We were lucky to catch up with Ryan Spencer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ryan, thanks for joining us today. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?

One of my personal core values was introduced to me by my father and it is taken from Proverbs 22:1 “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.” This has been our true north when addressing growth and problems that arise.  While there have been plenty of opportunities to take the easy path and save a dollar, it would violate our values and eventually destroy everything we are trying to build at Sharp.

We try to never let ourselves get to a place where we don’t address, readdress, adapt, reconsider, or rework our processes. When you are growing, oftentimes it is to a place you have never been before, so you end up having to react to problems you couldn’t foresee. I have surrounded myself with individuals who share my passion for growth and in many ways are better at the growth than I am. We meet regularly and try to follow a regimented meeting structure to keep us on track and pursuing our goals.

Communication always seems to be the achilles heel of businesses, whether growing or not.  We are constantly looking at implementing automations within our process to help our clients feel more connected with their project. Automation has been a time saver and a game changer for our clients. When communication happens regularly and without the need for human oversight, it allows you to do more with less and control the experience you want your clients to have.

To my fellow business owners, while you are critiquing, evaluating, and forced to look constantly looking at the weakest parts of your business, remember that you only have to adapt because you are winning the trust of the communities you are serving and need to continue to be the best for them.  So hold your head high while humbly addressing and strengthening the weaknesses of your business, so that you can enhance the experience for your clients, retain the amazing talent that has helped you get here, and propel you into the future!

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.

A little about me. I am the husband of fifteen years (as of 2023) to a beautiful lady who I met in church. We are the parents to six wonderful children who are the joy of our life.

In 2007 I started a mobile oil change business with a friend. We traveled from business to business and home to home providing preventative maintenance services to our clients. The country was in decline and 2008 hit, causing the business to decline. My business partner left me and I was forced to try to manage on my own. The result of that was the dissolution of the business.

Just a few weeks prior to stepping away from the business, my father called to inform me that a friend of the family, who was a missionary in Bulgaria, had recently returned to the states and was working for a roofing company who specialized in insurance losses and restoration. He thought my brother and I would be good at the job and said we should come down and train with him. So we drove down to Houston and began our journey in roofing. Within two weeks we were hooked and started working in Columbus, Ohio. “Herky Jerky” would be how I would describe that first year in the industry. There was so much information to absorb, and having never been in construction, we were starting from ground zero. With determination and just enough naivety, we made it through that first season!

I came home to my beautiful bride being 8 months pregnant with our first child, and roughly three weeks later we welcomed her into the world. Life was changing.

I worked for that company for another year and with our second on the way, decided it was time to put roots down and stay a little closer to home. We purchased our first home and I began my employment as an inside sales representative for a local building supply company where I expanded my product and installation knowledge to include most things exterior!

Two years into that job I received a call from my brother, who owned a roofing company, and he enticed me to jump back into the field again! I worked for him for three years and got the itch to start my own company with a friend.  March 5th, 2016, Sharp was born!

We grew pretty rapidly from 0-2.8m in the first three years. I purchased the business from my friend in 2020 and we have doubled twice since that time, with last years numbers hovering right at 9m.

We are a Tech Forward roofing company, emphasizing automations both in communication and estimating. We are committed to Tech and Talent stacking our team to become West Michigan’s premier roofing contractor.

We are determined to uphold our reputation in the community and have earned many awards for both excellence and ethics. Our crowning achievement was earning the 2019 Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethics. We have focused on Google reviews from day one and have at this date, 414 5 star reviews, with a total review count of 416.

Life is good and we are grateful!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I don’t know if this is a lesson, more a personal development story. I am an extravert and enjoy meeting and talking to people. One day in our management meeting, our production manager was speaking and I interrupted him to interject my opinion. He quickly reprimanded me for interrupting, to which my office manager echoed his angst toward my constant interrupting. I was shocked! This was a blind spot! I love people and always thought of myself as a team player, and this flew in the face of all of that. The apologies couldn’t come fast enough and I began a journey of developing a sensitivity toward this weakness. I realized that I valued the opinion of myself more than I respected the opinions of others. I was listening to speak, not listening to understand. I continue to catch myself, but have worked to develop the skill of genuinely listening and it has proven to be such a blessing, as it has revealed the competency and skill of our team, further building my trust in them, and hopefully their trust in me, as we continue to pursue excellence for our clients and ourselves!

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

The year was 2020, we were coming into winter, our slow time, and receivables were not keeping up with payables, and we were stretched beyond our limits. My office manager, who handles the books, comes in and says, “Hey, we’re broke and you owe us all money!” Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite like this, but that’s the way I took it. I typically don’t panic, but I was definitely worried. I reached out to Consumers Credit Union, where I had a pretty strong relationship. I said, “Hey, we’re broke and I owe my people money!” Okay, maybe it wasn’t said quite like this, but pretty close. The problem was that lines of credit weren’t just handed out with 24 hour notice. The team at Consumers (yes, I’m giving them a major shoutout here) pulled a rabbit out of their hat and within 5 days I had a line of credit and was able to make payroll. Crisis averted. Moral of the story, collect money as fast as you can, and develop strong partnerships with your lending institutions.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sharppros.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharpprofessionals