How this Texas Roofing Co. got to $5M+ by being Omnipresent in her Market
In this insightful interview full of Roofer Marketing 2025 tips (#8 from The Contractor Grow Show) with Ami Feller, founder of Roofer Chicks, we dive deep into the journey of building a unique and successful roofing business in a male-dominated industry.
Based in New Braunfels, Texas, Ami shares how she transformed a family roofing business into an industry leader, focusing on residential roofing and embracing a niche market.
She discusses her decision to rebrand in 2021 to “Roofer Chicks,” a name that reflects her mission to break the mold of what roofing companies can be, while also fostering an empowering space for women in the trades.
Ami’s entrepreneurial spirit has propelled her to not only succeed in roofing but also to advocate for more women to join the industry. Despite facing challenges in recruiting and retaining female workers, she has built a loyal, skilled team and continues to push for change.
Are you a woman in the roofing industry? Reach our to Ami for advice on how to thrive, or you can even join this woman focused association.
Roofer Marketing 2025 tips - Being Omnipresent was THE KEY
Throughout the interview, Ami also touches on her strong community involvement, including her work with Habitat for Humanity and the New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce.
She explains how these connections have contributed to her business growth, and shares her approach to customer service and building a strong online reputation.
Tune in for an inspiring conversation on leadership, branding, and the power of community.
Get your Roofer Marketing 2025 tips from Roofer Chicks in this episode.
"I’ve always believed that every time you get criticism from somebody, there’s truth in it, and you need to find what that truth is and get over your emotions." ~ Ami Feller
Topics Discussed
Building a Niche Roofing Business: Ami explains how she found success by focusing solely on residential roofing, simplifying the business model, and avoiding diversification into other services like windows or handyman work.
Branding and Standing Out: The creation of the “Roofer Chicks” brand was a deliberate decision to stand out in a saturated market by embracing a female-driven identity and bright, recognizable vehicles and branding.
Overcoming Challenges in a Male-Dominated Industry: Ami discusses the unique struggles of being a female leader in an industry where women make up only 5% of the workforce, and her efforts to build an all-female roofing crew to challenge this norm.
Community Involvement for Business Growth: Being active in local organizations like Rotary International and Habitat for Humanity has been key for Ami in networking, gaining trust, and growing her business in New Braunfels, TX.
Importance of Customer Service and Follow-Ups: Ami emphasizes the importance of a dedicated office staff to handle inbound inquiries and ensure timely follow-ups, a key factor in her company’s exceptional customer service.
Using Technology for Customer Engagement: The innovative use of a fun animated video on their website helps clients understand what happens when they reach out, enhancing engagement and setting expectations.
Building a Strong Reputation through Reviews: Ami shares her strategy for collecting customer reviews, which includes sending personalized requests and leveraging automation tools to make it easier for clients to leave feedback.
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Audio Transcript
Mark Lamberth:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Contractor Grow Show put out by Rokket Science. This is Mark, and today I have the pleasure of bringing onto the show, Amy Feller from Roofer Chicks. I’m really excited about her story. She unloads Roofer Marketing 2025 tips today, so stay tuned.
We’ve never met before, but I really already have a lot of trust for what she has to say and her business, and that’s a piece I’d like to unpack here later. But simply because the website is set up so well, she has a big footprint and has just got a great business that I’m really excited to learn about it. It’s kind of a niche business. It’s got a curious story. So Amy, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Ami Feller:
Thanks for having me. I’m really excited about it. It’s funny you talk about the website. I just stood that website up about two or three weeks ago and I’m actually trying to rewrite a lot of the content.
Mark Lamberth:
Oh, is that right? Okay.
Ami Feller:
Yeah.
Mark Lamberth:
So Amy is from Roofer Chicks in New Braunfels, Texas, which is between San Antonio and Austin. Amy, maybe you could tell us a little bit about the business and the current state that it’s in now, and which you guys you’re up to right now in New Braunfels.
