $5,000 because I know I can still do it for $25,000.

Mm-hmm.

And that way you can still get your entire roof replaced without having to pay your deductible. And so this is what we call classic insurance fraud. And so—

Straight to jail.

It is. And, and I, and, and I think that everybody needs to be aware that a $25,000 roof or a $20,000 roof is that much. That's how much it costs. And you don't get— nothing in the world is for free. It's just not. You agreed to a deductible whenever you signed up for your insurance plan.

Mm-hmm.

You agreed to it. And I, one of my, the biggest recommendations that I give to new homeowners is you need to put a minimum of $10,000 back in your savings or however much that number needs to be for the size of home you get. Just to be able to deal with deductibles and things that arise with your house because you just never know. And this is a perfect example, and I, I appreciate you bringing that up for sure.

Yeah. Absolutely. And, I mean, let's say that, that a roofer is doing that. It's a $20,000 roof, and they're trying to bill insurance $25,000 so that a homeowner doesn't have to pay their deductible. They started that entire relationship off with dishonesty.

Yep.

Yep. What do you think's gonna happen later when you're, you're saying, um, hey, I've got a leak. Are, are they gonna be honest with you? Uh, you know, so you can't start a relationship off with dishonesty. It doesn't work very well.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think real quick, just, just as a side note, I mean, like, I think people have different perceptions as to what a roofing company's responsibility is when it comes to leaks. I mean, what, what is, what is y'all's policy on that?

So our policy is, um, we have a 5-year craftsmanship warranty. And then, um, like most roofing companies, um, our friend— our franchisees are, um, Owens Corning certified. So some of them are preferred, some of them are platinum. And so they will sell extended warranties, um, which are really a great value because those extended warranties can include longer workmanship warranties with them.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so our policy is if we install a Full re-roof, and there is a leak within five years. We're coming out and we're going to fix it, and we're going to figure out what's going wrong. Where where we can't warrant is if you call us and you want to repair because there is a leak and the roof's you know ten years old, and we're trying to basically patch something. We can't warrant that because. we may fix what was causing the issue, and then the issue arises from another spot on the roof.

Mhmm.

Um, but we can give a warranty if we're doing— let's say that there's a leak on the south slope of a roof, and the homeowner says, you know what, just replace the full south slope. We'll warrant that.

Mhmm.

Um, because that, that's all, you know, that's all our work.

Yeah. Well, okay. So, like, let's, let's run this scenario then. Let's say You guys do a full roof install, and I'm glad you brought up the south side. And because now, 3 years later, solar company comes in and installs solar panels on the roof and a leak arises. Is, is that on you guys or is that on the solar company?

So first, I would make sure that your solar company offers a warranty for leaks.

Yep. Um, thank you.

You know, that, that's what I would say first. Um, ultimately that would be on the solar company.

Okay.

But we don't want you to be left high and dry. So if your solar company refuses to come out or goes out of business or whatever, um, call us. And, you know, it's up to each individual franchisee. I doubt that they're gonna fix the solar company's issues for free, but I suspect that all of our franchisees will offer you a very good deal to take care of you and make sure that you're— you you know, that you don't have those issues.

Yeah. I, I, I think that's reasonable. And I don't, but I, I bring it up because I want people to be aware. I mean, like, you hired another company to do something in addition to your roof that could potentially cause a leak. That doesn't mean that the roofing company did anything wrong. Right. Nor should be held responsible for it. But, like, you know, but, like, but people can get weird when they've spent a bunch of money on something and all of a sudden there's a problem. Like, they, you know, they, they turn into weird things.

Well, in this case, they've spent a lot of money on 2 things. On 2 things.

Yeah. You spent a lot of money on a roof.

a lot of money on solar panels and they're going, crap, I don't have any more money to fix this problem. So no, I think you're, you're, but this, Shane, this just really reinforces something we talk about all the time. Ask questions.

Yeah.

