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Show Summary
In this conversation, Mike Harvey discusses a specific case study in roofing where a significant price difference in roof replacement impacted a home sale. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding gross margins in home renovation projects and how quick, competitive proposals can facilitate successful deals.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Mike Harvey (00:00)
I left that partnership. We did a million dollars in nine months together because we knew the table dynamic. I knew all of that. But I just said, hey, you know something, I installed for family. And if I can do what I did for my family, why can’t I do this for a complete stranger? Why can’t I bring this level of experience to a completeDylan Silver (01:52)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Mike Harvey, is with the SkyeVantage powered by the Roof Resource. Mike, welcome to the show.Mike Harvey (02:04)
Good morning, the villains. It’s great to be here.Dylan Silver (02:07)
Great to have you on here. We were talking a little bit before hopping on about some of the unique things that your company is doing, as well as some of the ways that you’re able to assist folks who might not otherwise have access to kind of quick communication with someone in this space. But before we hop into that, I wanna ask you, how did you get started with this industry in this space?Mike Harvey (02:33)
Yeah, so it goes back to really at the end of 2018, I was transitioning out of corporate America and into 2019 and then I…was reached out by someone that knew me and said, you’ve scaled sales systems across the country that was in the telecom industry. You know, got to get into roofing. And I always joke and I always say, no, thank you. There’s a million ways to make a million bucks. And roofing is I’m afraid of heights. Don’t care to be involved in roofing. Long story short, he convinced me to get into it. And literally within nine months, I figured out
what I believed would be a utopia world of what could happen for the consumer and what was broken and how archaic the roofing industry is. And
I left that partnership. We did a million dollars in nine months together because we knew the table dynamic. I knew all of that. But I just said, hey, you know something, I installed for family. And if I can do what I did for my family, why can’t I do this for a complete stranger? Why can’t I bring this level of experience to a complete
And I left, I modeled out
the roof resource, I launched it in March of 21 and in eight months I did 94 customers from my home, never meeting them, never walking on their roof.
and delivered an experience that I had people reaching out to me saying, hey, what are you going to do with this? You know, this is really cool. This is like, you know, how did you do it? And not only that, Dylan, the by-product is you’re saving homeowners not $500 or $2,000. We’re saving them five, 10, $20,000 from quotes they’re getting from all of what I call the traditional blockbuster roofing companies that are out there today.
Dylan Silver (03:57)
Right. Right.I want to ask you a couple, I mean, this stirred up a couple questions, but first, when I think about what’s broken, not just with roofing, not to pick on roofing, but just whenever people are getting quotes from contractors in general, it’s first, well, where do I go? Oftentimes starts with a Google search, and then it’s, I’m not getting consistent communication, or I feel like I have to have all these spinning plates in the air in order to just get a number, which I don’t even know if I can rely on this.
Mike Harvey (04:28)
.Dylan Silver (04:49)
Were you seeing those issues as well and were there some other issues that you saw that, hey, we need to really be different in these areas?Mike Harvey (05:43)
Yeah, it’s all of those. You just explained the old way of roofing of what a homeowner has to go through and the reason why they have all those spinning plates. And that’s because there’s no transparency. It’s a market of confusion. Why does my home stay the same but I get four or five or six different prices? Who do I trust? Who’s going to do good work? And that’s why people feel that this is the most stressfulinvestment
rather than and I think it’s the second largest investment other than buying their home is a roof and everyone’s pretty scared and When I had family member reach out to me and say hey my brother and my grandmother. Can you do my roof? I was like, yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it
And I gave them class three roofing system, full transparency. And obviously I brought this experience to them. And that’s where I was like, why can’t I do this for a complete stranger? And that’s what the service is that that’s what we’re doing now nationwide. And the first, as I mentioned, cloud-based, 100 % virtual roofing platform in the country.