Ami Feller:
Okay, for sure. So we are primarily a residential roofing contractor, although we do do a little bit of commercial. We’re probably 90 10. We don’t do any work for general contractors. I’ve tried that in the past and it didn’t go well, so I just pulled back from that. So if we do commercial, it’s usually like a single owner business, like a restaurant or a church or something like that. And currently I seem to have plateaued at about 5.2 million for the last four years. And like I said, we are a roofing contractor. We primarily do roofing. I’ve tried my hand in trying to get into windows and handyman services, and earlier this year I dropped all of that again and just decided to simplify again and just do roofing. And within roofing we don’t do new construction because we don’t find there’s very good margins in it and different roofers do different things. And so primarily we are a roofer, which means we tear off old roofs and put on new roofs, and we also do a lot of repairs. And then when you within the reroof, you’ve got insurance and you’ve got retail. So we do, and it depends on the year and the storms, but we’re kind of 50 50 between insurance and retail.
Mark Lamberth:
Okay, great. And I mean you have I think a couple of degrees you many. Yeah, yeah, many. I’m an
Ami Feller:
Overeducated roofer
Mark Lamberth:
And then I’ve worked at a number of different companies, a number of larger companies. And then I think maybe 15 years ago or so, your brother and yourself started a company together, is that correct? Feller construction fellow builders.
Our other guest from Luria Construction tells a great story about how he came from the world of finance into the Trades.
Ami Feller:
My brother and I both attended Iowa State University at the same time. He’s five years older than me. And when I was at Iowa State, I ended up getting a degree in German, kind of useless except I live in New Braunfels and so it is a German community. And then I also ended up with a degree in business with a focus on transportation logistics. And I did that because the math was easier than engineering and I didn’t really see myself as opening my own business. It was just easy.
Ami Feller:
But in hindsight, I’m really glad that I did that because I fall back on that quite a bit. And then I also have my MBA in business that I did online through the University of Phoenix. But when we were at Iowa State, my big brother decided he was a construction engineering major, and his buddy told him he should start a roofing company. And so we did, and we grew up being handy and my parents renovated houses and stuff, but he learned how to do it and I went to work with him. And yeah, we did that for a couple of years, never thinking it would be a career. It was just a great way to make money and get tan and have a good time. And then we both went and got real jobs and neither one of us were real happy with that. And so in 2000, I was 25 years old, he called me, I was working for Caterpillar in Illinois and he called and asked if I wanted to move to Texas and start a construction company.
Ami Feller:
And I was so unhappy. And so we moved to Texas and we had a really rough go. I ended up doing that with him for about two years and we were so broke. And anyway, I ended up going back to corporate America. So I do have a lot of corporate America. My story Caterpillar, Walmart, Coca-Cola, DHL, and Airborne Express. And then in 2012, my daughter, I was a single mom and she was four years old and I was working 12 hour days and my boss was awful, and I was commuting an hour each way and just hating life. And I called my brother and said, there’s got to be more to life than this. And he talked me into coming back into roofing, which I was hesitant to do because it had been so awful before. But yeah, so that in 2012, he and his new wife and me, we started a roofing company from scratch, and we did that together for four years and then we got sideways and I split off from him in 2016.
Mark Lamberth:
Okay, great. So that’s
Ami Feller:
Short version.
Mark Lamberth:
Great. I love it. And then rebranded because you guys were fell the roofing and you rebranded to Roofer Chicks at that time
Ami Feller:
In 2021. So in 2016, it wasn’t a pretty scene when this happened. And I basically had 10 days to get my stuff and get out. And so I had 10 days to file the LLC with the Secretary of State, get commercial insurance, get supplier accounts, established, all this. And we kind of thought that if I kept the name Fellow Roofing, we were fellow roofing and remodeling. So if I became Fellow Roofing of New Braunfels, people wouldn’t think that we were arguing because we didn’t want to scare our customers, even though we were. And I didn’t really have time to think about the name either. It was hit the ground and run. So fellow Roofing of New Braunfels, it is and onto the next thing. And then yeah, I got down the road and I had always had roofer chick in the back window of my truck.
Ami Feller:
My brother did that for me as a joke early on. And so in this town I was known as the roofer chick and I started getting excited about trying to get other women to go into roofing. And in 2020 I started trying to put together a female labor crew. And so it just made sense if I ever wanted to sell the company to get my name off of it and if I ever wanted a franchise or anything like that. And every roofing company out there, if you’ve ever noticed, it’s always somebody’s first name, their last name, roofing. And then they put a little house, they put a little house over the top and then that’s their logo, the same
Mark Lamberth:
Little logo on all of them with the same house And the logo,
Ami Feller:
Yes, it’s all the same. And I just wanted to do something different. So I was going to make it just roofer tick because that’s me singular. But then my employees felt like that left them out and they wanted it to be plural. And I’m like, you sure? Because we got guys here. And they’re like, yeah, we’re sure we want to be part of it. It’s us too. So yeah, so that’s where it came from.
