Building Legacy: Arizona’s Finest Roofing & Contractor Marketing Insights

Audio Transcription

Mark Lamberth
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Contractor Grow Show. My name is Mark. Thanks for tuning in today. I am interviewing Danny Clark at Arizona’s Finest Roofing in San Tan Valley, just southeast of Phoenix. Danny, thanks for being with us today.

Danny Clark
Hey, good morning. How are you doing, mark?

Mark Lamberth
Doing great. So we’ve done a lot of research. The team has looked over the business. I can tell you guys got a lot of great stuff going on. Great history of the business. And just looking at your website, I can see you guys do a ton of work for the community. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about the history of the business and where you guys are at today,

Danny Clark
The history as far as how it got started or?

Mark Lamberth
Yeah, I mean, it looks like maybe your dad’s in the business or kind of been a family business.

Danny Clark
Yeah, so in 63, my grandfather, Earl Clark with Earl Clark Roofing started his business and he had boys in the house and he put them to work and got everybody swinging a hammer at an early age. So it started with that. And then kind of the same thing happened with me growing up. My dad, we weren’t roofers, we weren’t wealthy by any means, but my dad definitely didn’t want us getting in trouble or running around with the wrong group of kids. So he made us get up and go to work with them on summer breaks or weekends. School was very important to him. He was really worried about our education, but he wanted to make sure we didn’t have that idle time before we could hang out and get in trouble. So I remember it being kind of a love hate relationship. I’d say it like that because man, I love being with my dad and going to work at a family business was kind of like a family reunion all the time. You had uncles or cousins that would be there and we’re constantly playing jokes on each other and messing around. And so we had a lot of those good memories. But man, I missed out on a lot of friendships because

Mark Lamberth
My

Danny Clark
Buddies are going to the waterparks and in the summer in Arizonas are brutal. So when you had to go to work on a roof, it was like, oh my gosh, you figured it out real quick. That figured, I think his path was for us to stay in school longer to make us not really want to do this job. But I

Mark Lamberth
Felt interesting psychology there, huh?

Danny Clark
Yeah, right.

Mark Lamberth
You can either stay in school or you can be up on the hot roof in Arizona.

Danny Clark
Yeah, I was like, he always used to say to me, Hey, use your brain and not your back. So then I started thinking, well, what if I use both?

Mark Lamberth
Oh, that’s great, man. And was that in San Tan 10 Valley? Where you guys at? Southeast of, no,

Danny Clark
I actually grew up in Mesa and 2010 I decided to move out to San Tan to get out of the riff wrap and keep my kids towards more rural and more, we live on an acre and a half, and it was just one of those things where the kids could play in the backyard and that kind of deal is why we moved out here and it’s really been growing aggressively.

Mark Lamberth
Amazing. I mean, it looks like you had a full house, six kids, is that right?

Danny Clark
I have seven kids.

Mark Lamberth
Unbelievable.

Danny Clark
Amazing. My wife and I both come from large families and my dad had six. I’m the oldest of six, and I told him I wasn’t going to be crazy like him and have six kids,

Mark Lamberth
So

Danny Clark
I stepped it up and got crazier.

Mark Lamberth
Love it, love it. So man, I see you guys got a lot of video, a lot of some really busy social channels here, Instagram channels, a ton of great video and stuff on there. Where’s the business at today in terms of how many folks on the team? What’s the layout, the size of the team, and how much volume you guys are doing these days?

Danny Clark
We are, gosh, man, we’ve kind of downsized the last couple of years, and I’m not sure if this is an economy swing or what, but right now we currently have five office staff. We have two crews going, there’s six man crews, and then I have one repair guy kind of floats around. We are not at full speed ahead as I’d like to be, but we’re not struggling either. So we’re still able to, you talked about doing some of the community outreach, doing some of the giveaways that we’ve given away. We just gave away a free roof, and that was something that was important to me to give back to the community and just show just really what I’m grateful for, what we do have, and it was our way to give him back.

Mark Lamberth
Well, I love that. And so we were looking at over in Instagram, we saw a look back in October, you guys started advertising for a free roof giveaway, and then I think that was December 1st or so. Tell me about that, man. So how did you guys ideate that? I mean, how did you decide you’re going to give away a free roof, and what was your motivation there and did that all, how did that project go?

