We recently connected with Nicholas Riley and have shared our conversation below.

Nicholas, appreciate you joining us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

One of the best things we have done to show customers we appreciate them is building our referral program around giving back to the people who already support us. In the home services world, so much money gets spent on ads, lead companies, and big tech platforms. We decided we would much rather take that same money and put it directly into the hands of our past customers, friends, and employees of other local home service businesses who refer us.

For us, a referral is a huge compliment. It means someone trusts us enough to put their own name behind our company and recommend us to a friend, neighbor, family member, or customer. That is not something we take lightly. So instead of treating it like a casual “thank you,” we want to make sure people are actually rewarded for helping us grow.

The reason I think this is so great is because it creates a win-win-win. The homeowner gets connected with a roofing, siding, or exterior contractor they can trust. The person who referred them gets paid and knows we genuinely value their recommendation. And we get to grow Driftwood Builders Roofing through real relationships instead of just throwing more money at ads.

I also love that it supports the local business ecosystem. If someone from a lawn care company, pest control company, plumber, electrician, realtor, or another home service business sends us a good referral, I would much rather pay that person than send another dollar to a faceless advertising platform. I think customers and partners can feel that difference. It shows them they are not just a transaction to us — they are part of the community we are trying to build around the business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have been around home services and construction for most of my life. I grew up in Whitefish, Montana, and started working when I was about eight years old. In the summers I worked for my dad doing landscaping, and in the winters I worked for my uncle doing masonry. Whitefish is a pretty unique place, so we were fortunate to work for some really interesting clients over the years, including Drew Bledsoe, Johnny Depp, Kiefer Sutherland, and many others.

But even though some of the clients were well-known, the work itself was never glamorous. In Montana, you do not subcontract out the hard labor the same way you might see in other places. My dad and uncle worked incredibly hard, and they expected me to do the same. Whether it was landscaping, masonry, hauling materials, working in the cold, or doing the small details nobody else wanted to do, I learned early that there is no replacement for hard work. I also learned the importance of doing the right thing, showing up when you say you will, and taking pride in work that other people may never fully see.

That experience shaped me in a lot of ways. It gave me a huge respect for blue-collar work, but it also motivated me to go to college, get good grades, and try to build a career where I was not physically grinding every day. After college, I started my career at KPMG and then Deloitte, and I spent about nine years in consulting. It was a great way to start my professional career. I got to work with a lot of incredibly smart people, learned how businesses operate, and developed a much stronger understanding of strategy, operations, finance, and customer service.

Over time, though, I started to feel disconnected from the work. I realized I did not want to spend my career helping Fortune 100 executives make even more money. I had a lot more energy around the idea of helping everyday homeowners solve real problems with their homes. There is something much more personal and meaningful about helping a middle-class family replace a roof, repair storm damage, install new siding, or improve the exterior of a house they have worked hard to own.

That is what ultimately led me back into the blue-collar construction and home services space. Today, I am part of Driftwood Builders Roofing, an Austin-based exterior remodeling company that helps homeowners with roofing, storm damage, siding, windows, doors, painting, and other exterior projects. We solve problems that are both practical and emotional for our clients. Sometimes that means helping someone through an insurance claim after a hailstorm. Sometimes it means replacing an old roof that is at the end of its life. Sometimes it means upgrading siding, windows, or doors so a home looks better, performs better, and holds its value.

What I think sets us apart is that we try to combine old-school blue-collar values with a modern business mindset. From my dad and uncle, I learned hard work, honesty, and accountability. From my consulting career, I learned communication, process, follow-through, and how important the customer experience really is. Our goal is to bring both of those worlds together. We want to do high-quality exterior work, but we also want homeowners to feel informed, respected, and taken care of throughout the process.

I am probably most proud of the fact that we are trying to build a company the right way. We are not trying to be a storm-chasing roofing company or a sales-first company that disappears after the job is done. We want to be a long-term local brand in Austin that homeowners, realtors, property managers, and other home service companies trust. We are proud to be GAF Master Elite certified for roofing and James Hardie certified for siding, but certifications only matter if the day-to-day work and customer experience back them up.

The main thing I want potential clients to know is that we take their homes seriously. For most people, their home is their biggest investment, and hiring a contractor can be stressful. We understand that. Our job is not just to sell a roof, siding, windows, or doors. Our job is to make the process easier, give honest guidance, and deliver work that we are proud to put our name on.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

Yes, I bought Driftwood Builders Roofing about seven months ago. It was my first acquisition, and in a lot of ways it was the result of several years of studying, saving, networking, and trying to figure out the right path into business ownership.

Ever since I graduated college, I knew deep down that the traditional corporate America path was not going to be the long-term fit for me. I started my career in consulting, first at KPMG and then at Deloitte, and I am grateful for that experience, but I always wanted some form of financial freedom and ownership. Early on, I got really interested in the FIRE movement and started listening to the BiggerPockets podcast. My original plan was to become financially free through real estate investing.

After about a year of looking seriously at real estate, I realized two things. First, building real wealth through real estate can be a great path, but it is usually a much longer path than people make it sound. Second, I realized that being a landlord did not really excite me. It felt a little too passive, mundane, and slow-moving for the kind of career I wanted to build.

