Voice Transcript

Mark Lamberth:
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Contractor Grow Show. This is Mark. I’m your host, and today I have the pleasure to speak with Brent Rollins, who is the Vice President of Business Development over at Spray Lock Concrete Protection in Chattanooga. Brent, thanks for being with us today.
Brent is going to teach us Concrete Protection Techniques that are changing his business and the indstry.

Brent Rollins:
Thank you, mark. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Mark Lamberth:
Fantastic. You guys have got a lot of different stuff going on. I’m excited to hear just all about some of the different aspects of the business. You’ve got just a big footprint online of your own podcast, all kinds of YouTube videos. Excited to get into all of that. Maybe you could tell us before we go in here regarding spray lock concrete protection. What is the problem that spray lock concrete protection solves? Okay. I’ve done some concrete work myself. Maybe explain to our audience what you guys, what problem that solves.

Brent Rollins:
Sure enough, concrete’s number one enemy for many, many reasons is moisture and moisture movement through concrete causes a lot of problems. Specifically with flooring and coatings, especially. Our product is a penetrant that is spray applied to the concrete surface. It goes in and reacts chemically to close that void structure that is in all concrete to shut down liquid water movement, and also to reduce water vapor transmission to levels that even the most moisture sensitive flooring and coatings don’t care. So it takes water vapor transmission levels down below what’s required for a moisture mitigating epoxy. So that performance is really what our company is all about, and the products, once folks use them, the products really sell themselves because it’s such a great solution for the industry.

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. So I’ve done a fair amount of concrete work myself as a contractor, did a lot of construction, didn’t do a ton of specific concrete work. Myself was around it a lot and did some finishing work and things. So something that someone may not know, even at my level of skill, I’ve learned more about this over time, is that pouring concrete and doing concrete work is technical. You got to get it right or you’re going to have failure down the road sooner or later. Is that correct?

Brent Rollins:
Absolutely, yeah. It’s something that I get, people joke with me all the time. Friends of mine will ask me questions about what it is that I do, and I travel all over the world and go see people. I just got back from South Africa, for instance, and I’ve got one particular friend who’s an attorney, and he asked me, Brent, don’t people understand concrete by now? And that’s pretty funny, Sam. The reality is that there are many, many variables that you try to control when you’re placing concrete, but one big that is not in anyone’s control is the weather and the environment that you’re placing the concrete in so often, many problems that are associated with concrete can come from materials and workmanship, but often the environment itself is a big source of the problem.

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. Okay. Water is, I mean, concrete has got a specific relationship with water. It’s very, what’s it hydrophilic? It really wants to sort of take on water, and so if you let the concrete do what it wants without sort of controlling it at an application of some kind, when concrete’s poured, I think that you guys, your products can be poured now or later or applied rather.

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Brent Rollins:
Correct.

Mark Lamberth:
But if that’s not done, then you’re really leaving the concrete’s own relationship with water to its own, and that could cause all kinds of problems down the road.

Brent Rollins:
Yeah, it definitely can, especially if the water’s bringing in contaminants to the concrete areas where you have deicing salts that are being used, or you have salt water along the coastline or sulfates in the soil. That water is going to bring that stuff with it as a hitchhiker, and once it gets inside the concrete, it can do things like attack the reinforcing steel or even react with some of the reaction products inside the concrete sulfates, for instance, can react and cause the growth of really harmful materials in the concrete that can cause it to then fail. So yes, you’re exactly right, mark the water and the contaminants that water carries is our enemy, number one for long lasting concrete.

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. Okay. And I saw that you guys, I mean, you’ve been in business since 2010 or so, by the way, Chattanooga. I love it. That’s right down the street from my stomping ground. I was born in Jackson, Mississippi and then grew up in Memphis.

Brent Rollins:
Alright. Yeah.

