by Mike Feazel, Co-Founder and CEO of Roof Maxx
In 1988, my brother Todd and I started one of the largest and most successful roofing businesses in the Midwest. For the better part of the next 15 years, anyone looking at it from the outside in would have justifiably assumed we were wildly successful based on what they saw.
They weren’t wrong. The company I’d launched from humble beginnings by borrowing my father’s ladder and strapping it to my car had grown into a true regional powerhouse. Our trucks were everywhere, we were a household name, and Dad finally had his ladder back.
But the truth about what was happening under the hood? That was less cut and dry.
By almost any measure you’d use from the outside, the company was a complete home run. And yet, we were still struggling to take it to the next level because being profitable and being scalable aren’t the same thing.
It wasn’t that the work we were doing wasn’t lucrative. It had exceeded our expectations by that point. But without scalability, it felt fragile in a way that only Todd my brother, and I could really understand as the ones in the “weeds” with it day-to-day.
If we wanted to take things to the next level, we would have to open at least one other location, if not more. And with only the two of us in leadership, that just wasn’t going to happen.
Now, Todd and I are pretty allergic to giving up, so it was never an option. Instead, we took everything back to the basics, threw it all on the drawing board, and started ruthlessly scrutinizing every shred of the business for opportunities to improve.
It was like the sun finally came out after years of rain. We were finding ways to put new systems and people in place that would allow the business to thrive even without our help.
Slowly but surely, it started to evolve into the successful and scalable business it was all along, and by the time the right offer came along, selling felt right.
It turns out that when you’re in the thick of it every single day, sometimes you can’t tell the forest from the trees. It took stepping back to realize that Todd and I had unintentionally baked the same obstacles we were trying to fight into the company with every decision we made along the way.
We had built something that could only grow as fast as Todd and I could physically move, and frying ourselves by trying to be everywhere at once wasn’t the fix. So when the next opportunity came, I knew what I had to do to make it even more successful.
Todd and I began developing the Roof Maxx product, an eco-friendly treatment that restores flexibility to aging asphalt shingles, a short time later. We went from being the replacement specialists to helping the same people get more life out of the asphalt shingle roof they already had.
The very first question I asked was how to build the company around it, because I had just spent 25 years stuck in the exact same cycle. I could have run that same playbook in my sleep, but what I really wanted was a business that scaled because it simply worked instead of because I was there.
Todd and I brainstormed options while we continued to develop the product, and for a time, considered making it a franchise. A good friend of mine who helped design the dealer model for Renewal by Andersen warned me not to go down that path, and I listened.
That is the real gift of a second time around. You aren’t smarter, but you finally know which questions matter, and you know enough to ask someone who has already answered them.
The dealer model changed the math of the whole company. Franchising might work for pizza and hamburgers, but in a lot of these systems, the company makes its money on the upfront fee whether the franchisee ever thrives or not.
Roof Maxx only earns when a dealer buys product, and a dealer only buys product when they’re out there winning customers. Their growth and our growth are ultimately the same thing, and that meant the business could easily expand without expanding me or my brother.
After just five years, we had 100s of dealers across all 50 states. What’s amazing, as a virtual company, we’d become the nation’s largest residential roof maintenance company, and the only building the company owns is the factory, now, and I can confidently say it’s both profitable and agile.
So if you’re building something right now, I want to ask you this: if demand doubled next year, what would actually have to happen for you to meet it? If the answer is that you’d just have to work twice as hard, you haven’t found your limit. You’ve found your design, and you’re allowed to change it anytime.
Mike Feazel is the Co-Founder and CEO of Roof Maxx, a groundbreaking green technology company revolutionizing roofing sustainability. With over 30 years of experience, Mike co-founded Roofers Success International and built one of the nation’s leading roofing companies before launching Roof Maxx in 2017. Roof Maxx’s innovative safe, all natural product restores aging asphalt shingles, extending roof lifespans by up to 15 years. Mike is a recognized industry leader, contributing insights through his former column in Roofing Contractor Magazine and forging partnerships with institutions like Ohio State University. His leadership continues to shape sustainable solutions in the roofing industry.
