Joey Hawkins, owner of Hawk 3 Construction in Roanoke, Texas, shares insights on growing a successful contracting business, building effective teams, and embracing new technologies.
I grew up in East Texas and went to school in DFW. I played football and basketball at Texas Tech in the early 2000s, playing for Bobby Knight and Mike Leach. After that, I spent some time with the Indianapolis Colts in '05-'06 on the practice team when they won the Super Bowl. After getting out of football, I started a couple of businesses, and a decade later I own a roofing company with my brother in Roanoke, Texas, just north of Fort Worth. We're in what they call the "roofing Mecca" of DFW.
What are your main types of projects?
The majority of our business is re-roofing, so your typical roof claims and insurance claims. We also build high-end custom pools, do solar, and are starting to get into the home building aspect. But the majority of what we do is roofing - we do shingles, clay tile, standing seam, TPO.
What are your three biggest challenges you have right now as a contractor?
The biggest challenge is staying number one in the market for where you're at. Number two is keeping your employees happy, satisfied, and fed. There's a lot going on in this roofing world - you train somebody up for two years, they go and start their own company, and now you're competing with the guy that you trained.
Number three is lead flow. Where are you sourcing your leads from? How are you doing that? Are you doing pay-per-click? Are you doing SEO? Are you doing it organically? Are you going to real estate agents, insurance agents? What's the most effective way to do that, and then trying to incorporate AI - because that's the next step.
You talked about being in the ballpark of a $5 million company and kind of hitting a wall. Why do you think you hit the wall with that level? And what are you doing to try to break through it?
It's a proverbial wall as well as a physical wall. To run a company efficiently, you've got to have everything in place. You've got to have the build, the subs, the pay structure - you've got to have everything streamlined because you'll hit terminal velocity, and then you'll just fall on your face. When you do that, you'll lose your lead flow because you're not doing a good job. So growing at the correct pace is very important.
Having the right employees and managers in place is crucial. As owners, we try to do everything ourselves, and it's just too much to handle. So now we're pivoting into team building. We make a little bit less money, but our team leaders make a little more money, so we're giving them the ropes and letting them start their own teams. They report to us, and we give them what they need. If they want to throw a marketing event for their real estate agent, cool, we'll be there. If they want me to talk to a property manager, I'll do it. I'm trying to make everybody think for themselves so I don't have to think for everybody else.
You mentioned that you had struggled keeping sales reps. Why do you think that is?
There are some sales reps who need to be sales reps, some who need to be escalated, and some who don't need to be sales reps. If you keep the same mindset for everybody, then you will only fit them for one person.
You need to baby your superstars. You need to give them that trip to Mexico or a higher commission percentage, which many companies don't want to do. They want to hold their commission percentage where it's at. I personally don't believe in that - if I'm not having to babysit you daily, and you're a million-dollar producer, I'm going to pay you the highest percentage that I can as a company.
That's much higher than what I call the "Walmarts of roofing" - your big box retailers with 100-200 employees. They're not going to give one guy a higher commission rate. We look at it more as a boutique firm offering a higher service standard. We want to give you every tool you need to succeed instead of just trying to please the masses.
I love the idea of treating salespeople as a one-off and not having a standard program. Essentially, you're paying for performance, right?
Yeah, performance, attitude, and culture. At the end of the day, do you work at a fun place with happy hour on Friday and treats employees fairly? Do you take them golfing, or say, "Hey, show up from 9 to 5, do what you're told, and keep your mouth shut"?
I call it the Netflix or Blockbuster strategy. Do you want to be Blockbuster, set in their ways like, "No, we're not going to change, we're not going to go to streaming"? Okay, cool. You could have been bought out for $50 million, but now you don't exist. That's the way I think of this industry.
How do you think the culture you're talking about impacts your customers or attracts customers?
I really think that if you have a happy employee who loves your brand, is wearing your hat and shirt, and is cheerful, that really comes over to the customer, but not in a verbal way. If you're not happy where you're working, you're not going to be a happy sales rep, and you're not going to sell as much.
A big part of keeping sales reps happy is providing them with leads, organic leads that come into your office. And why are you getting those leads? Maybe it's because you rented the ice cream truck and had your whole team out there with 10 guys, and the dude across the street who works for ABC Roofing is like, "Man, I want to go work over there."
We do stuff like that all the time. We hold monthly happy hours for our real estate and insurance agents, and we highly encourage our sales reps to bring the agents and ask them to bring someone else. It's free food and drinks - come on, this is easy, right?
Just growing, changing, doing what's best for them and what's best for the company. The company's going to be bottom line always, but you've got to take care of your sales reps.
You mentioned lead gen. You need to feed them too, right? You've got to give them chances at bat. Could you talk about your lead gen strategy?
Man, we've done it all. We've paid for leads, and we've done SEO. Our strategy is to find a smaller town with roots you can walk through. I walk downtown where I'm at every day with my sales reps and my people. Everybody knows that I'm here doing this, and they see me. That feeds into the community, so we get a lot of organic leads that way.
My office is brick-and-mortar. I tell my sales reps, "When you're talking to that person, say, 'If you don't decide to use us, make sure that who you use has an office and is insured.'" That eliminates 90% of the roofers out there.
We try to do a mix of everything. Door-knocking has become less prevalent with the Ring door cameras. The Internet is king—you've got to get on the Internet, on those mom and dad Facebook pages. You've got to get referrals and Google reviews.
