I lose money on jobs all the time, but I will, I'm willing to lose money on j...
Yep, right? Like, we do something, the customer doesn't like it, or they what people call a nitpick, right?
But at the end of the day, I'm a take care of it. I'm a take care of the customer. I'm a do right by them, even if it means they're roting my margin a little bit. Because at the end of the day, guess what that customer, they're going to be like, holy smokes, like, they didn't have to do that necessarily, but they did. So now, I'm going to tell the old friends and family if you need a roof you got to go with capital C, roofing, because they're going to do it right.
Brad Strawbridge is a resilient, system-striven and visionary executive, and the founder and CEO of capital city roofing.
Building on his powerful journey of overcoming personal adversity, he empowers contractors and growth-minded operators
to scale their businesses through AI-driven technology and proven frameworks, setting a new standard for operational excellence, industry innovation, and meaningful community impact. Everybody sees, you know, the nice cars and the stuff and the thing and you want to be, but they don't see, like, all the bluts went in tears. They don't see that, but it's all there. This capital is going to reinvent, it's not over, I'll tell how we're doing.
The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of the living your legacy.
“I'm your host Jason Tyler, and I am joined today by Brad Strawbridge. Brad, how you feeling?”
I'm good, man. I'm good. Glad to be here. Pleasure to have you on the show. So, Brad, you just finished filming your episode.
First of all, I want to, how you feeling now on the other side of it.
If you feel like it's kind of like a breath of relief. Well, man, I tell you, it's exciting, you know, this first time I may have been on camera. I've done podcasts, things like that, but it was an experience. You sit down, it's lights camera, actually. My main thing with the studio setting is you got that big bright light right on your face. So, that's the first thing that I'm like, I got really tripped out by at any time on my camera.
Yeah, I turned red, I guess it was some burn. That'll do it. Let's do it. So, Brad, what would you say is the number one lesson you want people to be able to take away from your story? Yeah, so my story is, it's interesting. I'm an entrepreneur, I own several businesses, but a serial entrepreneur, if you will. If you will, yeah. But the thing I'm most passionate about is people.
“It's about, I believe that I've been blessed to be a blessing, right?”
And so, if anybody can take anything from my story, it's how to be a good steward of what you've been given. Mm-hmm. A big thing that I talk with a lot of our entrepreneurs on this show, we talk about, you know, the most successful business owner understands that his business is an act of service, right? If you're going out there and truly acting in service of another, if you're really trying to help the people that are coming to your business, yeah, you're going to succeed. Yeah, success is a byproduct, man. Mm-hmm. It just is. At the end of the day, if I help people, if I'm a good person, if I'm, uh, depending on, you know,
if you have faith or not, you know, if, if, if my faith is important, and I'm walking appropriately in that faith, if I'm a good husband, if I'm a good brother, if I'm, if I'm a good employer, if I'm a good boss, if I'm good to my customers, Mm-hmm. If I provide a good product or a good service, if I have integrity, then do what I say I'm going to do.
“Success is a byproduct. Yep. It's just, are you able to, in business all you're really doing is I'm making you a promise.”
Yeah. If you come to my business and you give X amount of dollars, I'm making you a promise that I'm going to give you X. If you're able to fulfill on that promise, that's, that's all it really is. It's just fulfillment. It's a simple concept. It's not difficult, but it's so simple, but it's for a lot of people, it's hard to do. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of people start a business in service of themselves. Yeah. How can I make as much money as possible? How can I, you know, how can I utilize other people's time?
So I don't have to work so much. Well, I think, you know, I think fear plays a big part of that. Oh, yeah. Right. You started business and you're afraid of it not making as much money or whatever.
You try to cut corners or you try to, you know what I mean?
roofing companies is my main revenue driver. And I lose money on jobs all the time, not all the time.
