Revolutionizing Roofing: The Virtual Experience

Mike Harvey (00:00)
I sold a customer for a very high priced roof. But the next day I was taking care of family and I was taking care of family at family pricing. I gave them cost. And so I just said it would be really cool if I could take this experience and give it to everybody.

Like, why do I have to go out and, you know, price condition you and give you three different choices and take you through? And everybody does that. And so I left that partnership two days later, created the roof resource and haven’t looked back. And it’s, we are homeowner focused and we call it the roof truth. We want to give the truth to every single homeowner in the country when it comes to roof replacement. They don’t need to go out on Facebook and, hey, any suggestions for a roofer?

There’s 102,000 of them out there. And guaranteed if you ever go out on your social media and you look for someone who had looked for a roof or a roofer, they’ll have 200 responses within 24 hours. It’s pretty crazy.

Michelle Kesil (02:31)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been really looking forward to chatting with. We have Mike Harvey, who’s been making serious moves in the roofing industry. Really glad to have you here with us today, Mike. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching a

modern day roofing business. So excited to dive in with you.

Mike Harvey (03:04)
Great, well thank you for having me, Michelle.

Michelle Kesil (03:05)
Awesome. Yes. So first off for people who may not be familiar with your business and your world, can you give us the short version? What is your main focus these days?

Mike Harvey (03:19)
Yeah, so I started the roof resource in 2020 after being in the roofing industry for nine months. It’s a very archaic broken model. It’s not, you know, the old model is not for homeowners. So I created a model and a service that’s the first cloud-based residential.

virtual business for homeowners to get a quote within 24 hours and have a new roof on within 7 to 10 days up to 50 % less than retail. Removing all the friction and all of the confusion and complexity and stress that goes into getting a roof and we do it virtually. so homeowners are shocked, they’re overwhelmed with glee when they meet us and quite honestly that’s transferred into the insurance world as well as the

real estate and investor world.

Michelle Kesil (04:04)
Awesome. And what markets are you operating in?

Mike Harvey (04:07)
So we are in, I don’t forget them, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Texas, Michigan, Ohio. We just launched Tennessee and soon to be launching Pennsylvania via franchising.

Michelle Kesil (04:20)
Awesome.

Amazing. Yeah, that’s really fascinating. What really caught my attention is the way that you’ve been able to create something so innovative in this industry and to make things so much more faster and accessible for people. How did you come up with this idea?

Mike Harvey (05:30)
I was in the midst of roofing

I sold a customer for a very high priced roof. But the next day I was taking care of family and I was taking care of family at family pricing. I gave them cost. And so I just said it would be really cool if I could take this experience and give it to everybody.

Like, why do I have to go out and, you know, price condition you and give you three different choices and take you through? And everybody does that. And so I left that partnership two days later, created the roof resource and haven’t looked back. And it’s, we are homeowner focused and we call it the roof truth. We want to give the truth to every single homeowner in the country when it comes to roof replacement. They don’t need to go out on Facebook and, hey, any suggestions for a roofer?

There’s 102,000 of them out there. And guaranteed if you ever go out on your social media and you look for someone who had looked for a roof or a roofer, they’ll have 200 responses within 24 hours. It’s pretty crazy.

Michelle Kesil (06:34)
Wow, yeah, sounds like it. So how did you manage to make this virtual? How does that work?

Mike Harvey (06:41)
Well, this was a time that when COVID hit, right? And nobody could see anybody. You can’t even see your family. And I always say in a nice way, Nanny and Grampy had to learn video calls, right? Everyone did. Zoom, Google Meet, FaceTime, Facebook Messenger. Everyone got started getting used to it. And so I went ahead and wanted to remove the hard closing out of roofing. I’m giving you cost.

So I’m always going to be at the bottom price point. And I incorporated the virtual space because I believe that everything is going virtual. And I wanted to give the best experience. Still wanted to create a connection. You know, it’s like we’re doing today. You meet me, I meet you. Making sure everything is real. then, you know, embrace.

which I believed is something that was new. Just like when we used to go to Blockbuster and rent a movie and you get a cassette and put it your VCR, right? Then Netflix came out and everyone’s like, I don’t understand. How can I download a movie? How can I stream a movie? And it moved people into that. And now a $6 billion company like Blockbuster is gone. And it’s just Netflix and all these streaming functions. And so we believe we are leading that charge in the ⁓

construction home improvement industry.