Ask so many questions. And I'll tell you, like the, if you don't know what the questions are, that's okay. Continue listening to the podcast, first of all, because we're going to help, but You know, there's this beautiful thing that we have at our disposal these days called AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, whatever you really choose to use. Mhmm. Whatever your flavor is, Grok for you, Elon Musk fans, whoever it is, go look and ask the question, what question should I ask to make sure I'm finding a reputable—

Yeah.

You know, roofer. And so I, I, I, I don't think there's any more excuses. To hiring the wrong person. Oh, they'll use them. They'll they'll use them. They're just they're not legitimate as far as I'm concerned. You stupid idiot! Do your due diligence.

That's it's a really great point. Ask questions. Absolutely. But also, the company that's doing work for you should explain things. They shouldn't just give you a price and say we're replacing your roof. They should explain. What they are doing and why. There should be, you know, some sort of educational component during that process because most people have not replaced a roof. Yeah. And, you know, if you're going to go and get surgery, for example, your surgeon is not just going to say, hey, I'm going to do this. They're going to say, I need to do this and this is why I need to do this so that you feel comfortable that you're making the correct decision.

Hmm. Yeah, it's really big. I, I really important.

I think it, I mean, like, I think if we all had, if we were all honest though, I mean, the number of people that don't ask questions is perplexing to me. Oh yeah. It really is. I mean, and I, I think in both of your examples, whether you're talking about a roof or talking about like surgery, I, I, like, I, I have friends who are, you know, medical physicians that, that do all kinds of procedures and I, you know, the number of people that are just not interested in like the information instead of like, and they're just saying like, whatever it is, cut me open and fix it. Whatever it is, just gimme the drug and fix it.

It's bizarre to me that you're not like actually going down the road and like, I'll just use the medical example. I mean, like, what are the side effects?

Right.

What are the potential risks? What are like all those things that like you should be asking your doctor And, you know, like, look, all of us get busy and forget to educate people from time to time.

Right.

You know, and so I, I think, I think that's why it's so important that we, that we, like, particularly here on this show, is like, we try and emphasize to so many people, like, you need to be your own advocate. Um, and you need to be your, your best self-educator in all of these situations. Like, you need to be, you know, for a time, you probably ought to become an expert in, in roofing.

Yeah.

You know, if, if that's something that you're needing to have done in your home, you, you, you know, if you're changing the flooring, you need to be an expert in like, what's the difference between like LVP and carpet and, and tile and, and wood and all, all these different kinds of things. So, like, you know, because you can't always, you can't always count on the contractor to remember to tell you everything that they know. You know, like, I, I know in my business, I, like, sometimes I'll, like, I'll be like, ah, I forgot to tell 'em that. You know? And it, it's not because I'm being dishonest or, you know, neglectful. It's just like, there's a lot that goes into a lot of these projects.

Yep.

And so we, we, we count on customers to ask us questions.

Right. Yeah, no, I, I think, I think that it's, it, it is really helpful for those types of things to make sure that, that the questions are being answered. So, I, so Derek, this is probably a question for you. So the rebranding is happening right now, and I, I know that this is a, a big shift in your, in your business. Not, maybe not the business model, but the business presence. So, um, as that happens, are, are, is there still rollout? Are people gonna see, you know, potentially still some of your old logos around versus your new logos? And are, are, you know, are your franchisees slowly rolling into this as well? I'm just kind of curious if I were, a potential customer

and I saw this, how would I know that that's you and not somebody else and all those sorts of things?

Yeah, that's a great question, and that's something that we have to combat. So we rolled this out about late last year, and, you know, we understand, you know, how long these things take, right? So how long a truck wrap can take, how long, you know, design, print, install. updating polos. We know, we understand the cost behind it all and how each business, you know, has their, their cost behind them. So, um, yes, so we're almost done, I would say, with kind of the entire rollout with everybody's trucks, the, the brand, um, the, uh, the, the uniforms, you know, our retail, our location. We have a retail location, but it's not a typical place where a lot of

customers go and visit, so But a lot of our print materials, our website's complete, so we're pretty much, I would say, 98% there. I think the 2% is what we gotta continue to educate our franchisees about, and that's just, again, from us educating our franchisees. So as we've already kind of established, roofing companies have a straight— a shady trademark, right?