But I will. I'm willing to lose money on jobs to do the right thing. Yep. Right. Like we do something. The customer doesn't like it or they what people call nitpick. Right. Something of that of that manner. But at the end of the day, I'm going to take care of it. I'm going to take care of the customer. I'm going to do right by them. Even if it means they're roting my margin a little bit. Because at the end of the day, guess what that customer, they're going to be like, holy smokes. Like
they didn't have to do that necessarily, but they did. So now I'm going to tell the next price runs in family. If you need a roof, you've got to go with capital city roofing because they're going to do it right. I say this quote to all of my clients whenever I whenever I do interviews and if any of my clients are watching this, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But it's a quote from my Angela that I say, "I need time. We go into the legacy segment." And she says, "People
“forget what you said. People forget what you did. But people will never forget the way you made them feel."”
That's it, man. And I think that ties in so perfectly to acting in service of another person. If another person feels like you did right by them, guess what? They're going to refer you to the next person and the next person. And it just like you said, success is a byproduct. Yeah. If you just continue to do right, success has to follow. One of our other companies is called BuilderLink. It's a contractor, centric CRM in operating system. And the amount of technology companies
marketing agencies, anything in the digital space, it's very similar to roofing. There's a lot of bad actors. There's a lot of bad service. There's a lot of people over promising and under delivering. But we do the same thing for our, for our contractors that we help. Like if they need something, we're going to figure it out. Like if they need the software to do something, if it's in our power to add it as a module, or add it, or tailor it to them, we're going to do it. We're going
to take care of that customer. Even if it costs a little bit, might have built it because it's the right thing to do. And then guess what? They remember how that makes them feel. It builds trust.
“It builds a relationship. And that's what it's about. Business is about a relationship. At the end,”
you know what? If you were on the New York Stock Exchange, if you did a IPO tomorrow, I would invest in your business. Just from the core values that I see that you have as a business owner, I would invest in that 100%. But I want to take a second here to kind of, let's walk it all the way back and talk about how did you Brad get into business in the first place? What was kind of your origin store? Yeah, no good question. So, I started out in the corporate world. I was with Lowe's home
home improvement, Lowe's. Did you know there's two Lowe's? There's a Lowe's grocery store too. I heard about that. So, are they in the Midwest? I think so. Yeah, I heard about that from somebody because I had just came back from, I flew back from Phoenix yesterday. And I was talking to somebody in Phoenix. And they were talking about renovation that they
were doing on their home. And I was like, I always recommend Lowe's to people over Home Depot.
“So, I was like, oh, you should check out Lowe's and they were like grocery store? Yeah, it's”
some of the, yeah, yeah. Someone did that to me. So, now I specify, so I was with Lowe's home improvement. But anyway, so I spouts with them over a decade. I started out in my early 20s as a delivery driver. And then I had a mentor, my first mentor saw something in me. And you know, I went in the management track. And anyway, long story short, I ended up being a, I ran home services. So, I ran home services for for Lowe's. And it was all the verticals, interior categories, exterior categories.
And during COVID, I noticed that two of my categories, we weren't just positive. Like we were double digit comping, like crushing it through a pandemic. So, I'm like, these are pretty good. Like it's obviously recession proof. It's non-discretionary. And those two product groups, there was roofing and it was HVAC. And about that same period of time, I mentioned faith a little bit earlier. I'm a pastor. I'm not currently serving a church right now. But once you're
faster, you're always faster. And so my faith baked to me, obviously, right? And I don't believe
in coincidences. I believe in synchronicity or divine guidance as what I believe. I have a, I have a quote on that that I always say to people, I was like, God speaks to you through the language of statistical improbability. Oh, yeah. This statistically improbable thing that happened to you is how do you, that's right. Telling you where to move. That's correct. Yeah, I'm a big believer in that. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to do that. Yeah, no. So that during that
time, same period, a headhunter reached out to me and said, hey, we've got a commercial roofing company in Atlanta. They're adding director-level leadership. Would you like to have a conversation? I said, I would, right? Because I knew there was something there. And you know, had several conversations later
Ended up leaving.