Mark Lamberth:
I love it. Amazing. So I mean, taking a look here, you’re known around town and on YouTube is the roofer chick. In October, 2020, Amy started an entirely female roofing crew,
Mark Lamberth:
Actively working to change the stigma of women in the trades. And then in October, 2021 started doing business as roofer chicks. Aside from roofing, Amy’s an active member in Rotary International New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce, the Women’s Business Alliance National Association of Women Business Owner, so as well as your church, and you’re also on the board for Habitat for Humanity. So mean, how has branding into a women owned business, you really went all in there with saying we’re the roofer chicks and just kind saying, this is what we’re doing over here. I love to see that and I love to see folks niching into something that is like, this is what we’re doing. It’s different than what’s just out in the marketplace. We put some intention into this and we’re making a stance here and saying, this is what we’re about. How has rebranding into women’s business, women owned business, how has that helped you guys set yourself apart and ultimately to land more business?
Ami Feller:
Well, there’s so many roofers in Texas. There’s no licensing required in our state. And so anybody with a truck can say they’re a roofer, and there’s just so much competition. So the Hot Pink and Lucy is the name of our logo of the girl.
Ami Feller:
It really does help us stand out. Our trucks are wrapped. We have 13 trucks on the road and they’re wrapped and they’re really bright and obnoxious, and little girls especially love ’em. People are always wanting to take pictures of the truck. And so we’re real well known. We were also on Good Morning America in 2023 in May, and so that caused a big hubbub in town and people know who we are. It’s not been easy. Females in roofing, 5% industry-wide is female of the industry. And when you get into the laborers, it’s only 0.5% are female. Oh,
Mark Lamberth:
Wow, okay.
Ami Feller:
Yeah, it’s really lopsided. And so I’ve tried to encourage women to come on. My goal, my dream was to at least have one crew of six. A roofing crew is usually six, at least have that. And so far I have not been able to get there. We’ve had a lot of turnover. Roofing is a hard business, whether you’re male or female, it’s hard. And not everybody can hack it. But right now I have three and they’ve been with me for quite a while and they’re pretty great. And we’ve been, actually, we just had a brainstorming session this week of how we can attract more women to at least come give it a try. It’s hard. We talk ’em into it and then their husband or their dad or their brother says, you’re crazy. You can’t do that. And they talk ’em out of it before they even show up to try.
Ami Feller:
And that’s frustrating. And then we also have people try who probably have no business, and some people we’ve gotten up there and they can’t get over the fear of heights and that won’t work either. So it’s pretty challenging. It’s had a lot of ups and downs, but we’re still going and we’re still going to do it. I feel real good about the base I have right now as far as being roofer kicks in the community. Sometimes I get flack, and I guess somebody once told me that all PR is good pr, so maybe it doesn’t matter, but they’re like, well, I see guys driving the trucks and I see guys up on the roof. Well, yeah, we still have a business to run and we would never be 100% female ever. That would be illegal, I’m pretty sure. And we’re just trying to get more women in. And so sometimes I’m like, well, should I have called it roofer ticks? But anyway, it works. And even if you’re getting flack about it, it means that people are talking about it,
Mark Lamberth:
Right? These guys probably have in mind they want it to be the barista Babes or whatever you guys to be up there in bikinis and the pink hammer.
Roofer Marketing 2025 tips – from Ami Feller
Ami Feller:
Yes, we could ask that too. And the girls are like, oh my God. Yeah, right. We’re not doing that.
Mark Lamberth:
Right. That’s not exactly what we meant by roofer chicks. Well,
Ami Feller:
And I’m sure that Hooters has male employees,
Mark Lamberth:
Right?
Ami Feller:
They have to. There’s no way.
