How An Aspiring African Missionary Went From “Sales Disaster” to Setting Up a 60 Million Per Year Contracting Business

It was incredibly exciting to have Will Miller on the Growth Minded Contractor podcast.

As there are few success stories more inspiring or fascinating than that of Will and Priority Roofing.

You see, even though the company was only founded back in 2016, by the end of 2021 they managed to clear over 60 million dollars in revenue.

They are also showing no signs of slowing down and are currently on track to increase this figure to 75 million dollars by the end of 2022.

And Will has done all of this while keeping his wife and four children as his number one priority in life.

By all accounts, Will Miller is the true definition of a growth minded contractor and someone to really pay attention to if you want to have it all in life.

So, keep reading if you want to find out how he achieved such rapid success and discover a number of fascinating business insights, such as:

• The one “explosive growth” decision that Will would never repeat or recommend to anyone (this had a massive negative impact on his marriage).
  
• The “mistake” that grew Priority Roofing to 11.2 million dollars in revenue – while actually causing them to lose money! (never repeat this common error).
  
• How Will “accidentally” grew the revenue of the company one year without even trying (it came down to two key principles for increasing security and profitability in your business).
  
• A game-changing strategy that led to a 203.4% increase in revenue in just 12 short months.
  
• Why Will never goes “all in” when pursuing business goals – yet still manages to achieve incredibly rapid growth with his company’s revenue (the key is to use it as part of this high-level strategy).

So, if you’re ready, let’s dive into Will’s story, which begins in an unlikely place:

A south Dallas bible school. 

You see, back in 2010 Will’s main vision for his life was to become a missionary in Africa spreading the word of God.

But at this time, he also needed a way to pay his way through school…

So he followed a friend’s advice and started going door to door for a local roofing company.

He would knock on doors and set up appointments for the sales team, who would then come in and close the new roofing deals.

However, once Will started to see just how much money these sales people were making, he quickly transitioned to selling roofs.

A Rocky Start: Will’s Terrible First Experience With Selling (and the problems his eventual success would cause)

Will spent four months selling roofs and it’s fair to say that things did NOT go according to plan.

During this time, he made just $400 total.

And when you factor in the hours he put in, this works out to a rate of one dollar per hour.

But when you account for the money he spent on gas this quickly drops to zero.

And while making no money in four months is not exactly a great outcome…

It gets even worse when you consider that Will was depending on this to pay his mounting school bills.

So, after this stressful and humbling experience, Will decided to never sell roofs again.

However, after only a year and a half of going door to door, he caught the bug again and was back to selling.

Thankfully, the second time went better and Will managed to generate a consistent 6 figure income for himself selling roofs, year after year.

But this success started to create an internal conflict for Will…

Because with his sales results getting better each year…

And with more and more ministry opportunities presenting themselves…

He found himself being pulled in two opposite directions and had no idea what was the right choice to make.

So eventually, after a lot of prayer and meditation, Will came to a powerful realization…

That by focusing on his business for the next season (6-8 years), he could then revisit this vision for his life and have a far greater impact with ministry later on.

So, with this new sense of direction and six years of sales experience…

Will decided it was time to go out on his own.

The Surprising Change That Took Priority Roofing From Modest Goals To Explosive Early Growth

When starting out, Will had pretty modest and realistic goals for his new company.

He just wanted to get set up, build a team of 4 or 5 sales reps, and consistently sell 20 or so roofs per month.

And soon enough they managed to start consistently hitting this target…

But in 2017 something unexpected happened.

There was a huge storm in the area which suddenly spiked their number of roofing jobs to 89 in a single month – four and a half times their normal capacity.

They decided to go all in but there was a problem in doing this.

Because Priority Roofing worked off of a principle of no upfront payments (a business practice they still adhere to today as a nine figure company)…

They didn’t have enough capital to purchase the required materials for all these jobs.

And because they had been in business for less than a year, they couldn’t get a loan from any bank.

So, Will went to an outside source and got a high-interest loan for $100,000, so that they could get these deals signed.

This created an incredibly stressful situation for Will.

Because, not only was his bank account and credit card debt constantly fluctuating as the company completed jobs, collected payments, and started new ones…

But Will was working from 6am to 11pm, six days per week.

And then on Sundays his phone was constantly ringing, which meant he was never really “at home” on his one day off either.

As a result, this caused Will’s marriage to really struggle during this time.

Thankfully, near the end of the year, the pressure started to ease.

All of the payments started to roll in for the completed jobs, they could pay off all of the debt, and revenue increased to 7.2 millions by the end of the year.

That being said, with what Will now knows about business, he doesn’t think that working this much was necessary to achieve this level of growth (or beyond)…

So he would never put work ahead of his family again, nor would he recommend that anyone else do this either.

2018: The Year Of Aggressive Investments (and the painful lessons learned)

Following the success of 2017, Will wanted to really capitalize by putting these profits back into the business.

So he started going all in and made a variety of investments, which included:

• Hiring sales managers, two quality control managers, and some more office staff.
  
• Getting a sleek new office space (which came with a hefty 80k security deposit).
  
• Buying 8 new company trucks in cash.
  
• Investing in new lead sources for contracting jobs.
  
• Starting a call center to generate their own leads.
  
• Setting up a new location in Denver.

However, none of these investments produced any significant revenue for the business.

And then, at the worst possible time, with all of these big expenses happening – a disaster occurred.

In the middle of 2018 they had taken the roof off of a house and a torrential downpour of rain caused damage to the drywall, insulation, electronics, and more.

This caused $83,000 worth of damage which the insurance didn’t cover.