It's an amazing organization. It's where I met my wife. We both would, anyways, love clothes. That's a rose. That's right. But the side of the pivot went into roofing fell in love with roofing
“because man, it's important. It's a literal roof over your head, right? And then I saw a significant”
gap in the industry. And it was what we talked about. It was companies that are doing right, having integrity, delivering what they said they were going to deliver. And so I said, you know,
I told my wife, we're business partners. We've always worked together. So I said, hey,
we're going to do this. We're going to start roofing company. And we did. And it was two years ago and now we have four locations. It goes, it just goes to show like the ability. And I talked to a lot of business owners on the show about this. But the ability to identify a need for something with it. It doesn't matter what market it is. Yeah. For a lot of people is what was your area of expertise, right? Like, what are you an expert in? All right, let's look at the, look at the market,
identify, like you said, identify that gap in the market and say, hey, we're going to attack this. Yeah. I mean, it's about, it's about, I mean, if you're looking for something that's sustainable, it's, it's about basic necessities, right? Like, there's only two types of roofs. There's a roof that's leaking. And there's a roof that's going to leak eventually. You know, and there's no shortage of roofs. So that's not at all. And we're building another window every, there's there's some seconds. There's
some job security there. Now is roofing sexy. I like to think so. But, but it's not, you know, but, and how's the wife feel about it? And that's okay. She loves it. She does. Matter of fact, I'm on camera. I'm really just, I'm not the pretty face either. But she, she runs the business.
Like, she, she, she, it, she's a beast. Like, she, she manages the crews. She, she's, she's amazing.
Her name's Tiffany. Tiffany. I love you. Thank you. I could not do all this without you. Big shout out to Tiffany. She's amazing. You got to have that level of support. And I think,
“you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Yeah.”
And matter of fact, while we're, while we're at, I need to give credit where it's due. I have so many great people around me. My, my, we run on EOS. So my integrator, CEO of his name's Edward Edward. Thank you. You're amazing. On, for our other business builder link, all of our co-founders, Blake, James, Sean, Nick, you guys, you're amazing. Thank you. And for people who are watching this, that are wondering, like, oh, should we, maybe we should do business with these guys? Like,
do business with us because we're, we, we love people. And our teams love people. And we all have great relationships with each other. And, and that's what it's all about, man. Exactly. Huge, huge believer in that. Now, you know, we've kind of covered this over the course of the episode, but I have to ask, because it's, you know, part of a part of the show for all of, we're here at Insights Access and for all of my guests on the show, I ask them, if you could speak directly to the
audience, look directly through the camera and just reach out and tell somebody something, what would be your number one kit key tip for success doing inventory on yourself? Right? It is. So, on, being an entrepreneur or being, even an executive in a, in a, in a company that you didn't start, like it's not for everybody. It, it's not. You know, and that's okay. Like, we need, like, companies need people to work for companies too. But what, what I mean by that is like,
look yourself in the mirror and say, do I want to do this? Am I built for this? Like, am I willing to sacrifice? Right? Am I willing to put myself last? Right? Because being a CEO is great. But you can't be a CEO if you don't have a business. And you can't have a business if you don't have people and you're not going to have a people if you don't treat them well. And you're not going to have customers if you don't treat them well. So, like, those things are not everybody
can do them. Not everybody wants to do them, but not everybody can do them. And so just be honest with yourself. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's the advice. Like, go all the way to the beginning. Like, before you even think about starting a business. Like, be like, can I,
“do I want to? Can I do it? You know, like, can I work the long night because something went wrong?”
And I need to make right by my client. Can I pull a 90 hour work week? Because someone on my team is sick. And I need to fill that gap. Right? Can I identify areas within my business that require systems and processes to where like, I need to design a process from scratch start to finish.
And I need to be the one working it. That's right. First, before I hand it off to somebody else.
Yeah. Like, those are all questions. I think every, everyone who's entrepreneur curious
Needs to be able to ask themselves because it's difficult.
you know, the nice cars and the stuff and the thing and you want to be, but they don't see like
all the blood sweat in tears. They don't see the sleepless nice. They don't see the, oh my god, am I going to make payroll this week? They don't, you know what I'm saying? They don't see not going on vacation or taking your family on vacation for years at a time because you can't, you know, they don't, they don't see that. But it's all there. You got to love it too.
