Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nick Warndorf. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?

Well, since this is about leak investigation, I like to tell the story of my first real water test. I had just been promoted from the field into management at the roofing company I worked for in Louisville, KY. Our company had recently completed a new roofing project at a distillery, and I had been on the sheet metal portion of the project when I was still in the field, so I was familiar with the details. The General Contractor had asked us to help track down a leak at a roof to window/door transition, a pretty common point of water entry. The glass company owner that installed the windows and door had refused to come for the water test on the grounds that it had nothing to do with his work. He also very openly reminded us that he’d been there far too many times chasing the leaks and wasn’t going to spend any more time or money on this job at a loss. The project manager and I conducted the testing, but the only point of observation was below the sliding glass door, which could only be accessed by crawling about 150′ (feet) through a crawlspace about 2′ (feet) tall between the floors of the building. We were able to reach the area to observe the leak which was in fact the door/window assembly and promptly reported it to the glass company owner who was very audibly eating crow on the speaker phone call with the GC. Ever since then it’s been a series of swing stage investigations at 30 stories dangling off buildings, 18-hour shifts in the field, emergency fire response, extreme weather damage, collapsing chimneys, a million varieties of roofing, in and out of crawlspaces, you name it.

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

My road to becoming a consultant started in college when I was studying history. I received a bachelors and a master’s degree in history which really taught me an advanced level of organization and research with overall scrutiny of the facts at hand in search of the best obtainable version of the truth. In fact, my graduate thesis was later published as a book, which has allowed me to remain part of the academic research community, traveling and presenting abroad over the years. Which was fortuitous because I’d always traveled abroad as an undergrad. After grad school I needed work, so I started roofing to pay the bills and moved up very quickly. Within a year I went from entry level installer to custom copper worker to project manager. Within four years I had become a division manager in pre-production and a branch manager in a new city. What I found along the way was that there is tremendous pressure on trades to solve a variety of problems that stray from their specific trade such as roofing. If there’s a leak you call a roofer that’s just the standard, but not every roofer is familiar with every facet of the building enclosure. What we do for our clients as consultants is provide honest and objective feedback, using real world experience, with as many positive options as possible regarding the building enclosure. If there’s a problem or a leak that no one can solve that’s where we come in. If there’s litigation underway or the possibility of litigation, we provide third party subject matter expertise to help guide the legal process. If our clients want to apply the tools of consulting within their own organizations such as a roofing or general contracting company, we provide training and education to help bolster their efforts in serving their clients. I’d have to say that what we are most proud of is our ability to tailor our approach to our clients’ specific needs and to expedite solutions to keep things headed in a positive direction. It would shock you to know how often these remediation efforts are stalled by bad information or failed repairs.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A valuable lesson that I learned in grad school was that there’s no such thing as truth only the best obtainable version of it. I’ve brought this to the consulting world in terms of problem solving because you can never assume that what you see on the surface is ever as simple as it appears. When you’re looking at tough moisture intrusion problems, they’re usually an iceberg with much more to it than is seen. Most of the time when it comes to solving difficult leaks or moisture intrusion problems regarding the building enclosure it is because too many assumptions have been made along the way about what will work, what should work, what could be happening. I remember performing a water test trying to find a mystery leak on a prefabricated metal building, which is often one of the hardest to track and diagnose in many cases. The metal roof and wall systems had hundreds if not thousands of potential points of water intrusion that we had to identify to prescribe a solution. Against my better judgment and at the advisement of the men in the field we assumed a point of entry, prescribed a solution, and left the job to the repair crews without oversight, feeling as though we had successfully remedied the leak. We ignored however the fundamentals of forensic investigation which requires testing and retesting to prove the theory. It’s a mistake I haven’t made since even at times to the detriment of client relationships and opportunities, there is a process for a reason, and we are engaged to execute that process and deliver solutions. Even when logic can dictate otherwise. Trust but verify.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I was raised by my mother along with two other siblings, my older brother and younger sister. She was a single parent after the untimely death of my father when we were all very young. All of us, under 10 years old, had to learn to adapt and thrive in a variety of environments as we moved every two years, which was a trend that continued well into adulthood. We had all moved out by the age of 17 and we’re mostly self-sufficient long before then. There was no first car or health insurance, no family cell phone plan, or allowances. Anything that we wanted we had to find a way to make money to pay for it ourselves. Because of this my older brother chose to join the Marine Corps directly after high school. I think like most kids that joined back then; he was motivated by 9/11 but he also saw it as a quick way out with a nice signing bonus. He was killed before completing his first four years of service in 2006. Along the way he’d always advised me to go to college and get an education and to never chase an easy payday. Thanks to him I pushed myself to complete an advanced degree in the hope that it would serve me for the rest of my career whatever that may be. I also took the opportunity during my undergraduate study to travel the world, backpacking to many less fortunate countries than the United States. Those adventures gave me perspective and taught me what suffering really looks like. However, upon graduating it also became clear that a degree is not enough on its own. So, I set to work demonstrating my dedication to making the best of my situation no matter where it was. Every job I had I treated as an opportunity and made the most of it. Roofing was never the ideal job, but I knew I had no choice but to maximize the opportunity. My hard work and my aptitude in the roofing industry has always been recognized by others and lucky for me I’ve had several influential mentors along the way to help guide me to where I am now. I’d have to say that starting a consulting company and owning my own business is the pinnacle of what I set out to do 10 years ago and the realization that hard work must remain consistent and usually for much longer than one might expect. Overnight success stories rarely happen overnight. However, all the experiences and the learning and the trials that have led up to this point in my life serve me in so many ways in assisting my clients because I have a vast well of personal and anecdotal experiences to share. It allows me to not only connect with my clients as a property owner, but also with contractors, attorneys, and other business owners, simply because I’m able to pivot and relate to their frame of mind in approaching problems and solutions. My life has taught me to adapt to adversity and relate to suffering, but mostly its taught me to be grateful for so many opportunities to grow and allows me to truly love what I do for a living.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.warndorfgroup.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warndorfgroup/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/nickwarndorf

Image Credits
Madi Flournoy, Nikki Warndorf, Jordan White,