Epic Entrepreneurs
Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs! What does it take to build a real and thriving business in today’s world? As entrepreneurs and business owners, we went into business to have more freedom of time and money. Yet, the path of growing a business isn’t always filled with sunshine and rainbows. In this chart-topping show, host Bill Gilliland; author of the best-selling book “The Coach Approach” leverages his decades of experience coaching proven entrepreneurs to make more money, grow the right teams, and find the freedom of EPIC Entrepreneurship.
Epic Entrepreneurs
How SEO Changed Everything for Four Square Roofing
What happens when you combine roofing expertise with self-taught digital marketing skills? James from Four Square Roofing reveals the blueprint that transformed his business from struggling startup to a lead-generating powerhouse without spending a dime on marketing agencies.
After 15 years in real estate's feast-or-famine world, James discovered roofing's potential in 2015 and recognized an opportunity. Rather than joining the legions of contractors knocking on doors after storms, he spent 500+ hours building an organic SEO strategy that would generate leads while he slept. His girlfriend thought he was "losing his mind" during those early days when the phone wasn't ringing—but his foresight paid off spectacularly.
James takes us behind the scenes of his decade-long journey, sharing candid insights about maintaining work-life balance as an owner-operator who handles everything from sales to warranties. Now married and expanding to a second location, he emphasizes that success requires patience: "It took me 10 years to get where I'm at now." His refreshingly straightforward advice for contractors—"take care of your people, put good material on there, and never let the reviews slip"—cuts through the noise of complicated business strategies.
What makes this conversation particularly valuable is James's willingness to share exactly how he built his digital marketing foundation. While many guard their business secrets, he regularly mentors younger roofing company owners on SEO strategies and believes in lifting others up. His approach proves that even in traditional trades, combining craftsmanship with digital savvy creates an unbeatable competitive advantage.
Whether you're a contractor looking to reduce marketing costs or an entrepreneur in any field seeking sustainable growth, this episode delivers actionable insights from someone who's built success on his own terms. Listen now and discover why sometimes the best investment isn't paid advertising but the hours spent mastering digital fundamentals that pay dividends for years.
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Bill
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All the best!
Bill
Hey there and welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I'm Bill Gilliland, your host. I am the principal at Action Coach, business Growth Partners, and I've got a super great guest today. I am very interested in hearing his story. It's James from Foursquare Roofing. But before we get to that, just remember, hey, we've got the Asheville Business Summit coming up on September 23rd. It is time to get your tickets. We are three weeks away-ish and, as we record this, it'll be closer by the time you hear this. So get those tickets. It's going to be an amazing day. We've got nine speakers. I mean, it's all about leadership, marketing, management, anything to do with building your business. Coming off the heels of Helene, we're in a unique position to be able to blast off and take our businesses to the next level. So, hey, james got James from Four Square Roofing over in Gallatin, Tennessee. I'm super pumped to have you on the podcast. So, james, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your business.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2:I would say you know, I started life as a real estate agent at 20 and was a licensed real estate agent around greater Nashville, where I'm from, a licensed real estate agent around greater Nashville, where I'm from, for around 15 years, and about 15 years in I found roofing because real estate can be inherently inconsistent.
Speaker 2:I mean, it can be great and it can be either it's feast or famine out there, and so I ultimately found roofing back in about like 2015 and saw the opportunities and saw how potentially lucrative the storm restoration, exterior restoration business could be and I just kind of pursued it. And right around the time, of course, the Internet was a thing, of course back in 2016 to 2017 time period, but not nearly as relevant. So if you could set up online businesses back then with various organic SEO stuff, you would have an advantage 10 years later and where we're at now. And so my company's had, with roofing, 10 years to marinate with the online SEO. I built all of my stuff myself and I think that's been a huge advantage in my business not having to rely on marketing companies and just being able to reap the benefits of what the internet can bring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we'll talk a little bit about marketing. That'll be some of the stuff to hear about your learning. So well, that's interesting. I mean, that's a it's not a big leap, I mean, but it is kind of leap to go from selling real estate and brokering real estate to going ahead and getting in a trade. So did you just jump in right away and start a roofing company, or did you? What was your path?
Speaker 2:start a roofing company, or or did you? Yeah, what was your path? Yeah, definitely not. Uh, so it wasn't that easy, uh, to just start a roofing company. I mean, it might seem that way, but there's a lot of, uh, years of of learning from other roofing company owners and, uh, you know, which I still have relationships with today, they're still my, some of my best friends um, but learning from people that were above me, and then you finally get to a point in your life to where you know, maybe you try your own thing, and so I didn't really like door knocking with roofing, and so I figured out a way to do digital door knocking through Organic SEO, and so that just made it even more so the better, because I enjoyed the craft and the trade of roofing and how lucrative it could be. I didn't like knocking doors, and so I was able to create the online organic SEO, which still functions to this day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll talk about that more in a minute. Well, let me just ask you so, if you had to start over, what would you do differently?