Danny Clark
That project is actually still in the works, so I’ll start with how we got there. So basically how we got there was we’ve been strategizing or trying to strategize on how to get our name. I’m terrible with, I’m a really good roofer. I can do anything under the sun when it comes to the roof, but I am terrible at Instagram. I’m terrible at, I’m probably going to be terrible at this podcast, but I mean, putting yourself out there is a really job in itself. So I never thought that I would be, I’m 48 years old, man, I never thought I would be trying to, my dad would probably call it, you’re trying to be a movie star or something, and I’m not. But you know what I’m saying. When you get out there and you put yourself out there, man, you get the weirdest comments like you’re giving a roof away. And some guy goes, oh, you got a dad bod? And I’m like, wait, what you got out of all that? Oh no. Yeah,

Mark Lamberth
Anyway. Could I get some love over here?

Danny Clark
Yeah. I’m like, oh, here we’re trying to shield the love and I’m getting some hate or some, I dunno if necessarily if it’s hate, maybe it’s jealousy, I don’t know. And you kind of roll with those punches. But at the same time, what got us to do this was I was like, how do I give back to the community? And I always wanted to do a roof giveaway and I thought, how could I do to help somebody else out that? And I was really worried that some multimillion dollar roof in Scottsdale was going to get in on this. And honestly, I relied on my faith a little bit and I just prayed about it. I say, look, I want to bless somebody. I want to advertise our business and show people that it doesn’t hurt to steal what you’re doing and trying to make a difference in somebody’s life.
And the cool thing is it kind of helps promote us as well, right? Everybody’s getting to see, and we’ve done this before, we’ve never advertised it, never put it out there, but I thought, you know what, this Instagram thing’s all about likes and shares and all that stuff that I’m really, it’s all Greek to me, but people are telling me like, oh, you have to do this. That’s kind of why we did it. But I’m glad that we were able to use that platform to get out there to find somebody. And ironically enough, the customer that we found, it’s a, what do you call the fourplex or whatever kind of building,

Mark Lamberth
And

Danny Clark
There’s 1, 2, 3, 4 in a unit. So the one part of it is hers, and I think, or the fourth of it is hers. And she’s unit number two. Ironically enough, we had done unit three and four already, really?
And so the crazy thing is a concrete roof tile that they literally had cocked every tile together, the concrete and mortared around every flashing around every chimney. Dead valley was full of mortar. So we literally had to remove every single tile and reroof that tile. And originally I thought, you know what? I’m going to just do on a tile roof. I’ll just do the underlayment. We’ll reuse the same tile, replace any broken tiles, kind of a standard for an r and r. And when she was selected, we drew her and she was selected, and I found out what job it was. It’s one of those pack in and pack outs. It’s nothing going to be easy. I thought, oh, it’s a perfect little 1300, 1400 square foot roof. Couldn’t have got any luckier to get. Bless somebody one and two, get the job size that it is. And man, it was definitely a job that needed to be done. One that you have to pack in and pack out. And now they’re talking about getting the joining unit one involved in it and wanted to get a quote to do that part of the roof. No kidding. And we’re working in those right now and seeing if I could do that. If not, then we’ll just do her section and be done with it. But all new tile, all new underlayment, and we build our tile roof so much different than our competitors. I use a polyurethane, excuse me, a modified vitamin torch down underlayment, put up Polyglass or Bond.

Mark Lamberth
And

Danny Clark
That product typically gets torched into position. We use that as the underlayment for tile. It was originally made for flat roofing and it was a

Mark Lamberth
Commercial. Yeah, I’ve done some bit You in torched down roofing myself. Yeah, super solid, huh? So I mean, that’s going to be a 50 year roof or whatever.

Danny Clark
And then the second key component for that is an arched or scallop Batten by Eagle. Eagle. They came up with a really cool product that has that scallop in it. So water doesn’t do the ponding that it does on a tile, traditional tile Batten. And then it allows water to run off that roof and give it the longevity that the underlayment deserves.