“And you got to love it. Yeah. You have to love it. You'll, you'll fizzle out if you don't,”
if you don't really love it. Like, for me, when I started, when I got into camera work, I was obsessed with it. Yeah. Like, very, very obsessed with it. It's a good way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. I, in every waking moment, like, I'm on YouTube looking up different strategies on how to film. I went to film school. Didn't really learn too much about too much of film school. And then I ended up teaching a lot of myself on YouTube. And I was just feverish about it. Yeah. And then
the pandemic hits. And I have nothing to do. And I got 30 K in a savings account. And I'm like, you know what? I'm blowing the savings account on a camera gear. And I'm just going to go for it. Yeah. And now six years later, I've worked, you know, all across the world, I've been able to work with high-end celebrities. I'm sitting here with you. Like, you got to be able to
“dive in and you got to love something to dive in like that. That's right. Yeah. I love how you put”
like you've got to be obsessed with it, man. And then like that's going back to the, to the thing I talked about before. Like, when you do audit yourself and you look yourself in the mirror and you're like, yeah, I'm the man. Like, I can do this, take that risk, gamble on yourself, put it all in. If you can look yourself in the mirror and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do it. I got it. And you know it. Then you're going to do it. There's no way to fail if you actually got it like that.
And faith is a big proponent. Faith is a huge proponent. That's all faith. I said this to another, another guest on the show. I said faith is the antithesis to fear. If you can walk in faith and know that regardless of the outcome, you've got your back. Yeah. You're going to be able to, you're going to be able to take on. Yeah. And what do we know about risk? You're going to be, you know, the more risk you're willing to take on, the better you're going to be. The better off
you're going to be in business. And be, he just kind of walk with an air of knowing. That's right. Of knowing that like, regardless of how today goes, I know overall, I'm all right. Like, I'm going to be a good. Yeah. Guys got me. I just wrote a book. I'm launching it soon. Keep an eye out for that. Yeah. Yeah. It's called courage is discipline. Right. And it talks about that because fear, fear is fear erodes every decision we make. Right. It fear is a cancer. And it's your
body trying to keep you safe. Yeah. But sometimes as with most feelings, they're not true. A lot of times the fear isn't based in truth. And but faith is, right, as the opposite. Right.
“But you have to have courage in order to, you have to have discipline to have courage to”
persevere through that fear. Right. And then once you do it several, several, several times, and then it's not, they're like, someone asks me like, when I was coming on the, to be filmed on TV, they're like, oh, are you nervous? And I'm like, no, I'm not nervous. I don't have time to be nervous. I've got too many people dependent on me. I've got too many responsibilities. And I've got too much
faith. I don't have time to be nervous. Huge, huge messages there. And guys, first of all, if you're,
if you're still tuned in at this point in the episode, I want you guys to make sure that you check out Brad's episode, which will be coming out shortly on the platform after this podcast episode, airs to make sure you stay tuned for that. You're going to get a full deep dive into Brad's story. But Brad, for the people out there that are watching, where can people find you on social media, where can they find your businesses, websites, and then that, I'm everywhere. I even have a Pinterest.
Pinterest. Yeah, but you're on there for, you're on the internet for real for real for real. I didn't even, I don't have a Pinterest Google. Yeah, just, you can Google Brad's job bridge, or capital city roofing, builder link, builder link is spelled LYNC link, builder link. But yeah, we're, I mean, we're on every social platform that there is. And I'm going to make sure editors, you guys know what it means when I point at different areas of the screen. Let's just put
those names out somewhere on the screen for them. But Brad, it has been an incredible pleasure
having you on the show, brother. Yeah, I'm looking forward. I just bulk my mic. I'm looking forward to watching your episode and getting no more of your story. And I keep in touch with you. I'm for sure, see where this business goes. Yeah, as soon as I hear about that IPO, I'm investing.
100% man.
I'm your host Jason Tyler and I will catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