Yeah.

Well, another barrier is then seeing 2 logos. So as everybody does research now, they're going to start to see 2 logos. So if they see our current one that's on our website and then you show up with an old logo, well, that's another barrier that the franchisee— or I'm sorry, that the customer sees. And you're having now to combat that before you're even having a conversation about the problem. And so it's the psychology behind it. Now, I'm no psychiatrist. Right? I'm in marketing, but there's a lot of psychology behind marketing. And so that's what we have to educate the franchisees is that, all right, you're already, you know, in a trade where you're historically negative. Well, when you have another— when you have 2

conflicting logos, that's another trade. So trying to be as quick as possible to update your polos and your swag, you know, that's just what we have to educate our franchisees about. We're almost there, you know, because once we start to see metrics turn, you know, conversion rates, all those fun stuff, that's when we have to start thinking about, all right, well, are you showing 2 logos? Well, you're not building the trust that we want, you know, that we as the home office and you as a franchisee really want to build. So that's just something that we have to combat, and that's with every company that does a rebrand.

Sure.

And that question is probably The most bothersome thing that Derek is dealing with right now.

I'm sure.

Um, you know, to spill some tea, we'll, uh, he'll get off of a, a Zoom meeting or something and with a franchisee and come to me and he'll be like, man, it was a great meeting except Al was wearing the, uh, the old logo. And we don't have a franchisee named Al.

So, um, so here's how I like to see it too. It's like, all right, you know, I'm— it's, again, it's trying to help break those barriers.

Mm-hmm.

It's, it's equivalent to where when a customer, you know, has our information and someone else's information that'll do it on the cheap and will probably, you know, be a fly-by-night roofer, and they go with that roofer. And it's like, oh, it just, you know, it does make me bothered because all I'm trying to do is help our franchisees and help educate and break those barriers to where they can, you know, service the customer better. And that's really why I get so frustrated. Because, you know, we're doing our best here and at the end of the day, we're serving the franchisee, we're also serving their customers too.

Yeah, and, you know, there's definitely a major expense to a rebrand, but we're the kind of people at the home office that really want to help our franchisees. And so the biggest expense for a rebrand Is the truck wraps. Um, you've got to pull your old wrap off and put a new wrap on.

Yeah.

And so what we did at the home— what we did at the home office is we offered to pay for the materials for the first 4 wraps for every franchisee. And if they had fewer than 4 trucks, um, we paid for installation as well. Um, and so we, we really tried to take that off of them to first of all, make it not a financial burden on them, and then second, be able to expedite the process of getting the most important customer-facing asset rebranded.

Yeah. Yeah. So I know we shifted there for a minute. I do want to go back to a question I asked a little bit ago. Talk to me about some of the other Service offerings that you guys have with windows and gutters and siding and some of those other things?

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. No, no, no.

It's good. We're kind of all over the place. No, that's really good. I, I appreciate it.

That's par for the course with us.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah, it is.

So the, the most common service offering is, is obviously gonna be gutters. Um, you mentioned it earlier. You know, if you, if you are doing an insurance-paid job, To replace your roof. It is, if you have gutters, it is relatively usual for there to be some gutter replacements or something because they're made out of soft metal and they'll get dinged up and they need to be replaced. So all of our franchisees offer that. And then we brand everything everywhere so that we have the optionality of going in with Every service in every location, but in reality, our franchisees choose what they want to really push. And so, in Texas, siding is not that common. You know, it might be on the back of a home, but we use a whole lot of masonry. So it's

just not that common as a whole home solution. But go further north, Chicagoland area, for example, or St. Louis, siding is extremely common.

Mm-hmm.