Speaker 2:If I had to start over, I definitely would have picked it's kind of hard to say because I have a lot of different things that I do but I would have probably tried to pick one thing and really focus on that more than multiple things.
Speaker 1:And what do you mean by that? Like one market or one, one business?
Speaker 2:I mean I had. So you know, there was a time where I was juggling real estate and roofing. Oh, I got you. I had to make a decision at some point. Okay, I can only do one, and so that's. I wish I would have you know, learned that a little quicker.
Speaker 1:Maybe jumped in on the roofing a little quicker.
Speaker 2:I understand I got it yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I understand that's a great learning Because I mean most people, a lot of people, when they go into business, they still have a job because you want that paycheck, so I love that. So what have been some of your biggest learnings as an owner?
Speaker 2:and an employer since you started. You have to treat your people really good, that you care for your inner circle of people that help you. You have to take really good care of your people and have good people around you. That's the biggest thing.
Speaker 1:So get good people and take care of them Pretty much. I love it. I love it. So what are some of the common misconceptions about running a business and how do you address them?
Speaker 2:It's definitely not easy. I don't know if some people nowadays think it. I mean, it took me 10 years to even get to where I'm at now, and so I would definitely not say that's overnight. So I mean, if you want to be an entrepreneur and not to say it can't happen for people faster, it certainly does, but be prepared to be patient.
Speaker 1:I like it. Yeah, I mean. What's the saying? An overnight success usually takes about 15 years.
Speaker 2:Something like that, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've heard that. So what do you attribute your growth to? Yeah, best, yeah, wow. So let's talk about that a little bit. So how did you learn that? I mean, what, what, what was your? I mean, just get in there and mess around and take some classes, what'd you do?
Speaker 2:no, there was no real classes on it when I learned it. I mean, there was videos and things like that and content online that you could read and that's that's basically. Um, there was just a filter of information that made sense. As far as citations, backlinks, keywords, things like that, and in roofing it's not overly hard because it's roofing roof repair, roof replacement, new roof installation, your service area cities which would be like 30 miles local to your office, I would think you know you just work those keywords with citations and over time and honestly, I was afraid that AI was going to potentially destroy what I've created with the organic, but it seems like AI actually pulls from all the citations that I created over the past decade. It pulls from that information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ai is looking for answers, so if you have blogs and things that can give it answers, then that's what it's looking for. And so if you've SEOed and you've backlinked and you've got all that connections and stuff, then you've got all that. So I mean, yeah, that's pretty cool, but that wasn't an overnight thing.
Speaker 2:I mean, you just yeah, no, my, my girlfriend at the time thought I was losing my mind, uh, because of, you know, the phone wasn't, the phone wasn't ringing and you know, and it just seemed like a lot of wasted time on it. But just somewhere at that time 10 years ago I knew how important reviews would ultimately be online and saw where the direction was going with it. So I always have made sure I have a few bad reviews I think most contractors that are really in the trenches probably do because you can't please everybody. But all in all, I have really good, stellar reviews and I've worked really hard for them and I think that, having a little bit of foresight back then again, I have a little bit of jump maybe on some other, a little jump A little jump.
Speaker 1:I think you have a lot of jump, I mean, because 10 years of stuff is I mean that's. You know that's amazing and I kind of like it that you did that. So where was the tipping point? Like where, how long did it take you to like go from the phone not ringing to like you could pretty much count on it.
Speaker 2:Pretty quick. So back then it was pretty quick.
Speaker 1:A little longer now, I would think, with all the noise.
Speaker 2:Probably a little longer now. Honestly, to this day, of course, like I've done Thumbtack, pay4leads, boosted Facebook, business posts, things like that but never have I employed the services of a marketing company to take over all of my systems and stuff and I've never done that, so it's all been 100%. I mean, the way I look at it is, I've never paid really for a lead. You know I've had my website produces leads and then, of course, all the online SEO and local and local. You know word of mouth is huge in our business and I would give the best advice I can give is you know, if you can figure out how to do residential roofing, it's actually pretty elementary. If you can get it dialed in, it can be extremely lucrative, but just take care of your people and put good material on there and you'll be good. And you usually can always get a review and never let the review slip, because they are just as good as gold.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I love it that you've grown it organically. It sounds like you haven't done too much with, like, paid ads or anything like that. I know it sounds like you've experimented some with it, but not necessarily like didn't need it really no, well, yeah, I mean, because I mean what can happen is you're going through, you know life.
Speaker 2:You're like, well, hold on things, slow down a little bit, and you're, and it comes in waves, uh, like right now it's in a really good wave, uh, and it can go up and down, but consistently it generates gross millions of roofing leads of many types annually. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:So how do you balance your personal life and your business? Running the business.
Speaker 2:My wife and I like to travel and we like to go swimming and just plan for important things and spend a lot of time with friends and family. We actually have some friends coming to stay with us from Florida this next weekend here at the house with their three kids and we're trying to have a family and things like that. So actually my wife and I got married in Costa Rica. I went across Costa Rica five months ago and she has an insurance agency in Hendersonville and so that's. Another cool thing is we kind of can work off each other but we do a lot of things. Just, you know, we work hard and play hard, I guess you'd say.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Well, congratulations on the marriage. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. It really didn't hurt the situation at all.