Mark Lamberth:
Hilarious. So you’re also really involved in your community. So you’re on the board of Habitat for Humanity, local historic theater, active member of the Rotary International. How has being active in the community, how does that work to help you build the business as well? I mean, it seems like you’re just kind of all over the place in a really great way. I mean, you’ve got a really active YouTube channel, but specifically their new Braunfels. I mean, it sounds like you guys are really well known. How has that helped to build the business and to keep relationship with your clients and customers?
Ami Feller:
I think it’s key, and I think it’s probably one of the most important things that I do, is being out in the community and being part of these groups and doing service in the community and just being seen and known because for sure, I don’t know if every business is like this, it has to be, but the more people that I know and the more people that I touch, the more likely that business comes my way is just how it works out. And they get to know your true authentic self. I have struggled with being on too many things, and at some point you still have to run the business. I do all our scheduling and I’m a hands-on owner. I don’t just walk away. And so there have to be enough hours in the day. And a few years ago, I decided just to really pick a couple and focus.
Ami Feller:
I talked to somebody that I respect that’s older than me and how do I do all this? And he said, you need to pick one industry organization to be a part of one volunteer organization and just pick three things basically is what he said. And I don’t know that I’m down to three things, but I’ve really focused on Rotary. I love Rotary. It’s one of my favorite things. And Chamber of Commerce, I’m what they call a Blue Coat, which is basically a volunteer ambassador for the chamber. And so I go to all the ribbon cuttings and try and get new members and get people to join. And so those two take up a lot of time. The Habitat for Humanity, it’s a board, and normally it’s only a couple hours a month. We have a board meeting and then sometimes an event, or right now we’re calling all our donors and thinking them for Thanksgiving, but it’s really not a time suck, too bad. And then some of those other organizations that you mentioned I’m still a part of, but I took a step back.
Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Okay, great. And then I noticed we help companies with web stuff and build websites and promote, and we’re always looking at websites and do they have the right conversion elements on them? And it’s surprising how many companies, even companies that are doing a lot of business just really haven’t put any time into that. I mean, I noticed that you guys have got an exceptional site. It’s really got all the right pieces. I mean, technically looking at it from a technical eye, it’s really great. I mean, the phone number, the call to action, the top right, it’s got really clean brand colors that are clearly across not only the website, but I mean your trucks and things got that great pink color really kind of lift up this female kind of brand. I noticed on your website that there’s a video of what happens when somebody contacts, gets in touch with roofer chicks, right? It’s this fun sort of animated video of you flying across town and landing The idea that the idea being that you guys take it really seriously when somebody gets in touch with you guys. And I assume you’ve got people in place that are answering the phones. I mean, how do you handle inbound and how do you provide that level of care where you’re really responding to anyone who gets in touch with you guys?
Ami Feller:
So I have one office employee, and that is her whole job. And not all roofing companies are set up that way. A lot of roofing companies, they collect leads and then they give the leads directly to their salespeople and ask their salespeople to follow up with a customer. And a lot of things get dropped that way. So we have a designated person who her job is to get their information, get it all into our CRM assign, she picks a salesperson depending on the customer’s personality and needs, and the salesperson. She tries to match people up that are going to be a good fit. And then she actually sets the initial appointment so we don’t miss those appointments. And then also, of course, then she’s always checking the Facebook inbox that we have an info. I try and send everything to that info as much as I can so that she keeps that inbox clear. And yeah, that’s her job. And that video is pretty funny. That’s what landed us on Good Morning America. They found our website and they filled out the web form to contact us, and they got that back and they’re like, oh. So it served us. Oh,
Mark Lamberth:
That’s fantastic. Yeah, everybody go to rupert chicks.com, take a look at the video, it’s about halfway down and just says what happens when somebody gets in touch with us at the office. Super fun. Fantastic. And then, I mean, you guys have got a ton of Google reviews over 303 50 or so at 4.9 stars. What’s your secret for collecting reviews? I mean, I know that you guys, inevitably, you guys do an amazing job in the community. I mean, how have you built up such a kind of reputation, especially in the reviews? Do you guys ask people after you finish jobs, would you go over and rate us? We’ve done a good job. How does that workflow happen?