Dylan Silver (06:50)
I want to kind of juxtapose the cloud-based virtual with how things are, were done and maybe in many cases are still being done. You know, for folks who have not had to have a roof replaced, what is the process like when, you know, they recognize that maybe there’s damage or there’s a leak and then how are they, you know, getting quotes as someone having to come out there? What’s the typical process like?Mike Harvey (07:17)
So what happens is that the homeowner to your point earlier, you know, they go out and Google, they’re asking neighbors, they’ll go to Facebook marketplace and I’ve seen it where they’re saying, hey, looking to get a roof, can you recommend anything? And within 24 hours, this person will have about 175 plus people that are just recommending every roofing company in the world, right? So that’s a customer experience right there is who wants that? Then what happens is that they contact typically two to four different companies because homeownersdon’t know what they don’t know. And now they’re scheduling an appointment. Most homeowners have to go through an hour to two to three hours of a sales presentation. That roofing company is going to send out the owner or send out a marketing person or a salesperson who’s going to walk their roof, take pictures, share a report with them, talk about their Google reviews, how long we’ve been in business, we’ve done XYZ, and then what they do Dylan is they price condition a homeowner.
And they say, well, based on what I’ve seen here, your home is 35 squares. The market price is about $35,000 to replace your roof. How does that compare to the budget you’re looking to spend? And that question right there is what I call the kiss of death for a homeowner. Because if they say, yeah, that’s about right, that I knew it was going to be expensive, they got it. And they got them by, I mean, double the price point, right? And so what happens is that you’ve got price leaders in every market.
in every market that are super high and then you got people who come in and say well I’ll be $50 less a square I’ll be $100 less a square or I won’t put on full systems or I’m going to put down synthetic underlayment with my company name on it because I’m gonna buy from this foreign company that I get synthetic underlayment and you’ve got all these variables and it’s confusion it’s complexity
And what SkyeVantage does is removes all of the complexity, removes all the confusion. We give class three roofing systems to every single customer. They get multiple choices from all the different roofing systems so that they can actually maximize the look of that shingle color for their home. They get to see where every dollar goes. Every dollar to the materials, every dollar paid to labor, to dumpster, to permit.
We charge a small flat fee for the entire experience and we itemize that through a proposal. And so homeowners go through all of this confusion, right? And they’re spending six to eight to 10, 12 hours just to find that with us within, they go to our website, go to theroofresource.com. get a, we’ll have a virtual quote ready and we’ll say within 24 hours, but we can have it done within an hour. Cause we have realtors reach out to us all the time and investors.
And then we share this virtual roofing technology report. So we let them know we’re not making this up. This isn’t guesswork. Down to the linear feet, an inch, square inch of every single thing on the home. Hips, rakes, valleys, pitch, squares. They get to see all that detail. What goes into waste factor. Then we share the proposal with them. And our proposal is not just a one pager written out. We do a six page, colorful, full, come to life.
proposal for this customer so they have absolute certainty. That’s what we deliver Dylan. Within 24 hours we deliver certainty on the lowest price in the marketplace with the highest quality roofing system with the highest quality craftsmanship. That’s what we deliver and that is not the end day.
Dylan Silver (11:30)
Hey, I’ll take that. thinkthere’s a lot of people who say I’ll have that over the alternative. I want to hit on something you mentioned 100 % virtual. Also, you know, highest quality. I think I mean, myself as a realtor, I’m thinking about this. And I’m saying, well, how is it possible to, you know, have the peace of mind that I know without someone physically coming up and being on my roof. So this this leads me to this question, Mike.
Do all roofers have access to kind of a similar or the same systems where they could do this remotely but are effectively doing like a pony show to show up in person and walk on the roof and that type of thing? Or is it, you you have something that is very specific to Skye Vantage, which y’all are doing over there, where other, you know, roofers and people in the space don’t have access to the tools to be able to provide quotes remotely.
Mike Harvey (12:23)
So the roofing technology is out there. mean, so you’ve got some of the companies that use the roofing technology. The key to the existing retail roofing world is the dog and pony show.because every roofing company will spend thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars to send their salespeople to seminars to how to deal with that kitchen table and get that homeowner to say yes. What we provide though with our IP, we wireframed our own CRM core, it’s called core. So we have a whole backend process. So we’re able to integrate APIs and we give pricing that is our national pricing, which is our vendor, our building supply, which is SRS. We get great price points.