About five years ago, I learned about entrepreneurship through acquisition, which is the idea of buying an existing business instead of starting one completely from scratch. That immediately clicked for me. I started reading everything I could find, listening to podcasts, studying deals, and learning from other people who had done it. I read books on small business acquisitions, listened to basically every episode of the Acquiring Minds podcast, and got involved in the local ETA community here in Austin. There is a group that meets every month for happy hours, and I started going consistently so I could meet people who were actually doing this in real life.

For about three and a half years, I knew this was the path I wanted to take, but I did not yet have enough money to seriously buy a business. So I kept working my regular job, saved aggressively, and treated that season as my education. I spent nights and weekends learning about small business finance, SBA loans, deal structures, due diligence, seller relationships, and what makes a good acquisition target. It was not glamorous, but it was the foundation I needed.

Then last year, I officially started my search. For about six months, I treated the search like a second full-time job. I was spending at least 35 hours a week looking for businesses, talking to brokers, meeting owners, reviewing financials, and trying to find the right opportunity. I looked at a lot of companies that were not the right fit before I found Driftwood Builders Roofing.

What stood out to me about Driftwood was that it was not just a generic contracting company. It was a real local business with a strong reputation, a long operating history, good people, and a service that homeowners truly need. Roofing and exterior work are not optional when something goes wrong. If a roof is damaged, leaking, old, or affected by hail or wind, the homeowner needs someone they can trust. That felt meaningful to me.

The acquisition process was exciting, stressful, humbling, and much harder than I expected. Buying a small business sounds clean and simple from the outside, but in reality there are a lot of moving pieces. You are trying to understand the financials, the customer base, the employees, the operations, the reputation, the risks, and the seller’s goals all at the same time. You are also working with lenders, attorneys, accountants, insurance providers, and a lot of other parties while trying to make sure the deal is fair for everyone.

I was fortunate that Driftwood was a great company, and that made the hard parts worth it. The previous owner had built something real over a long period of time, and I saw an opportunity to take that foundation and help modernize and grow it. My goal was not to come in and change everything overnight. My goal was to preserve what made the company good, while improving the systems, marketing, customer experience, and growth strategy around it.

Looking back, I am proud that I stayed patient. I spent years learning before I ever bought anything, and when I finally started searching, I was very serious about it. Buying Driftwood Builders Roofing was not a random opportunity I stumbled into. It was the result of years of preparation meeting the right business at the right time.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

One story that illustrates resilience for me is how we responded when we realized our customers’ needs were changing faster than our business model.

When I bought Driftwood Builders Roofing, it was already an amazing company with a long track record in Austin and Central Texas. For nearly 20 years, the company had primarily been known for roofing. That made sense because roofing is a critical service, especially in Texas where hail, wind, heat, and storms can create major issues for homeowners. The company had built a great reputation around helping people with roof replacements, roof repairs, storm damage, and insurance-related roofing work.

But after getting into the business, I started noticing a shift. More and more homeowners were not just looking for a roofer. They wanted one trusted exterior contractor who could help them with the whole outside of their home: roofing, siding, windows, doors, painting, and sometimes additional exterior repairs. A homeowner might call us because they needed a roof, but then they would mention that their siding was failing, their windows were old, or they wanted to repaint the exterior. In other cases, we would lose an opportunity because another company could bundle multiple services together.

That was a little frustrating at first. We had great people, great salesmen, and a strong reputation, but the market was telling us that being excellent at one thing was not always enough. Customers wanted simplicity. They did not want to manage four different contractors if they could find one company they trusted to handle the full exterior project.

So instead of getting defensive or saying, “This is how the business has always worked,” we adapted. We started expanding from roofing into a broader exterior services company. That meant building relationships with the right crews, learning the details of siding, windows, doors, and painting, and making sure we could deliver those services at the same standard people expected from us on roofing. It was not as simple as just adding new services to the website. We had to think through operations, pricing, quality control, materials, vendor relationships, scheduling, and the customer experience.

That process required resilience because growth is uncomfortable. It would have been easier to keep doing only what the company had always done. But I realized that if we wanted to serve homeowners well and stay competitive long-term, we had to evolve with the customer.

Now, what started as a challenge has become one of the most exciting parts of the business. We have multiple revenue streams, and we can help customers in a much more complete way. If someone has storm damage, old siding, failing windows, or wants to improve their home’s curb appeal, we can be a real partner instead of just one small piece of the project.

To me, resilience is not always some dramatic one-time event. Sometimes resilience is being willing to listen when the market gives you feedback, admit that your original plan needs to change, and then do the hard work to build something better. That is what we are doing at Driftwood. We are taking a great roofing company and evolving it into a trusted exterior company while still keeping the same values that made the business successful in the first place.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://driftwoodbuildersroofing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/driftwoodbuildersroofing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/driftwoodbuildersroofing
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/driftwood-builders-roofing
• Twitter: https://x.com/DBuilderRoofing
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4jHFc2a4BD2mPcw7G6J6aQ
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/driftwood-builders-roofing-manchaca-3