Mark Lamberth
Oh man, I love it. So I bet she was just thrilled to you guys chose her. I mean, I saw, looked at the video where you were promoting this and it was great, man, they’re kind of in the supply house or whatever and talking about, we’re going to do this. If you have some folks that may need a new roof, maybe send us their story. I mean, did you get some folks sending in some cool stories that you guys were able to kind of review? And

Danny Clark
We got some really cool stories. They’re kind of all over the board really. And really this one that we ended up drawing out, first thing, it was Arizona Girl, right? So just the username, I was like, bang. I said, I liked that name. I go, let’s go. What’s this one about? So we read her story and she had a good story and really it resonated with us. And I said, Hey, look, I said, let’s talk to her. And we had a hard time getting her on the phone. And then when we did our call, like I said, we are so not used to doing social media. We’re getting better and better at it and doing these videos. And I can’t wait 10 years down the road to look back and see how foolish I looked. And elementary it seemed doing these things because man, what a different world it is for me, for sure.

Mark Lamberth
Sometimes as builders, we are just out there quoting jobs and just going for it every, we’ve got teams and whatnot, and I mean, we’ve got families who need support. I’m a builder from back in the day, not building as much these days, but I’ve been on plenty of crews and run a lot of my own jobs. And it’s easy to kind get in the business of it all and not be in that position of giving back, right? It’s just business. You’re doing this work. So I mean maybe for your crew and for the folks that saw you taking that on and said, we’re going to do this. I mean, that must’ve felt amazing to just give back like that and just be in this complete service to the community position. You talked about your faith and whatnot, and I bet that just felt amazing for you and for the team to do that, huh?

Danny Clark
It did. And all the way from our office to the guys on the roof, everybody was kind of on the understanding, is this what we’re doing? And I think my guys’ first initial thought was, oh wait, we’re not doing this for free, are we? I said, no, of course I’m paying my guys to get it done. A couple of them did offer to give a hand and not to accept a payment for it. And I told ’em that wouldn’t be necessary that we’d cover those expenses. But we’ve done it before in the dark where nobody really knew that we were doing that. Matter of fact, one other time, we’ve done it, we’ve done it in the news channel, showed think it was news channel three or 10, or
They came up and did a segment on us. And I think that was back in 2009 or 10 quite a while ago. But back, like you said, kind of being on a roof and just doing our estimates and working with people, you try not to be like, Monty Hall, let’s make a deal. But then again, you get out there and you think you’re helping people or blessed ’em by knocking 500 bucks off or 300 or whatever it might be to help them along. There’s several times that we’ve gone out. And matter of fact, definitely not tooting my own horn, but I was out in Florence and I had the address wrong. Our office got the address wrong. Cause we are humans, we make mistakes. And man, I’m looking for this roof and I’m getting frustrated and I’m going through this neighborhood and I’m like, this ain’t the hundred block. This is a total different hundred block. And I went to another, I got on my map and tried to draw it up on the screen in the truck and tried to figure out where I was at and get my footing, get my location here. And finally I called the office and I said, listen, last thing I want to do is call you to figure out where I’m going, but something’s wrong here and we need to get this right. And they got a hold of customer and the customer is guiding us in, so there’s like a threeway there. And she was out there telling us she’s in an orange shirt waving me down. And I got there and it was one rake edge trim tile that was on the ground. And I thought, goodness, all of this grief for this one little time all the way out to Florence, Oh, one of the guys that was with me, I said, Hey, check it out, man. I said, this is what we’re going to do. And he goes, what’s that? And I go, get the ladder, get a screw gun, get some decimate screws, and let’s just put this up for her call today. And he said, well, should we charging? And I said, we’re not charging her. And he says, what do you mean? I said, Hey, you know what? First of all, I’m grateful I got here. It’s one tile. I’m not going to charge her a minimum charge for one tile when I can do it right now, I can get it done and we can be over it.

Mark Lamberth
That’s amazing, man.

Danny Clark
She was super happy, asked us to stand in front of the truck and wanted to take our picture and do a review. So I’ve yet to see that review, but as soon as she gets around to it, I’m sure she’ll get it done.