Ami Feller:
That’s been my pet project this year. So in February of this year, a guy left us a three star review and he said, you guys did such a great job on my roof. The roof is beautiful, but when it was done, you’d think you’d at least send me a picture. And it made me mad. I was like, why didn’t you just call and ask me for one? Why’d you have to go leave a three star review over the fact that I didn’t? But instead of getting mad, I believe firmly strongly that every time you get criticism from somebody, there’s truth in it and you need to find what the truth is and get over your emotions. And the truth was, he’s right. If he spent $25,000 for a roof, we should have at least sent him one picture of it. So from that point, from there, I built an automation.
Ami Feller:
It’s not completely automated because I do send it, but I used AI chat GPT to make a real cute thing about, here’s your final pictures, thank you for choosing us for your project. It would mean the world to us if you would give us a review. And then I actually put in that email three, I think three links, one for Google, one for the B, BB. I have a lot of BBB reviews. Now I did that. I had Yelp, but I had to take it out because Yelp somehow is magical, and they can tell when you ask people for reviews, I don’t know how they do it, but they delete ’em. And there was no point in collecting a Yelp review. I think Facebook is my third link. So anyway, so I send that out with their pictures and I think there’s an exchange there.
Ami Feller:
They get these pictures and it makes them happy. And so that puts them in a good mind frame to give me a review. I also set up a text asking for the same thing because some people respond more to texts. And then I use a review company. I put ’em on pause right now, but called erase.com, and they’re supposed to help you get rid of the bad reviews. And that hasn’t been real effective. But I send them a list, I send it two months back so I can make sure that everything’s resolved and done. I eliminate the ones where they already did give me a review so I’m not asking ’em again. And then they’re real successful at getting reviews. And so I think this year I’ve gotten about 125 reviews since that three star review back in February.
Mark Lamberth:
Amazing. So if you’re here listening to this episode, take a moment and listen to what we just heard. So Amy’s an amazing business owner. She’s doing 5 million in business. She’s got a great brand, got a great website. It’s rocket science approved. I’ve taken a look at it all and it’s fantastic, great business. And what she did was that she decided we’re going to build a review collection system, and she all completely above board, but put in some automations in place so that emails and text messages are going out. There’s an exchange there. So you’re sending out a photo and saying, look, we finished the project, here it is. You took some feedback from someone that wasn’t happy, started sending photos to them, and sure enough, I don’t know, raised your review count by 50 or 60% in the less than one year alone.
Ami Feller:
Yes, I get 20 or 25 reviews a month right now.
Mark Lamberth:
That is amazing. And I mean, they’re all at 4.9 stars, over 350 reviews, guys. So if you’re struggling to figure out how to create more reviews, prototype this thing that Amy is talking about, I mean, this is really, really powerful. And for ranking locally in your local area, like Amy is trying to do those local reviews, continuous reviews from customers is one of the key indicators that it’s going to help you rank. Fantastic. Okay. And then Amy, I mean, one thing that occurs to me is that you’ve got 16 people on your team. We talked about you’re doing 5 million or so in revenue, 5 million plus. That’s a lot of revenue for that amount of team.
Ami Feller:
So there’s subcontractors that’s not in the head
Mark Lamberth:
Count. Okay, so you have some subcontractors as well. Yeah,
Ami Feller:
Subcontractor labor. So right now I have five salespeople. One’s in trainee, I just started them like a month ago. So I have five salespeople. I’ve got four people on my in-house crew. They’re W2 labor, which most roofing companies in Texas at least don’t use in-house labor. But I find that’s the only way I can train women how to do this job because my subcontractor doesn’t want a woman on the crew that doesn’t know what she’s doing. They actually do have women on their cruise, though. I’m super impressed. There’s women out there on my crew too, which is awesome. And then I have four office employees, and right now I have two field support. So a project manager that goes around to all the jobs and keeps my quality in check and a material runner who just go get this, go get that, put yard signs, that kind of stuff. So subcontractor, those crews are their own LLC. And I pay the LLC, but I probably keep, and this is our slow season right now, but when we’re busy, there’s probably 30 to 50 people. There are subcontractors out there too.
Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Wow. Okay. Amazing. Yeah. Okay. And five salespeople.
Ami Feller:
And there’s different kinds of roofing. So I have single crews. I have two or three single crews I use. I have one metal crew, I have one tile crew. I have one flat roof crew. And I don’t necessarily keep them all busy. The shingle guys I do, but I don’t keep everybody else busy a hundred percent of the time.