That is, you know, the whole home will be siding. And so our franchisees in Chicago and St. Louis, they do a lot of siding because it is important in their market. If you go out west to the, you know, to the Rockies in Colorado, Those franchisees have gotten into windows because— and they did it because of insurance, because the, the, uh, the hailstorms that you would get coming off the Rockies into Denver, it's just big hail. And so windows would get really, really beat up. And so out of necessity, they started doing windows. Um, and that's now a service that, that they offer. You know, our franchisee in Lubbock, I'm sure that y'all heard about it being in Texas. There was a big, big nasty hailstorm out in West Texas last year.

Oh yeah. Yes, there was.

And I actually, I was in Lubbock shortly after and it was so bad that it, I mean, it knocked panes out of windows. It was really bad. I'm sure it was scary for those homeowners. And so, you know, that franchisee ended up doing a lot of windows. And so, We brand everything everywhere to give us optionality. But really, when you are looking at, you know, picking a contractor for siding, if you call our Texas locations, they might not do it. The plan is that eventually we roll out programs so that every location does every service offering. But But roofing itself is such a huge business. I saw Owens Corning, they did their Platinum Conference recently,

and I think that they put up a slide, and I think that the roofing market for last year was somewhere like $170 billion. And so that's such a huge market that that's where we start every franchisee.

Right.

So when we open a new franchisee, we don't train them on other services beyond some, some info on gutters because they should be focusing on roofing to build the base of their business.

Yeah, no, that, that, that makes a lot of sense. I, I think that, again, I, I love the idea of being able to just offer multiple services to one customer for, for all the reasons because, you know, often when storms come, it's not just the roof that gets impacted. Yeah. There are lots of other things that get impacted, and even if you don't notice it immediately, you might notice it down, down the road.

So, um, and it, it sounds like you guys are, are offering your different locations the flexibility to focus on different products as well. Is that what I'm—

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's, you know, that is, it's based on how long they've been in business and, um, the, the home style where they live. You know, so it would not make sense for us to train every new Texas franchisee on siding because they're not going to get a whole lot of siding calls, right?

Sure.

And so that is kind of what's driving it today is the level of experience and the composition of homes in the geographic area that a franchisee serves. And I say today because that's what I mean. In the long run, our goal is to offer training and, I mean, we support everything obviously, but offer training and really, really deep support, the same level of support that we offer for roofing for every trade that we list.

Got it. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm starting to run out of questions because y'all have done a fantastic job of kind of telling us about your, your brand. That, that's something that I will tell you. I, I believe that many, many businesses do not spend enough time on their brand. Uh, their brand is the thing that is the most recognizable thing about them. And so I, I do appreciate, you know, being able to just have such, uh, an ability to communicate about who you are, who you're not, which is also a huge part of branding, I know, and, uh, being able to communicate that clearly and effectively, but also just how you serve people. I, I, I'm thankful for companies out

there that this— there's still so much hope for the world whenever there's companies out there that are truly interested in taking care of the people that they take care of. It's not just about the bottom dollar, which we're in this to make money, clearly that's a, that's a, you're a business for a reason, but at the same time, there's a need and there's an opportunity for everyone to win here. So, uh, but I am curious, what have we not touched on that you're like, man, I'd really like for people to be aware of that? Is there anything that we've missed?

You know, I, I think the one thing that, um, I'd like to just mention is if If you want to get into business for yourself and you're interested in home services, you can obviously go and start a company. It's going to be a whole lot of work and you're going to make a whole lot of mistakes and you're probably going to burn a whole lot of money.

Yeah.

But you'll own it and it will be yours. A great option for people that want to kind of hit the fast-forward button and maybe avoid some of those mistakes is franchising. And there are all sorts of different franchises in home services. A lot of the giant brands that you think about, ServPro, for example, they are franchise systems.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so if you're specifically interested in roofing, we have territories available and we'd love to talk to you. You can go to our website, stormguardrc.com, or franchising— is it franchising or franchise.stormguardrc.com?

franchise.stormguarders.com.