Mark Lamberth
I love it. Well, Danny, so speaking of reviews, actually, we took a look at some of your reviews and I mean, you guys have got an exceptionally high rating. Looks like folks just love you guys. We’re looking at one of the reviews, and I had the coordinator said that you probably don’t even necessarily remember this, but it said your secret weapon is your good

Danny Clark
People. Yeah. One of my good people just showed up here. Matt, I’m going to have him step in. He just walked up.

Mark Lamberth
Let’s go, Matt. What’s up buddy?

Danny Clark
This is one of our sales reps

Mark Lamberth
FinTech live on the podcast right now. Matt in the house. Yeah, you’re

Danny Clark
Famous dude. Yep. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, you, he’s one of the biggest reasons why he’s one of our lethal weapons. I mean, everybody has a place here, and I’m telling you, I really have hand selected the best people. We don’t sub any workout. Our employees are top notch. I mean from certifications to I just the most, I’ve just gotten really lucky and blessed to have guys that are respectful, to have guys that care about what they’re doing and actually love roofing. I mean, I think when you meet somebody, you start talking to ’em. And a lot of times when I interview somebody about working on our roofs, and I can usually tell if they have a passion for it or not, and what I mean, they’re not jumping up and talking about roofing every second, but I can just tell if they love what they’re doing. And you can really tell when you get up on that first job with them that they’ve done. And typically when we have our guys come out and they want to work for us or work with our team, we go out with them and I’m typically on site watching their install. I can tell within the first 10 minutes, man, if that guy’s been a roofer for a year, 10 years, 20 years where he’s at, a lot of times you can tell, and I’m sure you know that when the guys show up with their tools or with what they’re working with and we have a very low turnaround because of that, I tell ’em right away like, Hey, listen, thanks for your time. I appreciate you. I’m not desperate for you. I’d love you to be in our team, but this is the deal. First off, if you’re going to start off with lying to me, tell me you’ve been business, you’ve been a roofer for X amount of years, that you got brand new nail guns or you got brand new tools. There’s something either happening, either they’ve been stolen and now you’ve had to replace your tools and I don’t know, after this next couple 30 minutes or so, or you’re just trying to get a job and you’re really not sure someone here’s leading the way. You know what I mean? Another crew member or whatever. So usually these guys come in, crews that like to work together occasionally. I mean, back when I was a kid and I was roofing for my dad, my grandpa, we would get the guys come in and I would know right away how good they were. And I’m telling you, my grandfather was from back in Missouri, and any good old boy from Missouri showed up, man, come on in. And he hired everybody. So I’ve kind of learned from that too, is to be a little bit more selective of who I hire, not just any good heartbeat with a pulse, right? Or good old boy with a pulse is what I meant to say.

Mark Lamberth
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I mean, Danny, it sounds like you’ve been in the business for so long and it’s really in your blood. I mean, you’ve obviously got the experience. It sounds like you got some leadership skills too. I mean, these days, something that’s coming up, and a lot of folks we talk to on the pod here and just folks in the industry, they really have a hard time with retention. So I mean, there’s a shortage of talented labor out there. There’s shortage of motivated people. Maybe you could last little bit of your time here. I don’t want to take up a ton of your time, but I mean, it sounds like you got some experience in this. What do you do to, what are a couple of tricks and tips for kind of retention? I mean, you put this time into finding the right people, very selective about who you hire. You probably pay, well, I mean that’s a part of it, but what’s a tip or two that you can share for the audience of how to keep your team long term? So it’s not just that kind of in and out flow

Danny Clark
Man, that that’s something that comes with time. But I mean really I think where you got to gain the respect to your guys. And a lot of times I don’t want my guys to just think that, Hey, Danny just sells roofs and he just goes out and he just talks to people and he does podcasts or he does Instagram videos every day, man, I get out there and I’ll hustle with them. I’ll get out there and I’ll chuck tile, I’ll get out there and I’ll show ’em that I know I’m a roofer. I’m not just a sales guy or a business owner. And I think that speaks volumes too. And a lot of times I call it the blessing, and sometimes my guys might not think it’s a blessing. Maybe I’m more in the way than I think I am, but I’d like to go out there and my guys all work piece work because we’re all motivated by money. And so I’ll go out there and I’ll spend my time with them and I’ll work all day with them, and I don’t charge ’em for my time. I go out there and just kind of my thank you to them. Hey man, I appreciate you guys. But I mean,

Mark Lamberth
That’s creep.