Mark Lamberth:
Yeah,

Brent Rollins:
Not too far. It is a boring drive between Chattanooga and Memphis, or at least the last time I made it, but No, that’s great, mark. I didn’t realize

Mark Lamberth:
That. Yeah, that’s great. Chattanooga, I’ve heard it’s just an amazing city these days. I mean, I haven’t been there in forever, but it seems like just an amazing place. I’m sure it’s changed quite a lot over the years and whatnot as they always do, but I bet that’s a fun place to be living right now and doing business.

Brent Rollins:
Oh, it is. Chattanooga is become a mecca, if you will, for things like hang gliding and backpacking and rock climbing. So there’s a lot of tourist type activities around Chattanooga now, but a revitalization of the downtown area happened about 25 years ago and is continuing. But Chattanooga has really put a new face on and is really an attractive city, and it’s got some fun night life, et cetera. Wow,

Mark Lamberth:
Exciting. So I noticed that I took a look at some of your work history and you were the director of Civil Engineering Materials Research Lab at ut. Is that right?

Brent Rollins:
UT Chattanooga? Yes. I was there from 2010 to 2017, and that’s where I first ran across the spray lock product, which is, it belongs to a product category called Colloidal Silica. So early on between the years of 20 10, 20 17, there were a lot of researchers all over the world doing work with colloidal silica and discussing the benefits that it could have for concrete. And I added my name to that list and thankfully got a chance to write several papers and go around the world defending them. And then in 2017, Michael, my boss now called me up and asked me if I was tired writing papers that no one would read, and if I wanted to come back and make a difference in the real

Mark Lamberth:
World Classic. That is awesome.

Brent Rollins:
Yeah, so it is 2017 I joined Spray Lock and it’s been the best career move yet, and I feel like we’re making a difference in how long concrete can last every single day.

Mark Lamberth:
That is awesome, man. I love it. That is so cool. You’re passionate about it. This is sort of your career path. You’ve been at this for a long time. You’ve been interested in these types of materials and civil engineering and that it seems like it fits right in with your

Brent Rollins:
Career. It does. Before UTCI was in the ready mix concrete business for 20 years, started at the age of 16, went to work for a concrete company when nobody else in an air conditioned space would hire me. I was looking for a summer job in Chattanooga area. Weather can get hot in the summer, as you probably can imagine. So my dad was working for a concrete company and he reluctantly put me to work in the warehouse. Then fast forward a little bit, next thing I knew I’d been in the concrete business for 20 years, and then finally had an opportunity to go do some research, which I really enjoyed. Wow, interesting.

Mark Lamberth:
Your vice President of business development and you’re in charge of growing the business, I mean is Yeah, and you have done something unique that I rarely see with folks that are in the position of growing a business, and that is to really take on kind of getting the word out there, media, YouTube videos. I mean, you’ve got your own podcast that you do with another one of people on your team there, and you guys are pretty prolific with this current. How did you come up with the idea to get involved with so much media and to take things this direction as far as promoting spray lock?

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Brent Rollins:
Well, early on, I guess around 20 17, 20 18 or so, we started noticing some content coming from some of mine, and Josh is the other guy you see in the videos. He’s our technical director, and we saw some content coming out on LinkedIn and other places from a couple of my concrete research heroes, one of ’em being Tyler Lay at Oklahoma State, and the idea was kicked around that, Hey, if Tyler can make videos, can we, and it started out I was making them by myself, and I just don’t have Tyler’s energy when I’m by myself behind the camera. So we did film a few with just me and then eventually worked in Josh. And Josh has been a godsend when it comes to content because he’s got a very technical mind and can come up with ways that we need to describe different aspects of the technology. So since then, I guess it was early 2018, somewhere in there, Josh and I began filming the videos together, and in fact, you just reminded me, we need to shoot several more because we’re running low on our hopper, if you will.

Mark Lamberth:
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Brent Rollins:
Yeah. That’s really how it came about was I saw others doing it, and we just asked the question, well, why can’t we do that also and take advantage of this free or low cost platform to try to get the word out?