And we’re able to assimilate pricing and systems and processes that we’ve put together to bring about this experience. so you just have an old archaic way of roofing companies and how they do it. We just re-envisioned a different world for the customer. so when, you know, could somebody do it what we believe in the next probably three to five years, people will say, we have to be like SkyeVantage. We have to do this because this is the way the homeowners are starting to
Dylan Silver (13:18)
Yeah.Mike Harvey (13:33)
buy roofs and not only buy roofs, it’ll be buying windows, it’ll be buying siding, it’ll be buying gutters and gutter guards because of the tech. And let me answer the one question is how do you know? Well, one, a homeowner knows that the roof is end of life. You’ve you’re probably well aware that insurance companies now are leaning in pretty hard that that roof is 15 to 20 years old. They’re going to say homeowner needs to replace it or we’re not going to put insurance on it. And so those phone calls come in. Once somebody becomes a customer with ours,with us Dylan. You’ll love this.
We have a third party home inspection company that is a national company. It’s part of our service. We come out within 24 to 48 hours and we’re taking pictures of the attic. We’re looking for intake ventilation. We’re looking at the interior wood. We’re getting pictures on the outside of the house. We’re getting all of that detail. So in the event that this homeowner doesn’t have the proper intake ventilation for their home, because you probably know this, if you just have exhaust ventilation and no intake, there’s no
warranty on that roof at all. We can address that and being that we do this at cost, when we say at cost, a four-foot deck air that’s installed material and labor with us, 45 bucks. Not 200 or $300, which the typical retail roofing world will charge. You know, we’re just based on volume. As you probably well aware, it’s just volume for us, volume business.
Dylan Silver (14:37)
Right.Yeah.
The aspect of being able to do volume, especially in an industry where you’re managing projects, roofing, ⁓ replacements, repairs, this is intensive, right? So one of the barriers that smaller will have is they don’t have access to that volume. This leads me to my next question, Mike. When you got…
started working with the Roof resource, at that point in time, did they have the vision that you had now with the cloud component to it, or did you take that from your previous experience and realize, hey, no, we’ve got to pivot to this other model because otherwise we’re just like every other show in town?
Mike Harvey (16:33)
Well, you so the partner I had at that time when I said, hey, I’m going to go do this. I think there’s a better way. He thought it was kind of thought it was crazy. So I started the company, you know, in December of 2020. My first customer was in March of 21. And being that what I was doing, I never looked at it as a cloud base. I never looked at it like that until I would say this past year, we’re really looking at it and saying everything that we do lives in the cloud.everything that we do is virtual. ⁓
And really kind of sharing that message out and saying that this is the tech, this is the way to go. You don’t necessarily need to, to your point, have that dog and pony show anymore. That is the way. And you’ll see it’s something that we’ve referenced it like, Hey, this is blockbuster. Here comes Netflix. Everyone laughed at Netflix and we see what happened. Right. It takes time for people to see. And I can tell you that realtors, investors, I actually had an investor from
Dylan Silver (17:16)
Right, right.Yeah.
Mike Harvey (17:36)
Europe, calling me for one of his properties and we took care of his home and he was in Europe and we were here. Obviously we never met him, did great job, great work and we can do this around the country.Dylan Silver (17:45)
Wow.Now, I want to pivot a bit here, Mike. Talk about the single family homeowners themselves. So maybe this is their first home or maybe they’re moving, right? But they live there. And they’re, imagining, and correct me if I’m wrong or off base here, they’re looking at selling their home and they’re saying, okay, well, I need a roof now, or it fails inspection, something along these lines. In most cases, this is not, and I could be wrong, this is not something that people have like budgeted in advance.
So it’s kind of maybe not an emergency, but something that they’re kind of stringing together at the last minute. So when they’re doing this and then they’re having to manage these spinning plates, it kind of can make them maybe more prone to making a bad decision than ordinarily.