Speaker 1:I love that. Didn't hurt, it didn't hurt.
Speaker 2:Not at all.
Speaker 1:So you talked about having great employees, so what qualities do you look for in employees?
Speaker 2:Hard work, hard as coffin nails. I mean, you know, I work with a lot of Hispanics and so I've tried to have sales guys. But that's another maybe interesting thing is that. So when the leads come in, they come into my phone. I go do the sales myself, I go sell the job myself, I'll put the logistics together in relationship with the distributor on material schedule, all the labor, pick up, checks, front end, back end checks, warranties and stuff like that, and I just so. I basically I've tried to do sales guys. It's easier said than done, so I would say I'm an owner-operator, so most of my employees are Hispanic.
Speaker 1:Got it, so at some point to grow, it sounds like you want to probably add sales so that you can grow it a little bit more.
Speaker 2:It's getting there. We're about to open our second location at 119 Stadium Drive, Suite B, Hendersonville, Tennessee. Along with my wife's insurance agency, we're going to put another four-square more or less permanent location probably there, Got it.
Speaker 1:I like it. I like it. Okay, no problem, I love it. So this is a quick fire round. Just give me a couple of sentences or a couple of words on each one. So BEPIC is a that's my tagline is an acronym. So I'll just give you the definition of the letter and you just tell me a couple of sentences about each. So the B stands for bring the energy. So what are your thoughts about energy?
Speaker 2:Well, it's everything I mean you know energy is all around us. Well, it's everything I mean you know energy is all around us. If you bring bad energy into something, don't expect anything good to come back out of it. So I mean it's all, bring the good energy. Bring good energy, and that's in particularly. Everything is you can speak things into life accidentally, so you have to be careful what you say and do no question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're exactly right. I love that. Okay, the E stands for education.
Speaker 2:I mean it's part of it.
Speaker 1:I liked it. I like it, got to educate. How about P for planning? What's your thoughts on planning?
Speaker 2:It's a big part of it, especially as you get older. So I just turned 40. And so planning is becoming more of a thing now than what it ever has been for me. But yeah, it's super important to have your, your house, in order.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it, love it. How about I inspiration? Where do you? Where do you either find inspiration or how do you be an inspiration?
Speaker 2:I try to help a lot of people, a lot of younger roofing company owners in my area that have questions about SEO. I'm like a open book for them. I want to see them grow and and develop their thing into you know something great uh. So I try to, you know, help guys as much as I can there and uh, but my wife is my biggest inspiration, yeah I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it. So c stands for commitment to do your own SEO and all that. You must have been committed, so tell us about your thoughts about commitment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the commitment part on the SEO, that's very real. So to do it right, I didn't have a stopwatch in front of me while I was doing this stuff, but I would say it's about 500 hours plus of. It took over a year um to to really get you know cause you have to manually put all this stuff and so, uh, it's it's. It takes some serious commitment to get to get it figured out, yes, but if you can crack the code on it, it's very much worth doing.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, 100% yeah, you got it. I mean, you need it. You need it regardless whether you do it or you hire somebody whose job it is to do it. Either way is fine, it's just. Yeah, I think it's. It sounds like it's just something you wanted, you were determined to do and you like doing it and you wanted the results, so I love it. I love that yeah pretty much.
Speaker 2:Nobody could tell me any different on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't blame you. I don't blame you At some point. It's kind of cool too, because if you actually did go to hire somebody to do it, you would know it. I mean, they'd just be doing the admin stuff because you'd already know how to do it. You would know it. I mean you, you, you know they'd just be doing the admin stuff because you'd already know how to do it.
Speaker 2:The updates and stuff like that, and I mean, and I've thought about hiring people to do that stuff so I don't have to keep up with it as much at this point, but I still, ultimately, as of now, do all my own updates and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. So what words of advice would you offer to other business owners who are looking to grow?
Speaker 2:Just definitely be ready for some patience and have your education together and be committed. I mean, it's pretty much a lot of things you just spoke about the. You know not to say that it can't happen overnight, because it certainly can, I would imagine, for people. But everything good comes with time. That's the thing about it. It just takes time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a little bit of that compound effect, right, you work and you get a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. So that's sort of how it is. So, last thing, what's the best way for someone to get a hold of you?
Speaker 2:You can probably just shoot me an email at four, like the number four, squarerestoration at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gmail got it dot com Probably the best way. Well, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you being part of the community and being part of the trades and taking a different bent on it, actually understanding that the marketing. You know there's a lot of people that are great contractors who are not great marketers and they complain because they don't have, don't have the business they have. But you've gone the other way. You're a great contractor and a great marketer, so thanks for being a leader in that industry yes, my pleasure yep, hey, and until next time, remember, get those tickets to the Asheville Business Summit.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you soon, and all the best.