Mark Lamberth:
That’s fantastic. And then when you guys are coming up with new ideas, I mean, it sounds like Josh, technical director, he comes up with maybe some of these technical ideas. I mean, I see you riffing there, right? Along with all the different products that you guys sell. What are some other ways that you guys ideate new content to come up with? Because I mean, let’s face it, concrete. I mean, it’s a niche field, it’s sort of obscure, and I mean, it’s not filled with drama and theater, so you guys have created a podcast. How much of videos where you’ve been able to keep that fresh? How do you come up with new ideas to put out new content?

Brent Rollins:
So one of the things we realized early on is that we needed to just be ourselves and rely on stories. He and I both have 30 plus year careers in the industry, so we’ve got almost an endless supply of stories that we can share, and people in the US at least, we’re a storytelling culture. And if you can tell us a good story, then you’ve got an audience. So Josh and I brainstorm together every once in a while, and we need to do this again. Like I was saying, we’ll hang out in Josh’s office or the conference room and we’ll just start writing some ideas down on paper. And I think we’ve done about 180 videos or so at the moment. And when you’ve done that many, you start running out of content pretty easily. I don’t care if it’s concrete or if you’re talking pharmaceuticals or you’re talking baseball, you’re going to have issues coming up with new

Mark Lamberth:
Stuff, big

Brent Rollins:
Sense. So we just try to bounce ideas off of each other and sort of have a creative, we have to make time for a creative hour for us to come up with some ideas. So you have to tell stories, you got to make time to put in the homework ahead of time to figure out what you haven’t talked about yet.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow. Okay. And then do you do your own kind of editing and putting that all together, or do you have somebody on your team that helps you work on that?

Brent Rollins:
We do have somebody on the team who actually is the owner of Spray Lock Concrete Protection, Fred Land, and Fred, we, several years ago, went to film school, so he has a passion. He’s the owner and he’s got a passion for doing that editing, and he does a wonderful job with it. And in fact, Fred is often the motivation for us to film new videos because he’ll tell us, he’ll come to me and Josh and he’ll say, Hey, guys, our Harper’s getting low. We need to film some. So Fred really is the brains behind the operation when it comes to putting it all together. Got it, so are the Concrete Protection Techniques from Fred as well?

Mark Lamberth:
That is fantastic. Yeah. I saw a section on your YouTube channel called Tailgate Talks where you guys explain concrete concepts, right?

Brent Rollins:
Yeah. We realized early on we didn’t want it just to be about spray lot products. We wanted it to be about concrete in general as well, and problems associated with concrete construction. Things like hot weather, concrete and cold weather concreting. What happens when your concrete cracks to be more accessible to everybody instead of it just being an advertisement for spray lock? We want to be, our number one job that we’re trying to accomplish is to be a resource for the industry. And if we happen to sell products, great, but otherwise we want to help. The whole core philosophy of our business is integrity and helping where we can, and that’s really, I’m proud to say, permeates every level of our organization.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow. Writing this down. I love it. Where we can, and then it’s amazing. Brent, how many folks do you guys have on your team?

Brent Rollins:
Probably right around 50, including manufacturing, personnel, et cetera. So we’re a small business, but we like to say we’re a small business with a global reach.

Mark Lamberth:
That’s fantastic. Well, I mean, when I hear that I make the association, I mean, 50 people on your team doesn’t sound small to me, it sounds like an important significant business and you guys community providing man a lot of jobs and guys doing a lot of work. I mean 50 people on the team is a lot. And what I want to draw attention to here for all the listeners, is that what Brent was just saying, and what I’m seeing also is that he said part of their philosophy is helping where we can as if, I mean, this is an important part of you guys’ mission, correct?