Michelle Kesil (08:00)
Yeah, amazing. So can you walk me through a bit how that works? So like people meet with you virtually and you connect them to roofers or what does that like process look like?

Mike Harvey (08:09)
Yeah, that’s a great question, Michelle.

Well, so when someone submits their information to us, which is just their name, phone number, and email address, they get a call within 15 to 20 minutes, we have an intake call. And that’s really about their home, their address. We pull it up, we see it. We have roofing technology that we utilize so that we pull reports. We don’t use just Google Earth or old photo. Then we schedule the Zoom call. And that’s typically within 24 hours based on the customer’s availability. We pull up their roof report. We share.

that

with them so we go over that detail on how those numbers go into a proposal and then we share their proposal and we lead with price because we said hey that’s the 800 pound elephant everybody wants to know like well how much this is going to cost me and once we go through that they get their choice of top-of-the-line roofing systems top-of-the-line installation and we manage all of that for them because we’re the consultant

We manage that. We’ve built the network of licensed insured roofing companies, the dumpster companies. We have national distribution with SRS’s who are our partners, where the materials come from. We’ve put all that together for our homeowners so they don’t have to worry about anything.

It’s all handled when they reach out to the roof resource. And so that’s why people read the reviews and it’s just no stress, choice and selection and ease is what we bring to homeowners.

Michelle Kesil (10:09)
Yeah, that’s super valuable and definitely something that’s needed.

Mike Harvey (10:13)
Yeah, it’s, you know.

When I started this, it was for the homeowner, but then I had insurance people come to me and saying, hey, you’re going to reduce our loss ratios. And I was like, what do mean by that? Because I really didn’t know what that was. And then I had a realtor reach out to me and then said, hey, we need to replace this roof. How much is it going to be with you? Well, it’s not $25,000 to replace it. It’s only $12,000. And they’re like, I don’t understand. And I’m like, well, that’s roofing. mean, they’re going to try to get as much money as possible. That’s the old way of doing it. And then it was one realtor, two realtors, big name realtors here in the South.

Southeast Michigan market and then more and more and you know now we’re talking with EXP realtors because the EXP is the first virtual cloud-based real estate company in the country and we’re talking with them about doing some really big things right now so

Michelle Kesil (10:58)
amazing what has been the key to keeping that business running smoothly.

Mike Harvey (11:05)
People can make or break any business and if you don’t have alignment and you don’t have a culture of core values that everyone lives and breathes, you can take the best company in the world and it can be destroyed. And so it’s making certain that…

You’re doing the best you can to have the people on the team believe in the mission, know the direction where you’re going. There’s no inflated people that feel that they’re better than anyone else, that you’re all in it together to win. And so it always comes down to people. You could have the best gadget in the world, but if you don’t have good people around you, it could be detrimental to your company.

Michelle Kesil (11:48)
Yeah, that’s very valuable. Now, every operator I know also has moments where things got real, maybe a deal went sideways, or you just had to make a fast pivot. Would you mind sharing a moment like that for you?

Mike Harvey (12:06)
Yeah, so you know a friend of mine said and I quote her, there’s power in the pivot. And she, don’t think she really realized what she had said because I said that was just liquid gold because there’s so, people get afraid of change. They think change is bad and you know she phrased it as there’s power in the pivot. And for us it was realizing when you might have

good people but maybe they’re not good operators. You know, they’re good people but they really don’t fit what you’re looking for. And we really had to take a step back and to really start thinking about our business and our model and who’s right for our business, who’s right for our wholly owned properties and who’s right for franchising and who’s not. you know, that was, you know, it’s kind of like you can’t fit a circle into a square.

Now the circle is good and the square is good, but you can’t fit a circle into the square. And so that was really a point where we really had to take a step back and start really thinking about who is our ultimate franchisee and what do they look like and build a model off of that and move forward. So there was some pivoting there.

