Hi there 👋🏼 I'm Price.

I’m building a roofing company from scratch in my mid-30s and documenting the whole process.

Watch me succeed or fail.

It's been about a month since I posted, as it's been a busy one! But there's a couple of reasons…first because I decided weekly was probably overkill, and I'd rather show up with something worth reading than just hit send on something half-baked. Second, I've been head-down studying for my contractor exams.

Oh, and we had spring break, the flu went through our house, and gophers destroyed the subfloors in our rental and we had a week to replace them all, which was its own circus.

So, writing this went to the bottom of the priority list.

BUT that being said, I've got huge news. I PASSED. Both of my contractors exams. They're done, and it's a huge relief.

A little context for anyone who isn't familiar: California has one of the strictest contractor licensing systems in the country. To even sit for the exams you need four years of journeyman-level experience (I had three from my construction management program at BYU, and the rest came from my time working in the industry over the last couple years).

There are two separate exams. A Law & Business test, and then the C-39 trade exam for roofing. Both are closed-book. Both are a few hours long.

The Law and Business one wasn't too bad. California contract law, employment rules, lien stuff — a lot of it I was already loosely familiar with from previous business endeavors, so it was mostly memorizing employment and contract laws.

The roofers exam was the harder one for me. There's a lot of commercial roofing applications I just haven't spent much time with, so that one took a lot more studying. Walking out, I was pretty nervous and was not confident I passed. It was quite a bit harder than I thought. Mostly they just tested different things than I had been prompted to study.

In the end, they don't show you your score, but they DO give you pass/fail right when you finish.

I PASSED!

Man, a huge relief. This has been hanging over my head and something I've been working toward for a long time. Getting my license has been a goal from the beginning of this journey, whether or not I was working for another company or for myself. It's been a personal goal.

Now I don't have to feel weird telling people I'm a "roofing contractor" ha!

So now, my insurance application is in and the license should land in the next few weeks. That opens up the opportunity to actually start earning revenue under my own name! And, because we're in CA I guess also… get sued? Ha.

So for a while, as you know, I've been in this weird in-between zone where I don't have my license yet but I'm trying to build a pipeline anyway.

Last week I was at Home Depot waiting for an employee to come help me find something, and I overheard a guy asking him about skylights. The worker didn't know the answer, so I kind of just inserted myself in and walked him through the differences between options, and pointed him toward a specialty skylight place.

He was thankful and jokingly said, "What are you, a roofer?"

And I said, "Uh, trying to be. I'm just finishing my exams and starting my own roofing company."

He seemed surprised but genuinely stoked for me. Then he said, "Well, I need a new roof!"

I measured his house yesterday. Pretty sure it'll close.

Months of building a brand, a website, a CRM, sales processes, all of it — and I might land a job because I overheard some guy at Home Depot. The world is strange and I love it.

This one I'm fired up about.

I built a custom proposal template that I think is actually pretty unique. Two things make it different from a normal roofing proposal:

The first customer I sent it to was so into the before/after photo that I'm pretty sure that visual is what closed the deal. It's a really cool feature I've never seen before.

I'll do a deep dive on this next issue.

The most surprising part of this whole stretch has been how generous people in the industry are.

I called a new supplier last week as a brand new business… The guy was just stoked for me. Walked me through pricing, gave me a list of subcontractors to call, offered to introduce me to people. I'm a brand-new operator with zero track record and he was so helpful.

I think people in this industry know how hard it is to get here. They've seen the effort it takes to actually get one of these things off the ground. So when they see somebody trying to do it the right way they just want to help, and it's amazing.

Plus, well you know, I'll be bringing him new business. So I guess he should be excited about that too.

The same thing keeps happening with customers. People are signing with a roofer who openly tells them he just got licensed. And from the conversations, it's because they appreciate the honesty, and they can see I'm hustling. Excitement is contagious. Transparency is rare. Honesty is appreciated.

Just tell people where you actually are. The version where you pretend to be further along than you are doesn't get you anywhere. Authenticity and confidence builds trust.

If you have comments or ideas, please share them.

Let's go to work!

— Price

P.S. — New here? Issue #1 has the full backstory. Fair warning: crypto collapse, emergency C-section, lots of figuring out life.