Bob Houchin
Contributing Writer
Success Group International
Bill Burkhardt of Four Seasons KangaRoof Has Overcome a Number of Challenges, Demonstrating Remarkable Resiliency, and Now is Reaping the Rewards of His Persistence, Hard Work, and Integrity.
Bill Burkhardt is excited and for great reason. He sees so much potential in his company, Four Seasons KangaRoof, and he fully expects 2017 to be a tremendous year of growth. The suburban Detroit contractor recently launched a windows and siding division, and with a customer base of over 2,500, Bill knows he has a vast and untapped revenue source.
“When people do roofing, they’ve want us to do siding and soffits and trim. They want one contractor to deal with,” Bill stressed. Rather than give that work away to other contractors who may or may not take good care of his customers, Bill wants to ensure they’re serviced to his standards.
“By starting our own siding [and window] division, I can bring in my own people and train them properly. So, they meet my expectations,” he insisted. “We want our customers to be well taken care of.
Starting something from scratch—and in a new field—isn’t something unfamiliar to Bill. Four Seasons KangaRoof generates roughly 50 percent of its revenue today from residential repair and replacement—that division of the company didn’t even exist five years ago. Four Seasons Roofing, as it was once called, focused exclusively on commercial roofing, dealing mostly with general contractors.
“We started selling [siding and windows] March 1st. We’ll have our marketing budget, and training figured out. We’ll know our sales presentation and the paperwork needed. We’ll have an inspection to perform. We’re going to have the suppliers in to do the product training,” Bill excitedly rattled off what he’s been focused on much this past winter.
“It’s funny,” Bill said and stopped himself. “I had no idea how to do that stuff five years ago. I’m not saying that to pat myself on the back. I say that because I’m proof that if you follow a system—and listen to some smart people—you can have success in this business.”
Bill Finds His Career & Love
Bill may enjoy his chosen profession in 2017, but if you asked him his feelings about contracting in 2009, you likely would have heard a much different response. “It was—for lack of a better word—a mistake getting into roofing,” Bill said before bursting into laughter.
“Back in the 80’s, I had a great job working in industrial motors and electronics. It was a phenomenal job. And I was a hard worker. I was motivated and pragmatic. I thought if I can make this kind of money doing this new age high tech stuff, there has to be something even better.”
Bill left that wonderful job to take a position with an electronics distributor. The job turned out to be a bust. The company failed to be completely truthful about the opportunity and his client list. Bill almost immediately started job searching.
A friend recommended that Bill should go to work for some building materials wholesalers he knew. “I didn’t really care for it either, but my job was calling on roofers, carpenters, and contractors. A couple of commercial roofers said, ‘Hey, I think you’d be good at this,’” Bill remembered. “I went to work for one of them as a salesperson/estimator. I loved it. That was 30 years ago.”
Bill Goes into Business
Hard work and commitment are two attributes Bill greatly values and has exemplified throughout his career. When he started in the roofing game, as he explained, “he went all in.”
“I made a commitment to the industry. I would work with guys on the weekends for free. I just asked that they teach me what they were doing. I knew how to estimate, but I didn’t know where the numbers came from,” Bill said. “I did that for a number of years, soaking up as much as I could.”
The Michigan economy in those days proved fickle at best and absolutely unforgiving at its worst. Everything hinged on the automotive industry. Bill could never count on any type of job security. “Your company would lose two or three automotive contracts, next thing you know, you’re getting laid off,” Bill explained. “For salespeople and estimators, it was a vagabond existence.”
“I went to work for a gentleman and I thought it would be a long-term deal. He was more interested in volume than quality roofing. When we had a big rainstorm, the call backs were so bad, he wouldn’t come into work for a day or two,” Bill chuckled heartily. “He’d leave me to take the calls and the complaints.”
“At that point, I said to myself, ‘You know what? Forget this. If I’m going to get his much grief and have my reputation tarnished, I’m at least going to do it myself,’” Bill laughed once again. “I went into business for myself. We celebrated our 10-year anniversary this past December.”
Partnership Gone Wrong
Four Seasons Roofing would not be a sole proprietorship. Bill took the step into entrepreneurship with a general contractor, whom he felt he could trust. It seemed the perfect partnership: Bill would handle estimating, sales, and serve as the project manager, and his silent partner would manage the finances and provide leads from his other company.
For three years, the agreement worked well. “Then the economy tanked,” Bill said in an understandable huff. Unbeknownst to Bill, his partner began siphoning money from their company to cover the general contracting business’ shortcomings. Legally, he could do it. Ethically is another question that brings about a different answer.
A buyout existed after their fifth year in business. “In between that fourth and fifth year, there was a lot of pressure on me to produce work and revenue because my partner needed the money. To make a long story short, we took on more work than we could handle and we lost $280,000,” Bill shared and sighed. “When it came to dissolve the partnership, I was owed $130,000. If things went reasonably well, I should have owed him $150,000. That’s how much money he had siphoned.”
Bill estimated he maybe recouped 25 percent of the money owed to him. Something else of note also transpired at this time: “I went to Profit Day.”