Michelle Kesil (13:16)
Yeah, absolutely. There’s always pivots when it comes to business, but they lead you in the right direction.

Mike Harvey (13:22)
Yeah, mean it’s again there’s power in the pivot and it’s really embracing that so.

Michelle Kesil (13:26)
Awesome. So let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

Mike Harvey (13:33)
So we are, I am focused on working with every insurance and real estate company in the country. And that is a huge monumental statement.

It’s not fair for me to say I’m going only look for one insurance company or one real estate company because the impact that we can have

everyone is monumental. I mean, we’re talking about millions of dollars that can be saved with realtors who understand the value and our value prop that we give to them, who they then that providing it to their homeowner, you know, who didn’t have to pay 25,000 for a roof. They only paid 12, so they can take that other 13,000.

and maybe put in a new furnace or a new AC unit or refrigerator, whatever. And then for the insurance side, it’s the impact when it’s the storms and those roofs don’t cost $40,000. They’re only like 17. So what does that mean for the insurance carrier is they pay lower money. It means that the homeowners pay lower money and that fiduciary responsibility is the byproduct is all of us as homeowners, we start

we can maybe start to see some lower rates because it’s not all of this inflation inflated I should say roofing pricing so those are two areas of focus that I have I will say one is the end insurance and two is real estate.

Michelle Kesil (15:40)
Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people listening to this show are investors as well. How could that benefit those investors?

Mike Harvey (15:50)
for the investors, we have a network of investors here in the Michigan market that we’ve worked with at S &O in Colorado that they have homes and properties. And so instead of having to worry about…

you know, Akron, or Chattanooga, Tennessee, fine roofing companies, what are they going to do? What are the prices? They come to us, one stop shop. There’s times where they have all these properties and they don’t necessarily need to have the Owens Corning Designer Series on a rental property. But what we do for them is we pull back the curtain and they get to actually see how they can save on so many different components of the roof. And when they have five homes, 10 homes, 50 homes,

$300 there and $500 there that can add up. But we bring the level of transparency to every project that it’s unheard of. And so from an investor’s perspective, when they’re looking at real estate or condominium complexes or apartment complexes, wow, it really opens up the door for them so that they can actually see where every penny is going rather than just see a lump sum price and not really understand what goes into that.

Michelle Kesil (16:55)
Yeah, that’s big. That can really shift things for people of all levels.

Mike Harvey (17:00)
Yeah, and it’s done that. again, to or as an investor, if they’re looking at owning some territory in Florida or what have you, that’s also another opportunity.

Michelle Kesil (17:10)
Yeah, absolutely. So I know, yeah, like I mentioned, there’s a lot of people listening to this that are early in their journey or just looking to level up. And I think they’d benefit from hearing this. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what has made the biggest difference for you?

Mike Harvey (17:32)
For me to really grow the network I had to get uncomfortable and I honestly had to do more podcasts. I had to be open to multiple different types of meetings, reaching out through social media platforms. But you know I would definitely say too really having a strategic focus on who you want to align with.

Because it’s not about having 10,000 followers, but yet you don’t engage with any of them, right? You really, you know, I’m always big with less is more. So keep the circle smaller, but keep it very, very powerful. And so, you know, that’s something that I would share to the listeners when they’re looking of, you know, how do I make these connections? It’s not about building your own personal brand. You know, it’s really about who do you want to connect with and what can you learn from them?

and have a mindset of gratitude and humility.

They really are and you don’t really know where one relationship You know will turn to another one and then what will blossom from there, so

Michelle Kesil (18:33)
Yeah and how has it been for you like creating this business and growing with the franchises?

Mike Harvey (18:41)
So this has been really…

God-giving to me because I didn’t want to start this. As you can tell, I’m a little bit older. I always say I’m playing the back nine of my life. I didn’t plan on starting a nationwide roofing company to disrupt the industry. I just wanted to do something that was right in my hometown.

