I lost seven figures while my wife was in emergency labor. Three years later, I'm betting everything on building a roofing company from scratch — and I'm documenting the entire journey in public.

(Yes, I said roofing. I'll explain.)

I had just arrived in San Diego for a weekend with friends.

An hour in, Twitter exploded. The financial/crypto companies BlockFi and FTX were freezing assets and collapsing. At that point, nearly our entire net worth was tied up in BlockFi (lessons learned).

Less than 30 seconds later, my phone rang. My wife was heading to the hospital for an emergency C-section—a month early. I was eight hours away.

Thankfully I made it back in time. Wife and baby were okay. I couldn’t and didn’t think about anything else. I blocked the crashing markets and companies out for a few days.

We lost seven figures. And worse, I'd convinced a lot of people to put their money on BlockFi. I thought it was 100% safe. It was all gone. The guilt I felt was tangible.

It took me a while to come out of this funk….and then there was the question of what do I do now?

So it’s 2023, and I was trying to figure out what was next in my career. Up until that point, I'd had some wins and some losses across jobs, startups, and solo ventures.

I started as an asset manager in commercial development fresh out of BYU, while also fulfilling orders for my clothing brand out of a storage unit during lunch breaks.

Fast forward through several e-commerce businesses, Amazon white-label brands, Bitcoin and crypto ventures, back to e-commerce agency work, and business development in tech hardware. I was chasing opportunity wherever I could find it.

This led to having a little experience in a lot of areas—the epitome of a jack of all trades and master of none.

I looked around at peers who were successful because they had specialized in one area and were almost a decade into their careers. The professional risk/reward profile I had chosen wasn't yielding the results I had hoped for.

On top of that, AI was just gaining major traction with the launch of ChatGPT, and I had a hunch that a lot of the marketing, analysis, and agency work I was doing might be replaced by AI in the next five or so years.

The BlockFi collapse forced me to start over, and I needed to be more calculated. I couldn't keep chasing the next thing. I needed to build something real that I could actually control—something that couldn't vanish overnight.

So, what was next?

Two separate friends of mine suggested I go back to my BYU Construction Management roots and get my contractors license. I love building, and we build our own small home in Santa Cruz. So I dug into research and landed on roofing.

Why roofing?

I told everyone who would listen that I wanted to get into roofing. I networked and talked to as many roofing business owners as I could. I sold solar door-to-door for four months to sharpen my sales skills and make connections in the solar/roofing space.

Let me tell you, door-to-door is no joke. It’s a grind and I respect everyone doing it.

Eventually, I was connected with the owner of a local roofing company, who I think was confused about my intentions—wanting to learn the roofing industry in my mid-30s. But after a handful of conversations, he trusted me enough to bring me on, train me, and eventually trust me to help open a new location in San Jose, California.

I learned the business from the ground up. The technical side, the operations, the customer experience, the systems that make it all work.

Six months in, we launched the San Jose location. No paid ads, just organic SEO and referrals. We did around $180k in the first few months. I was still earning basically minimum wage, but proved the model worked.

Then, about six weeks ago, my business partner and I realized we had different interpretations of our original agreement and different visions for the future. We decided to part ways.

So here I am. Technically unemployed. Third kid just born (again a month early, but planned this time). And ready to build something from scratch.

I know what you’re thinking - “your wife is a saint”. I full heartedly agree and trust me it’s an understatement.

It is January 2026, and I'm launching a roofing company from absolute zero.

No existing customer base. No revenue. No team yet. Just the things I've learned and commitment to do this right from day one.

Here's what makes this different: I'm building this company entirely in public. Every week in this newsletter (called The Rally), I'll document exactly what I'm doing—the decisions I'm making, what's working, what's breaking, the numbers when they matter, and what I'm learning in real time. Not the polished version. The messy one where I'm figuring it out as I go.

Watch me succeed or fail!

Most business content is written by people who already won. The advice is polished and the uncertainty is gone. Everything reads like they knew the ending the whole time.

This is the opposite of that.

You're going to watch me start from zero and either build something that works or fail trying. If you run a service business, a trade, or any kind of offline SMB, you know there's a gap in the content out there. Endless stuff for tech startups and creators. Not much for the person trying to scale an HVAC company or grow a landscaping business without burning out.

That's why I'm writing this.

My goal is to build something bigger than just a local roofing company. If I execute this right, I know it can scale. But first, I need to prove it works.

I felt validated when listening to the “My First Million” podcast and Shaan Puri brought up roofing. He said:

“There’s this kind of renaissance of cool blue collar franchises…so like cool branding, cool merch. It looks almost like a fashion brand. It's appealing to, you know, the sort of the Gen Z millennial audience. And you basically use social media in a way that all the mom and pop or even the old school national vendors just don't know how to do and you can create a really powerful franchise brand….. I mean, that's a that's a multi hundred million dollar play.”

It feels very validating — it’s exactly what I’m working on!

📋 Build Log - The actual work I did to build this company. Decisions, actions, what broke, what worked. Numbers when useful.

💡 The Lesson - One framework you can apply in your business (checklist, decision tree, SOP, pricing logic, hiring move).

⏰ Life Design - Ideas for managing your time and reducing chaos (calendar setups, delegation, constraints that actually help).

🔧 Tools/Systems (when relevant) - Only when there's something that genuinely saves time (CRM workflows, automation, AI usage).

The newsletter is lightweight by design. I record one weekly video (5–15 minutes), auto-transcribe it, draft the newsletter, and ship. Simple.

This is for you if:

This isn't for you if:

I'm nervous. I'm excited. I'm starting from zero for what feels like the hundredth time.

Three years ago, I was in the worst financial and emotional position of my life. Six weeks ago, I walked away from a stable situation to bet on myself again. Now I'm launching a company with nothing but systems, grit, and a willingness to show you everything—the wins and the screwups.

If this works, it could be something significant. If it doesn't, you'll watch me fail in public and learn from every mistake.

Subscribe to follow along. If you know another operator who'd find this useful, share it with them. If you're in the roofing or trades space and want to connect, just reply to this email—I read everything.

No hype. No promises. Just weekly updates from the field as I build this from scratch.

Welcome to The Rally.

Next week: The unglamorous foundation—LLC structure, insurance, licensing, and all the admin work nobody talks about but everyone needs to do. In #003 I’ll be revealing the branding and ideas behind it.

Let's go to work.

—Price

P.S. Questions, feedback, or just want to say hi? Reply to this email. I read everything./