Mark Lamberth:
Okay, fantastic. Great. And then let’s see, regarding how you’ve grown the business, I mean, you have got a lot of word of mouth that’s happening and just a great kind of footprint out in the marketplace. Do you do any kind of paid advertising or do you do some work to rank the website, different things like that?
Ami Feller:
Yes. So 70% of my leads are either repeat or referral, which is awesome. Personally, I’m frustrated because I would really like to get my business to the six to 10 million, and I seem to have plateaued at five, but this year wasn’t a great roofing year in my market and that I stayed the same as last year actually is really good, even though I’m frustrated. It’s actually there’s a lot of people that went out of business this year and there’s a lot of people that didn’t have a good year.
More Roofer Marketing 2025 tips below, keep listening for more golden nuggets from Ami.
Mark Lamberth:
Oh, no kidding. Yeah,
Ami Feller:
I need to keep that in mind. And it really just depends on God and storms on how all that goes. But as far as paid marketing, my truck wraps have been super successful, and a wrap is usually 2,500 to $3,500. I try to buy trucks that are already in the color scheme, like black, gray, white, red, so I only have to wrap half of it so I don’t have to pay for a full wrap because I save money there. But wraps have been great. Yard signs are really great. We get a lot off of yard signs and they’re not really that expensive. I do have a billboard and I move the billboard every couple of years. And what’s funny, when you move a billboard, people still, they think it’s a new one. So people think I have 10 billboards and I have one right now.
Ami Feller:
So it’s funny how the human mind works. I do pay my website company quite a bit, man. Last year I keep trying new things. I’m trying to find things at work. I tried radio last year. I didn’t feel like it was very successful, and maybe because it wasn’t a good year for roofing, but it was very expensive and I didn’t really feel like I got my bang for my buck. My social media team, I just put them on pause and I’m going to do it myself for a little bit, like $26,000 a year and paying them $500 a week. And they’re really fun and they’re really good at it. But I don’t see the conversion. There’s such a difference between branding and lead generation.
Ami Feller:
And I think as a roofing company, a lot of what you’re doing is branding so that when somebody needs a roof, you’re top of mind. It’s not like, yeah. Anyway, so I do not do any lead generation companies. So no home advisor, no Angie’s List. I probably get five emails a day. Could you handle 20 to 25 more roofing jobs? No, none of that because then they just pit you against three other contractors and then you’re just competing on price. And I’m not cheap, so there’s no point in me getting into a price scheme I’m going to lose, and there’s no point in paying for the lead. I was putting a lot of money in Google ads, a lot like five to $7,000 a month. I find that they don’t really convert. What does work well on Google is the Google guarantee do real well with those. And I do real well with the map.
Ami Feller:
And I guess Google guarantee is also called LSA local service ads and the GMB Google Map my business. So I do well with those, but not so much the paid ads. I’ve got a company called, it’s called Predictive Sales ai. I tried last year, and what they do is when there’s a storm, you can target an area with Facebook and run an ad and only target if I want to target females, but target household owners over so much and they can really narrow it down. And that’s been really great actually. And it’s a $5 a month. And they also put the chat box on my website. And they also, there’s a weather report on my website, which is really cool. You can type any address in that you want and get a free weather report for your house so you can see all the storms and people from all over the country use it. Obviously I’m not going to do their roof, but it’s a pretty cool thing.
Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. Okay.
Ami Feller:
There’s also a thing on my website you can click on that gives you a free estimate. You can type in your address, it’s in the top right and I need to get a landing page for that, but I’m working on the landing page for that. But you can type in your address and you can get a free, it’s pretty close estimate how much it would cost to reroof your house, and you can pick different materials and colors and stuff, and that’s pretty cool. So yeah, lots of different things. And just for this winter, I pretty much shut everything down because it eats me alive when it’s not busy financially. And I’ll wait until February and then I’ll ramp it up again and try something else. I do want to, next year I’d like to find small offices in San Antonio and South Austin, like real physical offices so I can drop a pin, a real
Mark Lamberth:
New GBP location in those areas to the application.