Danny Clark
The deal is, respect is huge. Ownership is huge. And what I mean by ownership is, man, we’re not perfect. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And it’s not a bad thing to step up to that and own that. And I teach my guys that too. I wouldn’t have my guys do something that I wouldn’t do. And so A lot of times when I come out to, even though we do piecework and something isn’t always cut and dry or black and white, and there’s some gray area on some of those things as far as pay goes. And what I mean by that is different things like doing a hip versus a straight gable or doing a dead valley versus a regular valley on a tile roof. I take those into consideration the time that’s spent to do that, because I’ve lived it. So I pay them well. Again, I live that part of it too, right, to where you’re going, man, how much am I making this week? And I pay the best in the valley. My guys, they don’t want to go anywhere else. They love what they do, they love that I pay and I treat ’em right. And that’s just, I think that’s what makes the roofing world go round.

Mark Lamberth
Love it. So it sounds like pay is, I mean, you’ve got the pay piece of it, which is certainly a piece of it. I mean, it can’t just be all good vibes and we’ve got the paying them well, but also you’re getting in there really as a leader does, and kind of leading from the front, not you’re willing to jump in there and jump on the roof with these guys hoof up the ladder or whatever it is, and just being there with them and just be there on the team. And so you’re kind of cultivating that respect, and when they just see that you’re there, part of the team doing it with them, being up on the hot roof and taking care of them, taking care of their families, then they’re not looking for somewhere else to go. They’re stoked to this work for you and the team.

Danny Clark
Yeah, absolutely.

Mark Lamberth
I love it.

Danny Clark
Treat people the way you want to be treated. Right?

Mark Lamberth
Love it. Love it. Simple. Well, fantastic. Well, Danny, so I’m not even sure I said America’s finest roofing as you guys Arizona. Arizona is finest Roofing. They’re in San Tan Valley, kind of southeast of Phoenix, a little further out. Arizona’s finest roofing.com. I mean, if folks want to get in touch with you, they want to hear a little bit more about what you’re doing, and you’ve got an active Instagram channel, but what are a couple of good ways to get in touch with you and the crew?

Danny Clark
You can catch us on the gram arizona’s roofing.com, Arizona’s finest roofing.com. You could catch us on TikTok. I think we got somebody do some TikTok stuff for us too. I think that’s going away though, right? Is that, I hear that.

Mark Lamberth
Yeah. Yeah, if you want to find him on TikTok, you better do it quick.

Danny Clark
Yeah, so yeah, I heard that was going away, but we’re pretty easy to find, so you catch us on social media, but I dunno, where else would I find us? I said I have

Mark Lamberth
A QR code. And then to see some of the work that you guys do is also going and taking a look at the website, Arizona’s finest roofing.com.

Danny Clark
Yep. Yes.

Mark Lamberth
Perfect. Okay. Well, Danny, it’s been great, man. Thank you for being on the channel here today. We’ve learned a lot about the family business, what you guys are up to today, and some great tips on retention. If you’re in the Arizona Valley looking for a great company to work with, go take a look at Arizona’s Final Roofing. I think you guys are going to find some great stuff to read more about and read some reviews and get in touch with Danny.

Danny Clark
Yeah, and real quick, I just want to say before we go, I started my business in 2007. I’m a third generation roofer here in the valley. We love what we do here, and I’m always learning, man. There’s always, I never think for a second that I’ve got it all figured out. I mean, there’s always something new. Trying to keep up with cutting edge, this whole Instagram thing, and this technology’s out of my world, but I’m getting to it. And best of luck to everybody out there. Keep grinding. Don’t give up, and stay positive all the time.

Mark Lamberth
I love it. Great advice from Danny. Great advice to follow. I’m going to be looking into that myself. Thanks for being on the show today, Danny. Appreciate it, man.

Danny Clark
Hey, thank you so much, mark. I appreciate you for having us on. Thanks again.

Mark Lamberth
Okay, take care.

Danny Clark
You too, buddy. Thanks.