Hi there 👋🏼 I'm Price.

I’m building a roofing company from scratch in my mid-30s and documenting the whole messy process. Watch me succeed or fail.

Last week I shared my story about my unconventional career path from BYU construction management grad to e-commerce side-hustler to crypto crash survivor (barely) to, somehow, "I'm starting a roofing company from scratch in my mid-30s." 

I was pretty nervous about that first issue and honestly wasn't sure anyone would care. It was long and personal, and I half-expected it post it and hear crickets.

But what do you know, some people actually read it, and it seemed to connect with a few of you.

A bunch of people reached out; from new connections to old college friends, and a few who were already in the roofing space. The newsletter has already paid for itself in connections alone.

So I guess we're doing this thing.

Now, I look around and I'm in a bit of an awkward phase nobody talks about where you're technically unemployed but somehow busier than you've ever been. Weird place to be.

The License Situation

In California, you need a C-39 contractor's license to legally do roofing work, and getting one takes 3-4 months if everything goes smoothly. You also need a qualifying individual to essentially vouch that you know what you're doing.

I'm starting the application process now.

In the meantime, I'm helping a smaller contractor I’ve worked with in the past with sales and marketing, their website, and some processes. Any referral jobs that come my way run through their license for now. It keeps me connected to actual roofing work and pays some bills while I build.

My goal is to begin setting up my business more as a sales and marketing business until I’m licensed. At that point I’ll hopefully have a pipeline built out, ready to hit the ground running.

What "Building" Actually Looks Like

When I tell people I'm "about to start a roofing company," they probably picture me sitting around, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for my license to arrive. Not quite!

Here's what I'm working on right now: website almost finished, just signed a lease on small office space in San Jose, onboarding with an SEO group, about to hire a business coach, getting a bookkeeper set up, branding package ready to go, setting up social media (my Twitter used to be all crypto related so the algorithm is super confused), lining up subcontractors, shopping insurance, building templates and sales processes, building out a new CRM, creating ad content, sold my Tacoma and got an F-150 work truck, and a pulling the thread on a few marketing ideas I'm excited to share later.

Reading that back, it sounds like a lot, and it is! But there's something about this phase, where nothing is real yet but everything feels possible, that I'm trying to appreciate while it lasts.

My thinking has been that the more I can get set up and dialled now (obviously changes will be made), the better set up I’ll be when I actually launch.

Side Notes: S-Corp vs LLC? - bank?

California has extra bonding requirements for licensed contractors with LLCs, which is why most ar S-Corps. It’s a little more expensive but after weighing the options, I went with an LLC anyway because it’s a cleaner structure and less paperwork. I filed it through Bizee (which I recommend because they’re super easy), opened a bank account with Mercury, and we’re off to the races. I’ll probably open a Wells Fargo operating account as well because there’s one right next to my house, and next to my office, and I as a contractor I’ll need access to cash pretty often.

Sorry this last part was kind of random and boring… but this is what starting looks like.

1) Don’t back your golf cart into your new work truck the day after you get it.

2) You can scrape the tweets of popular accounts you like and engage with, feed them to a claude project to make a style guide, and have a professional x.com copywriter.

3) Be careful if you do #2 above….not all attention is good attention on X. This sign outside one of our projects this week is how I felt after I got 30 comments on a “hot take” tweet this week:

What I'm using to get this off the ground:

Next issue I'll share more about the actual business model – why residential roofing, why San Jose, and what I'm building beyond just "another roofing company."

There's a bigger vision I haven't talked about yet. Gotta keep you coming back somehow.

If you're in the trades or run a service business, reply and tell me what you're working on. I read everything.

Talk soon.

– Price

P.S. — Missed Issue #1? Read it here. Fair warning: crypto collapse, emergency C-section, lots of figuring out life.