I would say our biggest lead flow is that we turn every customer into two. "Hey, I hope you like our service. Here's a gift - a wine gift basket for a good Google review. We'd appreciate it; it goes a long way for us. By the way, the easiest way for you to help us is just throwing us on your neighborhood Facebook page, and then we'll throw you $500 per referral that comes our way." When they hear that $500, they're like, "All I gotta do is throw you on a Facebook page? Cool, done."
I have over 100 five-star Google reviews, and I'm number one in my market share because that's how we built the business. When people start looking for someone to use, they're going to go with the guy who has an office, has the best Google reviews, or was referred by somebody—that's who they're going to use.
We're going to another market right now, so we will replicate what we did here and see if it works. If it does, we will do it a third and fourth time. The first thing we're doing is buying an office. We're putting our money where our mouth is. We're going to do our location pages, and we're going to do it the right way. Our goal is to get 20 Google reviews in the first month.
You mentioned AI. Obviously, it's a buzzword out there. Where do you see it helping a contractor?
Every contractor has to deal with paperwork. Those are all things that have required a human to do. Where the market's going is that AI is going to do your supplements, AI is going to do your cold calling, AI is going to answer the phone call when someone calls your office at 7 o'clock when you're bowling with your family.
If you're not at least learning what AI has to offer, it's going to pass you by, and then you're going to wonder why Tom Selleck Roofing did so much better than your roofing company - and it's because that's what they incorporated.
Are you using any of the content tools for helping you with proposals?
I have a meeting today with a guy who wants to present me with AI for SEO, and I'm going to listen to it. Currently, I'm working with a group out of Florida, a group out of Colorado, and a group here. We've got about 15 contractors, and we're sharing our supplement process.
We're all learning from each other to increase our supplement process so that it's automated. Instead of paying somebody 10% of a claim, we pay them a fixed rate, and it's done. We can get the whole process done in 2 to 4 weeks instead of 2 to 3 months.
Imagine getting an email from the insurance company saying, "Hey, I don't like this line item, but I'll buy this and this." As soon as the AI receives it, it goes through our statutes and says, "Well, city code says you've got to do this, and the manufacturer installation specification says this. By the way, they don't have a cosmetic clause on their standing seam." It does this instantly, so you don't have to wait to get to the office to review your 100 emails.
You are who you hang out with. If what you're doing is working for you, keep doing it. But understand, I might pass you by as well.
How is the selling process changing? Is AI and the internet changing how you sell?
I think the internet just gives people more access to stuff and helps the process by removing the lookers. I live in a neighborhood that got hit with hail about two years ago. We probably did a hundred roofs in that neighborhood, but I had two people in there who weren't educated—they gave a contractor $5,000 for materials, and he never showed up.
Our process is pretty streamlined. We give them a contract, walk them through the whole process, and then give them access to another source if that sales rep is new and doesn't do a good job. Follow-up is king - Having your CRM in place to know where everybody's at is crucial.
In the next 6 months to a year, all of those emails that the sales rep is supposed to be sending - the AI will see if it's been sent, and if it hasn't, it'll send it and CC me on it. You could have the greatest structure in the world, but you're relying on other people to run it.
What CRM do you use?
Right now, we're using JobNimbus. Before that, we had RoofLink. We used Google Workspace for a little bit. I haven't tried AccuLynx yet, but some good estimating tools in JobNimbus have ScopeSync Quote incorporated.
But at the end of the day, that person will choose you to do their roof based on you and your personality. You can have all the pretty bow ties in the world wrapped around it, but if it's not good, it still won't look good.
I think, guys, at the end of the day, are going off the sales rep. And if it's a big roof - we have very large roofs here, 150 squares, 180 squares, slate, expensive roofs - if that guy hasn't closed it in a week and I know it's a big one, I'm going out there to follow up with it.
What about paid marketing ads, local magazines?
I don't like any paid leads, but I'm in DFW, like the shark's nest of roofing. I've heard paid leads work in small towns because they're not getting bombarded. But once again, do you want to pay for that service in a small town if you don't have an office there?
The data shows that about 60% of people prefer organic search, and about 40% will click on the paid ads. They do make Google rich, that's for sure.
Oh yeah, wait till Google comes out with an SEO product.
The world of search is changing with AI. More and more people are asking basic questions like, "Should I buy a standing seam roof versus an exterior fastened roof?" AI does a great job of answering that.
I've talked to McElroy, CertainTeed, Atlas, Versico, and Crown Tile—some of these big manufacturers. I told them, "You guys need to help the people that you want to do business with, who actually pay their bills on time."
I've gotten referrals directly from their websites via the Certified Installer program. It's crazy - I do more shingle roofs than standing seam roofs, and I get more referrals from the metal roofing manufacturers' websites than from my shingle manufacturer.
I think finding good contractors who pay their bills, have been around for 5-10 years, and keep those guys afloat should be more prevalent in the industry because they're the backbone of the industry.
What do you think about where this industry is headed?
We know metal is becoming increasingly popular. We're slightly biased since McElroy is in the metal business, but it makes sense. When you talk about a hailstorm coming down your road, metal roofs will last longer, and the pricing of traditional roofing is getting more comparable. The ROI calculation gets easier to make.
The trends are spotty—you see them on the coast, in Florida, and Texas is another big one. Many people are going with metal because of hurricanes and weather. It's a bit spotty across the country, and obviously, there's an economic piece to it as well. If people have money and are optimistic about the future, they will likely invest in their house.
I'll add another point. We build homes and barns, and I came across those Cold Steel buildings. I immediately asked my rep Kevin to come to my office and tell me what this is because it's right in our wheelhouse—another product we can offer. It's good that you guys do standing seam but also offer that.