Brent Rollins:
It is,

Mark Lamberth:
Yes. A stated part of the mission helping where we can, significant business, helping significant business. And part of the way that I see that you guys help, and I’ve taken a look now at a number of your podcast episodes, is indeed talking about not just your products, but also the concrete industry. And it’s not our specific focus, but if it were, it’s always a gold mine. I think we’ve all had that experience of finding that channel that speaks perfectly to what it is that we want to learn, and we go watch all the videos on it, right? It is this awesome community benefit that you guys are providing in that way, and

Brent Rollins:
We get feedback to that effect. Josh and I just came back from Iowa State. Iowa State University had a concrete day where they brought in a bunch of speakers. Then I was one of ’em, and I was talking about something that didn’t have anything to do with our products, but we ran into so many people there. The audience was mostly concrete contractors along with some GCs and some engineers and architect type folks. But I know I had at least a half a dozen people walk up to me and tell me, Hey, I’ve seen all your videos, and that’s a great feeling.

Mark Lamberth:
Yeah,

Brent Rollins:
That is amazing. So these are not customers of ours. These are just folks that may one day consider using our products just because they know who we are. So that’s been the biggest challenge for me as a business development guy, is I got tired back in 2017 or 18 of hearing, well, if spray lock is so good, why have I never heard of it? So we really made an effort to try to get our names out there, participating in things like World of Concrete, et cetera, but also the videos and social media space has been a huge impacter for us.

Mark Lamberth:
That is awesome. I mean, Brent, what do you see? I’m curious about the sort of impact that it has. I mean, it’s always hard to kind of measure. I’m wondering if there’s a way that you can describe any kind of metric or measurement that you guys see. You spend all this time, you spend money, a lot of money, putting out content, taking folks from the team, yourself, editing all kinds of things. You guys put a lot of time and energy and money into this. I think without knowing the metrics and without taking calls and listening to people that are familiar with your stuff, I can just, to me, it’s really implied that I can absolutely see how it has a huge effect. But have you seen that when you have conversations, for instance, with people compared to 2017, that there’s just much more familiarity, that’s much more authority, and you’re able to move further into ultimately a sales conversation because they already know about you guys?

Brent Rollins:
Yes, definitely. And it’s hard to put a number on because we don’t do a good job tracking those kind of things. I wish we did. I wish we had some way to do a better job tracking where a lead comes from, but just the leads that we know about that we’ve gotten from the videos and social media, we’ve seen an increase every year. And the conversations that I have where people have some familiarity with our products because of the videos make the sales process go so much easier because they’re recognizing, okay, yes, I had that same problem on my last job. I don’t want that same problem on this next job, so maybe I should get ahold of spray lock because I saw this cool video. So that’s really the impact that it’s had. Unfortunately, I can’t put a number to it, but I would say we’re getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 projects a year from people that have run across our videos and wanted to learn more.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow. Amazing. 10 to 20 projects a year. That is wild. In the digital marketing world that we come from, sometimes there’s an overemphasis on traffic to your website, so whether it comes from SEO or Google Ads or whatever, we’ve actually started to focus in the last few years on really talking with folks about creating content for exactly the reason that you’re talking about, because there’s a third metric there, and that is increasing the conversions on your own site or conversions just of folks that hear about you, they hear about you, then they go research you, and they see that you’ve put out so much content and they just have a relationship with you before they even call. And it absolutely moves the needle in terms of jobs, in terms of revenue, and I just love that you guys have absolutely embraced that and figured this out.

Brent Rollins:
I like to think we’re in the process of figuring it out still because we do try to improve content wise and style wise and everything. We want the content to be fresh and relevant that speaks to our target audience, and we usually hit the mark, but sometimes we will shoot a video and then we will watch it in post-production, and then Josh, and I’ll look at each other and we’ll say, okay, that one doesn’t need to see the light of day. Oh, no, it doesn’t make the cut. Yeah, it doesn’t make the cut. So my advice is to take advantage of those opportunities, but also make sure your messaging is clear and make sure your videos are not rambling long because people just don’t have time to sit down and watch a very long video. Often, especially on the social media sites, they’re going to scroll right past it. If they see it’s more than four or five minutes, if it’s a 15 minute video, nobody’s going to invest that amount of time, typically, or very few people. So we try to keep ’em short and informative to the point with some good quality content that really is missing from other folks. We want to try to offer up some nuggets that are useful to our target audience.