Um, to get more information. A note, uh, currently today as we sit, uh, on whatever it is, the end of March, uh, of 2026, that has not been— the branding there on that franchising hasn't been updated. That will be done in the next month. Um, but, you know, I, I think that franchising is a great, great option for, um, a lot of people to own their own business and take control of their lives and Um, the advice that I would give to somebody that was looking to buy a franchise, whether it's with us or anybody else, is to go to a meet the team day or a discovery day, whatever that brand calls it, and really try and learn who the people are

behind the brand, because you're going to be in a long-term relationship with them, and you need to make sure that the people that you're talking to are people that you want to be involved with for a long time.

Yeah. Do you guys have any geographical areas that you're, you're looking to, to move into right now?

You know, other than North Carolina, where we're basically sold out, and west of the Rockies, we have territory in a lot of places. For whatever reason, we have never gotten a franchise in Oklahoma City. Um, I would love an Oklahoma franchise. Um, sure. That's probably—

Lots of storms.

Uh, exactly. That's one of my top territories and top on my wish list.

Okay. Do you guys have one in Houston right now?

Uh, we have one that we just opened, uh, who's in West Houston. Um, just went to training about 3 weeks ago. Okay. And then we have one, um, in North Houston in the Spring, Texas area. Okay. Uh, that's been in business for a couple years.

Nice. Um, yeah, I see the, I see the technical locations. Tomball, Cypress. Yeah. For the one and then one in the spring. Yeah.

Uh, well, it should, you should talk off air and connect me with that one. Um, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, but, uh, do you mind if I, I, I had it hit you with a couple of, uh, rib punches here? Sure.

I mean, just, I mean, I don't know, Craig, how heavy is your fist? Yeah, exactly.

Uh, first one is, uh, just off the top of your head, and if you don't know, that's, that's perfectly fine. I'm just curious, do you know how much, uh, has shifted as far— 'cause I know you mentioned earlier that insurance payments as, as far as like roofing is, is falling off. Do you guys know how much that has shifted, like percentage-wise, where you guys are getting revenue from?

So, um, our revenue today is probably still around 80% insurance, right around there. Okay. We would, in the long run, like to have a greater share of retail or customer-paid work. And I think that there's a huge opportunity. So I mentioned an Owens Corning slide. On that same slide, they said it was about the total roofing, um, market for, for 2025 was about $170 billion. Of that, about $70, $75 billion was actually driven by remodels, not, uh, weather.

Okay. That's, that's good to note. Um, and then, and I'm just, I'm, I'm jumping topics just cuz I had a couple in my head I wanted to make sure we, we got to. One of, one of the sentiments that we hear a lot when you're, when you're, especially if you're going on like Facebook groups and different things like that where people are looking for services, one of the sentiments that you'll hear is, I want to keep, I want to keep my money hometown. So I don't want to work with a, with a national brand. I want to keep, I want to work with like a local brand. Like, how, what is, what is your, your company's response to, to that sort of sentiment?

If you were working with a franchisee of any franchise system, us, ServPro, the myriad other home services franchisees, you are working with a local company even though it's got a national brand. The vast, vast majority of the revenue and profitability for any individual job and any individual location stays local.

Right.

You know, I'll tell you, our What we get is 6.25% of what a franchisee collects. Everything else, it actually ends up at 7% because we have 0.75% that we collect for our brand development fund to help things like pay for truck wraps and rebrands, et cetera.

Right.

That means that 93%, at least because we have a declining royalty, 93% of the revenue Um, stays local.

That's awesome. I, I think that, I think that's important for people to know because it's like, you know, yeah, you're, it's a national brand, but like all that money is staying close to home for the most part.

Absolutely.

Yeah. No, I think, I think that's critical for people to understand. Um, because I, you know, you, I, I like, I know in my business, like that's, that's people's concern. I mean, they're always, you know, looking at, okay, where's, where's this? Is it, is it staying in my community? Is it getting reinvested here? Is it, is it, you know, so that that guy can, you know, put his kid in Little League? Or like, you know, all those things that keeps money in a community, that's, that's important to people.