At Profit Day, in August of 2012, Bill learned a new way of conducting business. It launched him into a series of massive changes. “I know I needed to make some changes,” Bill said. “I put the faith in my people and me to make them.”
“First things first, I knew that I needed to start a residential division from scratch that next month, which was September. For the next six to nine months, all I did was focus on service,” he added. “We weren’t going to get heavy into re-roofs yet. I wanted to do a bit of service work to generate some revenue and use that time to get everything else rolling. By the spring, we were ready to sell replacements.”
Among the first of many action items on Bill’s initial ‘to-do’ list was implementing StraightForward Pricing. “That was an automatic,” Bill said. “I did everything I could step-by-step. We made do with the little money I had. Instead of uniforms, I bought shirts and got them monogrammed. Instead of wrapped trucks, I got stickers to put on them,” Bill explained. “You have to remember, at the same time we were investing in this new division, I was trying to fill a quarter-million-dollar hole.”
Today, Bill’s employees wear professional appearing uniforms and drive beautifully wrapped trucks. On those wraps is the KangaRoof brand. “We loved the idea of KangaRoof when we heard it at Profit Day,” Bill stressed. “I’ve considered only buying gas five gallons at a time because every time I stop, someone walks over to me and says they love the wraps. It’s crazy!”
Bill began marketing Four Seasons KangaRoof seriously for the first time. He joined Home Advisor, invested money in pay-per-click, and sent emails and mailings to commercial clients announcing the new division. “That’s how we got our first leads, that and word of mouth,” Bill explained.
Commercial Changes Come Next
After seeing some positive early returns from his service work, he was willing to incorporate some of the methodologies he had learned to his bread-and-butter. “Well, you have to trust what you’re doing. By the spring of 2014, I believed in these new systems. I knew it was working. So I started taking some of the principles I had learned and worked them into the commercial side.”
Bill evaluated his commercial competition and developed a new sales approach. “I noticed all of the big boy commercial contractors chased Ford, General Motors, Targets, Sears, and the property managers,” Bill shared. “I realized that there’s an entire market that wasn’t being served: small business owners. They didn’t know who to call for a roof because nobody was targeting them. So I did just that.”
Bill tweaked his PPC campaign, adding terms that would ensure people looking for commercial roofs would find Four Seasons KangaRoof. Bill also amplified his activity in various small business networking groups. As he gained more exposure in the small business market, he could see the word-of-mouth leads roll into the office.
“The other big change I made on the commercial side was increasing my prices. I pushed them probably 20 percent. I jumped them up on the residential side too. I lost probably 20 general contractors because of it. I talked with two or three of them on the phone. I said, ‘Hey, we’ve been doing work for you for years. I’ve run my numbers and found that we don’t make any money on your jobs. And I know you won’t let me increase my price, so you need to find another roofer. You cannot believe how incensed that makes them,” Bill said with a smirk and a laugh.
With Bill’s new commercial approach, he found himself selling more commercial roof replacements than ever. “And I was selling them at those increased prices,” he quickly pointed out. “When you increase your price by ‘that’ percentage and your closing rate by ‘this’ percentage, the numbers were mind-blowing to me. It was a great feeling.” In fact, in 2016, their gross margin was higher in their commercial, rather than residential, division
Culture of Training
Initial changes only prove to have a lasting impact if supported with training.vvElevated pricing only works if employees can sell the value. “We definitely have a culture of training here,” Bill said. “Every four to six months, I try to step up what we do a bit more. Jason just went to [Learning Alliance’s] Service Essentials training.”
Jason Foraker is Four Season Kangaroof’s primary technician. He’s been with the company a little more than a year. Prior to coming to Bill, he owned his own roofing company for a time, specializing in new construction.
“Jason has been a great addition. He’s been willing to learn and his hands-on. He wants to help customers and solve their problems. His tickets are approaching that $1,000 mark. I’m really happy with his progression.”
Jason’s evolution has come thanks to regular training with Bill. Bill meets with his entire team for training once a week. In every meeting there is a review component, an update component, and a training component. He’ll also ask manufacturers to come by to provide technical and safety training frequently.
Know Your Numbers
“I have this innate ability to process numerical information; therefore, I don’t need to track numbers,” Bill said, paused, and then yelled. “Wrong! Wrong!” Bill laughed heartily and continued, “I used to think that way—that I knew my cash flow. That I knew where all my money was going. Then, at the end of the year, I’d look at my bank account and go, ‘What happened? Where is it all?’”
“As big as any changes we’ve made, the investment into understanding the business by the numbers has been huge for me,” Bill added. Four Seasons KangaRoof uses QuickBooks. Bill explained that each element of the business has its own budget and income statement: commercial service, commercial roofing, residential service, and residential roofing.
“We track our average ticket, closing rates, lead source, and so on,” Bill explained. “It’s a freeing feeling having processes and controls in place. Brian tracks all of that for us and we meet every single week to go over them.”
Brian is Brian Neaton, a friend of the family whom Bill has known most of his life, as he coached Brian most of his childhood. Brian would work with Bill’s three sons in the business during summers and breaks, eventually taking a full-time job.