Mark Lamberth:
I see. Well, yeah. Well, fantastic work over there. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Haley had told me, she said, you’re really going to enjoy talking with Brent. She did a lot of research and helped us figure this out and just saw you’ve got a big footprint, and I just love to see that. I mean, in Chattanooga in Tennessee, it’s 50 people on your team. You guys employ a lot of people, and you guys really do a lot of great work in the community, clearly.

Brent Rollins:
Well, just, you’d asked me before we got on Mark, you’d asked a question about impact on revenue kind of stuff, and I do want to, now, it’s a total package. It’s not just the videos. It’s a lot of effort from a lot of different people, but we average about 20% growth year over year at the moment. No

Mark Lamberth:
Kidding.

Brent Rollins:
Yes. And that speaks to a team effort across the board of people who are every day having those conversations and working hard to get the word out, and social media and the videos that we’re doing absolutely plays a big role in that, and it also makes the sales conversations much, much easier.

Mark Lamberth:
Wow. That is fantastic. Yeah, guys, so I hope you’re really listening to this and really hearing what Brent is saying. Okay. There’s some ideas around the growth. We can kind of put some of these numbers together in our head, right?

Brent Rollins:
Yeah.

Mark Lamberth:
It’s a lot of growth. It’s a lot of great work they’re able to do and be significant in the community. And Brent’s saying that a lot of that comes from this media production devoting some of his very important time to really putting out great content. Another piece of this, I just want to say, sometimes folks say, well, they could go find mean, you’ve talked about this a little bit, but oftentimes folks think the content’s already been created, right? Everything’s already been said, but you’ve found things to say that haven’t been said in whatever the case. You’ve gone out and just created a lot of content around this specific industry and are really helping a lot of people learn what they need to learn. Reach out to Brent to hear more about his innovative Concrete Protection Techniques.

Brent Rollins:
Yeah. Thank you so much, mark. There’s one key thing that we try to do too, even if it’s already been presented, most of the time, the information that others have put out is convoluted and difficult to understand for the lay person, the person who’s not dealing with concrete every single day or doesn’t deal with it as a scientific material. So part of mine and Josh’s big job is to take that very complex information and gel it down to where a newbie can understand everything that we’re talking about. And we actually use some, Josh has an older son, and I’ve got two older sons, and we run those videos past them. They don’t know anything about concrete, but we want to get that feedback from those

Mark Lamberth:
Guys. That’s great

Brent Rollins:
To get a feel for, okay, can this video work? Is it accomplishing what we’re wanting it to accomplish by communicating what we’re trying to get across?

Mark Lamberth:
I love it. Get some other younger millennial eyes on it or whatever. Exactly. Yes, sir. Yeah, that’s great. Well, fantastic. Well, Brenda, if folks want to hear more about what you guys are doing, if they want to get in touch, take a look at Spree Lock at your site and your photos. What’s the best place for them to reach out to you?

Brent Rollins:
Concrete protection.com is a website, or you can always email me at ABRollins@concreteprotection.com, and I’m happy to talk anytime, even if it’s just a concrete question that doesn’t have anything to do with spray lock products, that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to help, and we’ve come to realize that people don’t like to be sold anymore. They want honest giving people that are going to help them accomplish their goals, and that’s really what the whole team at Spray Lock is working hard to do, is to help everyone have better concrete.

Mark Lamberth:
That’s fantastic. Great. Will Brent, thank you again for being here today for teaching our audience a lot of great stuff, and we’d love to stay in touch, man. Hopefully we can do this in one of these days.

Brent Rollins:
All right. Thank you so much, mark. Thanks for the opportunity. Okay. Alright. Bye-Bye bye-Bye.