Now I have all of this and it’s growing rapidly and there’s so many different areas of change in business that we’re going to affect. We’re just going to be rolling out gutter guards here in the next couple of weeks. And next year we’re going to roll out windows and you get a roof at cost, get gutter guards at cost. I mean it’s just, it’s a level of simplicity and frictionless services. You know, because right underneath here, underneath my logo, we used to have, we don’t print it there now, but it’s your home, your savings.

Because it was, you’re now a homeowner, why is it now you’ve got to overpay for everything? Right? And it’s about having the right connections and being able to sync up with the right people that will be the ambassadors really of your dollar in a way that, you know, that’ll keep money with you rather than take it from you.

Michelle Kesil (19:48)
Yeah, amazing. That’s super valuable. I’m sure many people are looking to grow their businesses and yeah, can get inspired from that.

Mike Harvey (19:58)
Yeah, you know, I tell you what, it’s growth will, you know, I think your mindset of humility and, you know, I’m a very faith driven person and it’s the impact that we’re having on communities and the states that we’re in. And I think that if you have a heart of servanthood, I think that you will do very, very well if you.

And I use this word specific, chase the dollar. It’ll always elude you. And if the dollar is your focus, profit is not a bad thing. But what is it that you really want to do? And how do you want to affect people? And I think that that, at the end of the day, for me at least, is what wakes me up every day and keeps me going.

Michelle Kesil (20:39)
Yeah,

that’s a powerful reminder to focus on the service and everything will follow from there.

Mike Harvey (20:45)
Correct, you said that best.

Michelle Kesil (20:46)
Amazing. Yeah, that is so powerful. Is there anything like that? Maybe someone is curious about working with you and they’re having like an objection or a hesitation. Are those like something that people often come to you with or they’re always like shocked and just go for it?

Mike Harvey (21:09)
You know, I will say that I mean, I do have some coaching that I do.

with, especially with franchising, get people that are very interested in it, but yet at the end of the day, they’ve got one foot in corporate America and one foot they’re thinking about kind of running their own show. And at that point, I always tell them they’re not ready to do their own thing. If they need to be convinced or if they need to be thrown into it, maybe they’re not ready for it. And this you know, and I always say, a friend of mine has called me up one night, ⁓ he moved to California and he’s like,

You know, Mr. Harvey, he me Mr. Harvey, he was one of my guys in corporate America and he’s like, he says that jokingly, Mike, he goes, I burned the boat. And I told him, he needs to write something big about that because when you burn the boat, you move into entrepreneurship and you’re there. That means you’re not going back.

And so I think it’s a mindset when people are listening to, they just, feel it inside that they just, it’s time to go do my own thing. And it’s scary. It’s exhilarating. You wake up with a fire in your belly every single morning. And you’re, you’re pioneering something bigger that you may not even see yet, but you know, it’s the right thing to do because getting in a car, driving an hour.

and working on somebody else’s dream. Not a bad thing. If that’s what you enjoy and you wake up for that, then you know that that is for you, right? I’m not saying that’s bad. But for those who are listening and they feel it in their gut and when they’re going to spend time somewhere else and there’s this disconnect inside, then they know that they’re fighting something. And another good mentor of mine said, don’t swim upstream.

Don’t swim upstream. Go with the flow of that. And so when you are swimming upstream, you know that something is not right.

Michelle Kesil (22:53)
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing.

Mike Harvey (22:56)
Yeah, I I appreciate being here.

Michelle Kesil (22:58)
Alright, so before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Mike Harvey (23:10)
They can go to theroofresource.com. Our contact information is there. Depending upon where they are in the country, they can email me directly. And that is mike at theroofresource.com. They can get a hold of me through my email. And of course, realtors, investors, and properties. And if they’re looking for quotes on that new roof replacement and they need to get it done, that’s where we can help and serve them too.

Michelle Kesil (23:35)
Perfect. Well, listen, I really appreciate your time, your story and perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing things in this innovative way. So thank you for being here.

Mike Harvey (23:46)
Thank you for having me, Michelle. This has been a pleasure.

Michelle Kesil (23:48)
And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Mike, who are out here building real businesses. And we’ll see you all in the next episode.