We recently connected with Amy Walker and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Sometimes we don’t pick our career path, it picks US! We moved to Oklahoma from St Louis in 2009 with another contractor hoping to make a better life for our family. Within months of my husband Paul starting at this company, one owner was bought out and that company quickly didn’t have a future for Paul. Our daughter had already started her kindergarten year at Broken Arrow and my only stipulation when I agreed to move over 400 miles from home was wherever our daughter Alyssa starts school she is finishing so I knew we had to stay in Broken Arrow area. Paul made a promise to both me and our daughter, we can do roofing and survive somehow. That was spring of 2010, we officially formed AKW Roofing July 19th 2010 out of the spare bedroom of our rental home.

Paul knows the ends and outs of all things roofing, he’s amazing at diagnosing the problem and mapping out a path of long term resolution for our customers.

I on the other hand didn’t have the decades of construction background that Paul had at the time, however my mission was to share Paul’s knowledge to anyone and everyone I could that was in need of a solution to their problems.

A thought on family businesses where I’m not sure where it goes however; when you’re self employed many people (friends and family) think you can just take off work any time, as much as needed and wanted. Family and friends may think things like we’re always on our phone, you seem distracted, or something else is on your mind, or why are we going to run this quick errand; when in reality we are on the other end trying to figure out why the wrong material showed up to the jobsite, or why one of the guys didn’t show up to work today and how we’re going to explain this to the customer. Or trying to collect on an invoice so that we can pay all our COGS, employees and maybe even ourselves.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My husband Paul started working for a national roofing contractor in 2003, he traveled alot and away from the home often. I worked full time and we had our young daughter Alyssa where even though I had family and friends to help often, it wasn’t the same having dad around to help raise our daughter. Which is why he eventually took another job in Oklahoma in 2009 to travel less, be present with us more. That story was shared in the previous slide to where AKW was born and how I got thrown into the business, to support Paul and our family. Paul has a craft for finding problems and solutions to fix them fast, efficiently and most cost effective long term. As he was able to fix those problems for homeowners, the word spread fast; people have finally found an honest roofing contractor that is professional, honest and does what he says he’s going to do.
When someone calls into our office and needs to schedule a roof inspection for damage because their neighbor had damage or a neighbor got a new roof they expect to have the same damage. They do not expect a roofing contractor to perform the inspection, provide them with photos and sit down and explain what’s going on with their roof system. They are shocked when we sit down and show them photos and explain they don’t have damage; why because we don’t make money when we tell people their roof inspection has a clean bill of health if you will. But what we do make is trust and a customer for life, eventually that customer will use us when they need to fix a problem with their roof.

Discipline: It can be very challenging to stay above water being self employed. I maintain discipline by maintaining my mental, physically and spiritual health. This would be a whole rabbit hole I could go down however, I maintain all 3 of those by moving my body and working out, reading, journaling, meditating and eating a clean diet and lifestyle.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I shared a little on this already, being honest has been the most ROI for our business over the last 12 years. Being honest looks like this, we tell a homeowner not to file a claim because they don’t have storm damage to their roof and the insurance company wont pay to replace it. Being honest looks like this, a homeowner is made because they want us to lie and say they have storm damage so they can get a full roof replacement paid for by their insurance carrier. Or telling a homeowner we are not a good fit for them because they want us to pay their deductible on their insurance claim because 3 other roofing contractors said they would do that, however that’s insurance fraud and I bet those contractors didn’t explain how they will do that. Again, our reputation isn’t work 1 homeowners deductible or telling 1 homeowner to file a claim when they don’t have enough storm damage to qualify for a roof replacement paid for by their carrier.
I hope this makes sense:)

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I personally have always sold AKW’s vision and behind the scenes if you will with marketing, accounting, managing the business. However, when covid hit and a few attempts to hire, train and retain a team that can do the sales/production portions of the business (initial inspection, walk homeowners through the roof replacement process (either retail or insurance)) I realized quickly that was a current bottleneck in our business. I knew it was time to get a ladder, roof boots, some tools and go to work. Its fair to say I’m scared of heights, I’ve been on a handful of flat roofs with Paul over the years but not many. Not enough to know how to safely complete a roof inspection on my own. The training process began and I was in the field with Paul and our team daily to learn as quickly as I can to duplicate Paul as close as possible. Within months my confidence gained little by little, I found myself on my own more and more with less questions. Fast forward a year and I can confidently say I’ve been on several 12/12 roofs with adjusters, walked many homeowners through the roof replacement process and created maintenance programs for many to prolong their largest investment of their home – the roof!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.akwroofing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akw_roofing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AKWRoofing
• Other: My personal IG: https://www.instagram.com/theamy.walker/ My personal FB: https://www.facebook.com/amy.walker10044/

Image Credits
Paul Walker Jim Silver Alec MacLean John Senac Dashaun Bryant Alex Buker