“About five years ago, Brian put himself through night school while working for us and earned his degree in accounting,” Bill shared. “Eighteen months ago, I brought him into the office. My bookkeeper was retiring. Brian has done a terrific job of picking up where she left off. He’s now our GM for our residential division. I’m really proud of him.”
Must Have ‘Buy In’
Brian’s isn’t the only young face in the company. Brian’s longtime friend and Bill’s son, Matt, has been with Four Seasons KangaRoof in some form or fashion most of his life. He graduated from Michigan State with a degree in education, but while doing his student teaching, the realization he would be in a classroom, surrounded by four walls all day, was too much to bear. “Matthew sold me on the idea of taking up the family business. He broke his mother’s heart,” Bill said with a snicker.
Some contractors’ sons would walk into their father’s business with a comfortable management job on day one. Not Matt. Bill wouldn’t have it. He wanted Matt to earn his stripes and had a specific way he would be groomed.
“I told him he can expect to be in the field for at least three to six years. He’ll start with running a roofing crew. When he has that crew running nicely, he will train his replacement. Then, he’s going to run a sheet metal crew. And when he has that crew humming along, he will train his replacement. As the company grows, we’ll bring him into the office,” Bill explained. “But only then. To Matt’s credit, he didn’t complain. He’s following the plan, and the transition has been great.”
Matt shares his father’s strong work ethic, and he takes instruction well. Yet he doesn’t always agree with his dad or his decisions. Matt might have been Bill’s biggest opponent of adding a residential division. Matt didn’t understand the need to divert from the company’s core business—until Bill took him to an Executive Perspective a couple of years ago.
“I brought him along with me, because I wanted to hear everything again. I knew there was plenty I probably didn’t pick up the first time. And I wanted Matt to hear and experience another perspective, outside of his dad’s,” Bill explained.
“At the end of the week, we’re having dinner in Florida. And we’re having a good time. Matt leans over to me and says, ‘You know, Dad, you really messed up.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ Matt says, ‘You should have taken me down here two years ago so I knew what you were trying to do. I could have had your back when we were going through all those changes. Now I understand what you’re trying to do, and I’m pumped.”
Not everyone on Bill’s team has been an easy turnaround. One of Bill’s most trusted employees, someone who had been with him for years never fully bought into this new way of doing business. His name was Elmer.
“Elmer is a great guy. But we finally parted ways about a year ago. He wouldn’t sell the way I wanted. In general, he thought I was too negative,” Bill shared openly. “I kept saying that’s not it. I’m trying to implement a proven system. Eventually, it didn’t work out. It was best for both of us.”
The Future
Change is sometimes difficult, but change is eternal, especially when trying to operate a profitable business. Bill may have lost one salesperson, but he soon hired another. Joe Radlick is the newest member of Four Seasons KangaRoof.
“He’ll be leading our new siding and window division. He has extensive industry background in the field and in sales. He’s worked for a couple of pretty big home services companies,” Bill said. “Once he gets the new division up and running, our intention is to train him how to sell on the roofing side, as well.”
This is all part of Bill’s plan for 2017 and beyond. Four Seasons KangaRoof has come a long way in just these past five years. It hit a revenue high-mark in 2016, and Bill enjoys operating a business that he knows will yield a profit. Bill expects explosive growth this year with the addition off the new siding and windows division and some additional strategic improvements.
“What’s the most exciting for me is, as of 12/31/16, other than a couple of vehicles, we will be completely debt-free. It’s kind of weird that we’re doing the interview as this is happening. It’s perfect timing, I guess. By the grace of God, two of our suppliers we owed were great and worked with us. One was not. That one we will finally be done with.”
“We were in the hole 280 grand. We were paying that off while starting a brand-new division. Now, we’re working from a clean slate. We understand what we’re doing, and we’re really going to grow this—and I think we can because now we have everyone on board too. My whole management team is 100 percent invested in what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Four Seasons KangaRoof certainly is in a position to grow. The company recently moved into a larger office. Bill has plans of expanding into HVAC in three years and opening a satellite office across town in six or seven years. In listening to Bill layout his future, it’s clear he feels like there is no limit to what can be achieved. One thing is certain—he isn’t talking like a man who once regretted his decision to enter the roofing trade 30 years ago. Now, in his mid-50’s, Bill is more excited about his business and what lies ahead than ever before. He knows he’s building something, not just trying to churn out a living.
“If there’s one thing that I would like to add to this piece is a special ‘thank you’ to my spectacular wife, Susan. With the stress of what was going on with the business, we had some really tough times, as anyone can imagine. She stuck with me, and I give her all the credit in the world. Week after week, month after month, with payless paydays and pulling out a little bit of money so we could get the bills paid,” Bill said.
“She’s worked so hard for us. She went back to school to better herself and help the family… to help me. And without her support, I never could have done what I did. I’m so proud of her. She started as an outside sales rep for an ambulance company eight or nine years ago. Now, she’s a vice president. She’s a special person and I love and admire her.”