So, by the end of 2018 they had done 850 roofs and 11.2 million in revenue but they had still lost money.

And this hit Will really hard.

Because he felt that he had put all this time, effort, and money into growing his business and he had nothing to show for it.

So, once again, he found himself at a crossroads, wondering if he should downsize, go back to selling roofs for another company, or strive to continue with his own business.

Will took 5 days off to really think, pray and look through the numbers to try and find the answer.

And here’s what he came up with:

Two Key Principles That Unlocked The Next Level of Revenue And Profitability

Once more, Will decided to stay the course with his business.

However he would go into 2019 with a very different approach.

This year the main goal was not to grow the revenue of the business at all.

Instead, he simply wanted to make it to the end of the year in a profitable and sustainable way.

So they didn’t make any crazy investments and their sales team only grew by a little…

But in doing this, something completely unexpected happened.

Even though they weren’t actively trying to grow…

Revenue increased by 38%, allowing them to finish the year with 18.1 million in revenue and report much better profit margins.

So, now that they had figured out sustainability, they decided that 2020 was going to be a year of intentional growth.

Rather than trying to run with every suggestion or make a ton of investments, they were only going to try one new thing at a time…

And they would stick with this plan until they made it produce a return on investment.

For 2020 these plans were going to involve getting into commercial and designer roofing as well as starting a new location in Austin, Texas. 

Thanks to this new focused approach, during 2020 the pipeline for commercial and speciality roofing really started to grow.

This allowed them to complete 20 commercial projects and close some of their biggest ever deals with specialty roofing projects.

Finally, their new location in Austin went on to become their strongest location to date, performing really well right from the start.

This gave them a huge confidence boost and let them know that, if they put their minds to something, then they can get it done.

This also led to a massive boost in revenue.

With this “intentional growth” strategy taking them from 18.1 million in revenue in 2019…

To a massive 29.5 million dollars in revenue by the end of 2020.

But as impressive as this growth was, it would be nothing compared to…

The Game-changing Strategy That Allowed Priority Roofing To Double Their Revenue In 12 Short Months

Things had always been consistently growing for Priority Roofing with each year showing around a 40% increase in revenue.

But in 2021 they would experience a dramatic change in growth, allowing them to more than double their revenue from the previous year.

This all came down to one thing:

Will had people on his team that were accomplishing great things without him needing to be there.

The manager in Austin worked 105-110 hours per week and did 1600 roofs in 2021.

Which is more than Will would ever have been able to do by himself in just one location (never mind trying to manage all the other aspects of the business).

Then, thanks to the hiring of more fantastic managers, the newly opened Houston and Tyler locations started to thrive as well.

This marked a sudden change in the potential of the business.

It went from what Will Miller was able to do, to what everyone in the organization can do working together, which really massively lifted the ceiling of what was possible.

Now, with all that being said…

All these strategies never would have worked without the right foundation in place:

The Culture And Leadership Needed To Grow to 60 Million In 5 Years

Will firmly believe that having the right people in your business is far more important than having the best systems in place.

As he puts it:

If you have amazing people, they can always go on to create fantastic systems and processes later on.

But having world-class systems can be useless if your staff isn’t following them correctly, or even willing to apply them at all.

So, Will put a special focus on developing a process for consistently hiring and training high-quality staff.

But hiring amazing staff was really only half of the equation…

Because holding onto their best people has been a huge factor in Priority Roofing’s consistent growth each year.

Which is why Will’s counter-intuitive approach to leadership has been so effective.

You see, even though Will has highly ambitious business goals, he has vowed never to go truly “all in” on achieving them.

That’s because when Will was growing his business at the expense of his family back in 2017…

He noticed that they lost some key members of staff who could have been pushing them forward today in really impactful and significant ways.

It was around that time that he realized that his staff don’t just want someone to look up to in terms of success with their career, but also in terms of being a great father and a loving husband.

Basically, if you’re a grinder, your people will follow you for maybe 10 years (during the “hustle” phase of their life), but if you’re also a family man, then people will stick around for 50 years.

But this is a careful balancing act.

Because the ambitious grinders are the ideal people you want working for you, but they are only going to stick around if they continually have direction to grow.

If you just put this person in a sales role and expect them to stay there, then once they’ve crushed it for 2-3 years they are going to wonder “what’s next?”…

And if you don’t have that next step in place, they are going to look for it elsewhere and perhaps even start their own competing roofing business in the area.

Before you know it, you are only left with the unambitious or less competent team members…

While your best people are now all directly competing with you for the same customers.

This is why holding onto these people is so much more important than putting in as many hours as possible.

Now, the final part of the equation is the culture and feel of the company.

Will has always made it a priority to make his company feel like a family-run or “mom and pop” business.

He does this to actively avoid the feeling of a large corporation where people start to feel like just a number on a page.

Because when this happens, they feel unimportant and start thinking about going somewhere where they can feel more valued.

How to Recreate This Rapid Growth in Your Contracting Business

There are two paths to success.

You can either spend several stressful years figuring everything out on your own…

Assuming you ever even get there! (many go bankrupt trying).

Or…

You can learn from the experience of other highly successful contractors…

Allowing you to immediately apply what has already been proven to work and skip years of painful and expensive trial and error.

So, if you want to directly learn from a high-level contractor like Will Miller, then I’d highly recommend you attend our yearly live event: The Transform Conference.

Because Will and dozens of other 8 and 9 figure contractors, are going to be revealing their best business strategies and giving you the chance to ask them all of your questions.

To discover more exciting details about the upcoming Transform Conference – just click here now.

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