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You know the feeling. Storm season hits, work is everywhere, and the guys around you are building bigger teams. So you build one too. Four or five people in the office, project managers, a sales team. You finally get it all lined up, and the market's flooded. You show up to bid and there are seven or eight packets on the table. Sound familiar? 

Kaleb has lived it from the roof up. He was 7 or 8 when his dad started taking him out on jobs, picking up paper wrappers. By 16 he was running crews, and in his early twenties he took out a loan and bought the sheet metal side of the business. He built his name soldering copper, and Copper Masters Roofing grew out of that. After the 2023 hail season it grew into full roofing. When the market flooded, he scaled back to himself, a project manager, and the same family crew he's worked with for about 18 years.

This one's a real story more than a playbook.

In this episode:

  • Buying the sheet metal side of his dad's business in his early twenties
  • Why he started with copper flashing instead of shingles
  • Scaling down from a 4-5 person office to a lean crew
  • Bidding 390-480 a square while some PE-backed companies were in the 200s and low 300s
  • Building a national following of about 10,000 and meeting builders at the expos
  • Why he tells new contractors not to commingle funds and to give every dollar a job
  • What he'd buy first with $10K: phones, bookkeeping, project management software, and bulk material
  • Quality over quantity

Notable quote:
"Just because you see a ten thousand dollar job come into your bank account doesn't mean all of that ten thousand dollars is yours."

About the guest:
Kaleb runs Copper Masters Roofing, operating under Kaldera Construction, in Mississippi. He's been in roofing for 30 years, started in the trade alongside his dad, and today runs a lean operation with a small team and a crew he's known for nearly two decades. He also spoke at JobTread's yearly event on social media and brand awareness, and now teaches the basics through The Social Charge.

If you've ever built something bigger than you wanted, or wondered what a simpler version of your business could look like, this one's worth the listen.

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