I have spent most of my adult life on the road working in cities all over America. When I was young and in my 20-30’s I always looked forward to getting on the road for the summer to not only work and make some money but, also see and experience new things and places. I have been chasing hail storms since I was 18 years old and spent significant time in many states within the USA. I got into the roofing business by accident in 1990. I saw a future college roommate one day while running errands around town. He had a job opportunity from a connection he got lined up through his father. I tagged along with him and the next thing you know I was knocking on doors and selling re-roofs to people who’s homes were destroyed by hail. I remember my first sale being 2800.00 and making only about 200 bucks after two solid weeks of work. I thought, man this job sucks! After many sessions of encouragement by my mentor who introduced me to the hail storm business, I finally got things jumping and made more money than I could have ever imagined possible in an 8 week period for an 18 yr old kid.
The next summer was my first time working out of state because it doesn’t always hail in your hometown. Again I made a nice chunk of money but, I also worked the entire summer before I had to head back to college on a baseball scholarship. I was hooked! I finally learned all the angles to play with insurance companies and making money became easy to me and the freedom that came with the job meant more to me than anything.
One thing that has been consistent from day one of this job is I always looked forward to coming home to Colorado. Well this year is no different....except I did not make any money. As some of you know, I left Colorado for Texas about 4 weeks ago to work for a company in Ft. Worth who is legendary in the lone star state. They have been welcoming to me many times to help them out in the summer months when Roofing is busy. I am a project manager or what some might actually call a salesperson. Sometimes the situation is not ideal for sales and you must realize you have miscalculated the information you gathered during your due diligence. That is the case for me this year because, this storm in Texas is not providing as much action as I’m used to. I decided to leave here in the morning and head home to my own bed, my family, friends and routine. My good friends here in Texas were gracious enough to let me stay with them for a few weeks so this mistake only cost me several hundred, instead of several thousands. Lucky for me, while I was gone, my hometown got a couple hail storms which should provide enough work to make it through the winter. Texas is awesome in many ways but in the end, it’s not even close to living in Colorado.
I wish things would have worked out different this year down south but, the silver lining is football season just started and there is nothing like watching Broncos games with other Broncos fans. Dallas Cowboys fans aren’t even close to as bad as the Kansas City Chiefs fans but, it’s time for the OG Broncnutz to be in a state where everyone thinks the color Orange is beautiful. Go Broncos!
