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“Nothing in America happens until something gets sold,” said Michael Kelley. “And hard work is the yeast which raises the dough.” Kelley, the General Manager of Kelley Construction Contractors, focused his presentation at Best of Success on building value with the customer. Right off the bat, he acknowledged that it takes time and effort.

I’ve been feeling pretty good about 2011. There are several signs the economy is rebounding. Many construction-related firms throughout the supply chain have indicated they are gradually climbing out of their respective holes.

Matt Spanton, Vice President of Mastercraft Exteriors in Rockton, Ill., credits new technology with helping him increase sales and boost his bottom line.

Before becoming the owner of Guardian Roofing and Windows in Tacoma, Wash., Aaron Santas worked as a branch manager for a major construction materials distributor. Santas worked closely with a lot of contractors, and he found out that the successful ones had something in common. “Successful contractors watch their numbers, and they know them intimately,” he said. 

Allen Lancaster, the current president of the National Roofing Contractors Association, updated Best of Success attendees on NRCA. “In a tough economy, there’s no shortage of issues,” he said. “My hope for the year 2011 is that we finally get a Congress that is business friendly.”

Whenever pro-amnesty groups would claim we need illegal immigrants to do the work U.S. citizens do not want to do, my blood would boil.

Greg Hoffman is President and co-founder of Roofing Contractor Marketing, a company specializing in marketing and advertising for roofing contractors. (Despite the similarity in name, the company is not related to our magazine.) 

The December 2010 issue of Roofing Contractor magazine will have a breakdown of over a dozen speakers who attended the Best of Success (BOS) conference held in September in Denver.

In the last two weeks, I’ve traveled to Las Vegas twice for construction trade shows. While there, I had to turn off the TV in my hotel room to escape the tidal wave of negative political ads.

Public speaking is tough. As Jerry Seinfeld once noted, “According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”