Yeah. And, you know, we— I talked earlier about the StormGuard Cares program. So, um, we really do believe in giving back to our community and, uh, to our individual communities. And one of the ways that we do that is through charitable work. And the StormGuard Cares program is us at the home office supporting local charitable work by putting some money from our pockets into our franchisees' pockets in order to make those donations and do that local charitable work.

Oh, so you're actually, you're funneling money from corporate back into local for local charity?

Absolutely.

That's incredible. I love that. Yeah.

Well, again, it, it just, it, I think you, you said this earlier and I think it transcends not just the, um, the franchisee you mentioned. Get to know the franchisor and the, the overall vision and the type of people that you're working with. Because I think that you'll, you'll determine pretty quickly, is this the type of, you know, business that I want to be a part of? And, uh, do I want to put my name behind and be able to really dig my teeth into? And I think that's a huge question. And, and it, it transcends down into, into homeownership, right? Like just the, the more you know about a business, the more you know about a company, the more you

spend time with them, um, that if you, if you feel like they're not answering your questions or if you feel like they're not You know, calling you back whenever you, you, you've tried to get ahold of them, um, then, then there's a problem. Um, I mean, I, I heard of an, an instance just the other day where, um, there was a, uh, it was a, another pest control company actually. And, uh, the customer had called up and said, you know, I need, uh, need some termite work done. Can you come check it out? Um, they said, sure. They came and checked it out and they're like, yes, you've got termites. And I was like, okay, uh, when, when

can we get on the schedule? And the guy said, we'll get back to you. And then the next Monday they showed up to do the work, but they never scheduled Monday to show up to do the work.

Wow.

And so there was, the homeowner was glad that the work got done, but there's like, look, this, that this was not planned. I would really like to have a plan. And so Just, there are little things that make a difference. And, uh, you know, just the, the, the first person that answers the phone is gonna be, uh, the first person you talk to, but they don't have to be the first person you give your money to.

So, and I want to make a little plug here too. So, you know, as you're thinking about homeownership or, uh, business ownership, you know, obviously you're gonna do your research, you're gonna look at other companies as well. And so I would tell you to take a look at the FDD, right, and kind of compare ours, because everything we've talked about this last hour or so about being honest is what's in our FDD as well. And so we don't shy away from anything up to a certain point of what we legally can't say. And so everything that they want to know is in there. And, you know, that speaks volumes compared to kind of, you know, other home service

franchise brands that You know, you know, just, it's, it's doing the research as well. And so that's kind of what I wanna speak on is, um, we don't really hide anything from, from anybody. So, yeah.

Dig it.

Yep. I love it. Anything else that we have not talked about that, that you really wanna, you know, throw out there? I know we, at this point, we know that, uh, we know that your website, uh, your primary website for, uh, for, you know, the, the main company, and then there's obviously There's locations across the, the country, but it's stormguardrc.com. Uh, if there's another way to get ahold of y'all, do you have an email or a phone number that you wanna throw out and, uh, give that opportunity for people as well?

You know, the, the best way to contact us is through the website. Um, I can't give you a phone number because you need to call your local, uh, office. Um, I could give you our number, but it's not gonna do you much good if you're, if you don't live in Fort Worth, right? Sure, sure. So go to the, go to the SwarmGuard RC website, and then we've got a functionality to find your local office and call them directly. Um, that's the best way if you need services. Um, but as far as other things that I want to cover, I, I think this has been fun and y'all have done a great job, and I think we've covered everything.

Awesome. Great. I love that. I absolutely love it. Thank you guys, uh, for the time. We appreciate it. And, uh, if y'all would hang on for just a few minutes after we, uh, get done here, but we're gonna wrap this up. Thank you guys for downloading today's episode, for finding us on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or wherever you find your podcasts. We appreciate it very much. If you've not already told your friends and family about us, please do so. Go leave us a 5-star rating and review. We would love that as well. We've got some cool stuff coming up. So thanks for sticking with us. And until next time, we'll see you later.

See ya.