Mike Harvey (18:38)
Yes, you’re absolutely right. I share this with the realtors all the time that when someone is selling their home and that roof is old or the end of life, because respectfully, the inspection company doesn’t want to kill the deal. So they’re going to tell that homeowner or that new buyer, it’s end of life, two to three years maybe. Now they have to cross their fingers and hope that an insurance policy will go on that. Where we come in is we say, guess what? And I just did this and I shared it out on social media.a gentleman it was a 1.5 million dollar home they had a quote for $70,000 to replace the roof that was killing the deal he reached out to me it was 25 grand he got a proposal within an hour and a half 25,000 to replace the roof the deal went through because the homeowner said hey guess what they figured out whatever dollars that they would contribute to that and it wasn’t a $70,000 roof purchase it was only 25 grand that just goes to show you how much gross margin Dylan is marked
Dylan Silver (19:15)
Wow.Mike Harvey (19:38)
up in roofing. And so we were able to help this realtor Jim close that deal and then the customer in the springtime will get that roof through us. So they use the data to either put the new roof on and sell the house for more because even though they’re buying it at 50 % less than retail, it actually creates more value to sell the home as you know, or they use it in ⁓ escrow.Dylan Silver (20:00)
Yeah.Now when we talk about, I wanna go separate conversation point here. When we talk about roofing in general and how it’s changed over the years, ⁓ we can talk about going from dog and pony show to now cloud, that’s a big one. But I also think about if people are coming out of pocket and not relying on an insurance policy to pay for a roof,
And again, I could be off with this but I’m thinking they’re not necessarily thinking let me get the nicest looking roof or the super highest quality roof Let me just get something on there so that I can sell my my home But you just mentioned, you know, this can drive the price of your your your your sale price for your home up dramatically so the aesthetics even will potentially have a big impact on the overall price of the home and so people might
not be so quick to just go for, let me get this fixed as quick and as fast as I can, because plus two, you mentioned as well, they might be getting a quote that’s three times where it should be.
Mike Harvey (21:11)
Right. And we’ve had it where, you know, the homeowner can put on the Owens Corning designer black sable roof and they’re putting it on for only 12 grand. But the retail price of that roof is 30,000 and they can, they can sell that house for $20,000 more and get 100 % of the money back because there’s, there’s, and you’re probably familiar with cost-first-value.com or remodeling magazine kind of says, Hey, the investment is about a 57 % payback. But with our model, the homeowner gets a100 % of that money back.
plus because they’re getting and I want to say is that in the beginning of 26 we’re going to be providing what we because we have the investors that will say, guess what? I don’t need a full system lifetime warranty or the bougie looking roof. Just give me a gaff natural shadow with generic underneath because I’ve got 27 properties that I have to replace the roof on. And so one of the things though, Dylan, we share is that between a generic, just basic architectural shingle that the shingles a lifetime
Dylan Silver (21:44)
Yeah.Mike Harvey (22:13)
shingle and with a class 3 maybe $800. Now that’ll blow your mind. Going from what they say good, better, best, going from at the bottom to the top is about 800 bucks. Now someone says from a class 3 to a class 4 maybe $1500.Because the labor doesn’t change. The dumpster doesn’t change. The permit doesn’t change. And so we’re able to give you, the realtors, the investors, we pull back that curtain and say, well, if it’s only $800, that’s your $800. Doesn’t matter to us. You know, we’re not making anything on materials. We do not mark it up. And we give all of those choices to the homeowners or the owners of the property. When you have 10, 12, 15, 20 properties, that five or 800 bucks adds up.
Dylan Silver (22:37)
Whoa.Right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Harvey (23:07)
But if you want something that’s classthree, full system, lifetime warranties with these, we’re talking 40 and 50 years, not just 30 on the shingle, ⁓ game changer.
Dylan Silver (23:18)
I mean, when we’re talking about this idea of I’m already spending some money, what’s 800 or what’s 1500 if I’m getting a higher quality, it seems like a no brainer, especially if you’re looking at replacing a roof, right? Mike, are coming up on time here though. Where can folks go to ⁓ learn more? Maybe they have a roof that needs replacement. Maybe they have some investment properties and they’re having to deal with who to reach out to. How can folks reach out to you and your team?Mike Harvey (23:45)
Just go to TheRoofResource.comDylan Silver (23:50)
Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show today.Mike Harvey (23:54)
Thank you for having me, Dylan. It’s a pleasure.
