Tony
Flattum and the leadership team at Built Strong Exteriors have more
than two decades of experience in roofing within Minnesota’s Twin Cities
metropolitan area with varying degrees of profitability, so forgive his
response when asked if he’s “surprised” by a recent surge of success.

“Of
course!” he exclaimed. “We just got out of high school and just started
working and doing our thing, and kind of got pulled into this
business,”

The primarily residential roofing company Flattum’s
brother started in his house nine years earlier has been on a meteoric
rise. Last year, the Built Strong team of about 100 generated more than
$63 million in roofing revenue — a significant jump from the $22 million
it reported in 2021 — and placed the firm near the top third of
qualifiers in RC’s 2023 Top 100 List for the first time.

Flattum
said many factors contributed to the company’s success, including a
strong, determined sales force, effective and targeted marketing through
digital campaigns, neighborhood canvassing and reinvigorated employees
committed to the team’s overall success. 

But he’s sure to point
out that the most significant factor — often hard to quantify — was
refocusing on the first of his company’s seven core principles: customer
care. Flattum said everyone on staff recognizes the importance of
transparency and providing clear expectations to the customer through
timely, positive communication. They often discuss going above “the
ordinary” for customers and their business partners and train for
scenarios where they can provide world-class customer service. 

“We’ve
initiated several training programs in all facets of the customer
experience, striving to be the gold standard in the people business,”
said Sales Manager Reed Asher about last year’s success. “Customer care
is our number one core value.”

That can-do attitude is what
Flattum said was often missing from the roofing and construction
companies in his past — and what he believes the industry still lacks,
writ large.

Bumpy Ride

It
may be counterintuitive for a business owner to call focusing on the
customer a bold initiative — customers are the lifeblood of any
enterprise’s prosperity. But Flattum found that losing sight of the
customer’s satisfaction in roofing and construction can often lead to
more stress, problems and less profitability, which is why he ventured
out on his own to build a roofing company in the first place. 

Flattum’s
roofing career began in 2002 when a friend recruited him to join an
install crew for a company just starting in the Minneapolis area’s
active market. He quickly moved “up” from installing to production and
quality control on the job site; the company also expanded beyond roof
restoration and repairs. He also gained exposure to the lucrative
storm-restoration market, which he called “eye-opening.” His key
takeaways were that working with insurance companies can be tricky, and
customer care was often not top of mind. He said he was also curious to
learn more about that aspect of the roofing business he’d never seen up
close, intrigued by the potential volume of sales it generates. 

Within
a year, Flattum jumped over from sales to the operations side of the
business and developed a process he soon wanted to test out — but in a
venture of his own. He partnered with another roofer in 2006 and
operated locations in Minnesota and Florida for roughly eight years
before that affiliation fizzled out.

“We were going in different
directions,” Flattum said. “He wanted to do more franchising, strictly,
and I wanted to do more of a corporate location.”

Looking back, he
said the critical component of their buyout agreement was Flattum’s
ability to keep his Minnesota operation intact, which included his team.
Still committed to roofing, his team needed a rebrand, which they found
with Built Strong, started by his brother, Dave, in 2014. 

The
changes to operations, corporate culture and marketing Flattum’s team
put into motion started to pay quick dividends and garnered attention
from private equity investors in 2017. Flattum said he shook off the
first few entreaties from potential suitors but saw an opportunity when
Restoration Builders Inc. approached — not just to improve his bottom
line but also to help lift the larger roofing industry. 

“The idea
was to take all these successful roofing companies, build this group up
and change the industry. Make it better for everybody,” Flattum
explained. 

By November 2019, he sold to RBI and was among the
first 15 roofing contractors from diverse but largely storm-driven
markets — stretching from Florida to the upper Midwest — to join the
rollup. Flattum agreed to purchase shares in a corporation that
ultimately was to go public and likely walk into a windfall of profits.
The deal also allowed him to stay independent before it became publicly
traded. 

The roofing jobs and partnership with RBI continued
through the COVID-19 pandemic, with contractors sharing best practices
on Zoom meetings and trying to align their systems and operations under
the same platform. Flattum began working closely with veteran roofer Ty
Adams, whom he’d worked with before and who had just left crosstown
rival Legacy Restoration and started consulting. 

The pair
developed a system with the potential for nationwide expansion that the
RBI team was interested in. However, finding ways to implement it was
challenging, and Flattum and Adams both said they realized Built Strong
may be better on its own. By 2021, Flattum said he left RBI and
implemented the new system — full force.

Taking ‘Massive Action’

Customer care, safety, honesty and teamwork became the bedrock of Built Strong’s new foundation. 

“From
there, it was taking massive action on the sales side,” Flattum said.
“That’s where it kind of all started, just doing really well on selling
and getting the business going and bringing in tons of volume. 

“It
was kind of a learning-as-you-go kind of a deal, and then I brought in
the right people to help fill the areas that I wasn’t good at,” he
added.

Adams, his one-time competitor, said they tried a new
approach of compartmentalizing departments and clearly defining employee
roles. Workers were divided into different departments: production
teams, maintenance and repairs technicians, sales representatives,
gutter squads and collections specialists. 

Each department has its mission; depending on responsibility, they stay in their own lanes. 

“It
was about making our teams smaller, so salesmen aren’t project
managing, which was part of the burnout factor,” Adams said. “Their job
is to feed the pipeline, and there’s nothing more demoralizing than when
you have to work so hard to build the pipeline and then watch it
diminish because of production.”

The company also emphasizes
training online and in the field. Workers are trained on something every
day, Flattum said. In addition to regular safety training and providing
401(k) contributions, Flattum said they’ve revamped company culture by
offering incentives and experiences helping drive success. He saw the
opportunity to work on the firm’s workforce by “building people up.” The
company started offering growth opportunities and career tracks by
working on both hard and soft skills, strengthening team management and
undergirding customer satisfaction.

The pair also developed a
family-style approach to work culture, emphasizing team-building through
work exercises and bonding via company-wide trips, most recently to
Columbia. Beyond coworkers, the bonding experience and camaraderie
expanded to employees’ family members on the trip, allowing everyone to
meet each others’ families they had previously only heard mention of.

“People
are still talking about that trip and know they [must] hit their goals
to go again,” Flattum said. “The people we have [here] make the most
difference; it’s clear that they care about the company and our
customers.”