Ami Feller:
That’s what my guy recommends. I do real well on Google, and that’s where a lot of my business comes from, aside from referrals and repeats, the next thing is Google. So if I can get a stronger presence there, I think I’ll do
Mark Lamberth:
Well. Okay. Interesting. So some things I’m taking away from this regarding growth, you’ve got this part figured out. I mean, you’d like to grow more, but you’re a nice sizable company at this point. Amy’s trying everything, right? And what I’m saying by that is she’s not afraid to go into try radio, to try billboards, to try all of the different ways of building the business and trying to see what works. And it sounds like you’re also open to trying new things in the future as they come about. Maybe it’s some different platforms that open up or whatever, but you really get the idea that spending money on marketing is something that ultimately brings in the business. And so you guys are spending a fair amount of money on that, and that’s a huge part of why you guys are the size as you are right now.
Ami Feller:
But I don’t spend as much. So in our industry, it’s pretty normal to spend eight to 12% of your gross revenue on marketing. I’m closer between three and 6%. So I do try and keep control of it. It’s pretty easy to lose control of it. And then I also, recently, I went to a class and this lady said that 17% of your revenue should be your commissions. We pay a hundred percent commission to salespeople, so that should be advertising and commissions. And I love hearing numbers like that. Then I can look at what I’m doing and see where I fall. And so I pay about eight to 10% in commission. And if I put that with 7%, I’m in a good spot. So I only try to do one or two major things at a time, otherwise I’ll go broke. And I also think that shutting it down during the winter, I haven’t always done it as hard as I did this year, and I think it’s the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I have a hard time hurting people’s feelings and I hate telling people I’m not going to do business or we need to stop. Yeah,
Mark Lamberth:
Sure.
Ami Feller:
But it’s super smart. There’s no point in spending all this money when it’s not, people aren’t buying roofing right now.
Mark Lamberth:
So basically three months out of the year or so, the phones just aren’t ringing. Folks are not getting bids for roofing.
Ami Feller:
There’s some, and it’s enough to keep the lights on, keep the doors open, keep everybody employed. It’s not like I grew up in Iowa and it’s hardcore, you can’t roof in the winter, but not really. And down here we can roof year round. It’s just the demand isn’t there. And I think this year too, the presidential election had a lot to do with that. People just didn’t have confidence and we needed somebody to win. I don’t think it really mattered who won, just so that half the population can move forward with their lives and start spending.
Mark Lamberth:
Oh, right.
Ami Feller:
Yeah.
Mark Lamberth:
Right. Yeah. We’ve talked to a lot of folks that just their operations really slowed down around the election to see what happened. And so we’re not going to spend any money right now. We’re just going to take a break,
Ami Feller:
Especially such a big thing as a roof. And usually it’s not, I mean, roofs are super important, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like an air conditioner where you have to have it today. Usually you can pass your way through for a little bit.
Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. Okay, great. So guys, it’s been a great conversation here. I mean, Amy has got a great business. Definitely take a look at the website, roofer chicks. I’m a nerd about this stuff, but I’d love to see, and honestly, it’s rare to see websites of construction companies that are set up as well as yours is, and that it’s just got all the right components in it. It’s got the branding put together, it’s got the whole story in there. So definitely something to go take a look at and learn more about what Amy’s up to over in New Braunfels.
Ami Feller:
Thank you so much. That means a lot. Yeah, Amy, because I work pretty hard
Mark Lamberth:
At it, so I’ll take the call. Yeah, I can see that. Amy, if folks want to get in touch with you and learn more about the business or just personally get in touch and hear more about what you’ve talked about here today, what’s the best way for them to get in touch?
Ami Feller:
For sure. I love talking to people from around the country about different things. If you’re on the website and you want to fill out the info form, they will get that information to me. Also, my email is just ami@rooferchicks.com and yeah, I’ll get back to whoever.
Mark Lamberth:
Perfect. Okay, great. Everybody go take a look at Amy’s website and if you get a chance to take a look at her social stuff and give her a big thumbs up and say hi over there as well. Amy, thank you for being on the show today. I think that’s it for now.
Ami Feller:
Well, thanks for having me. Super fun.
Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Alright, we’ll be in touch. Take care.
Ami Feller:
Thanks, mark.
Remember to give Ami some love for all the Roofer Marketing 2025 tips she shared today. Go find her on the socials and say thanks.