Get Paid Twice — Flagstone Roofing & Exteriors

Check the arithmetic yourself

Where the second check comes from.

I'm an owner, not an operator. After overhead, warranty calls, the customers who don't pay, the lawsuits and the payroll, I clear about ten percent. A buyer pays a multiple of that number. So do the arithmetic with me.

Your book does

$1,000,000

From your registered accounts, in the year before we close.

I earn ~10%

$100,000

What that million is actually worth to the company.

Buyer pays ~5×

$500,000

The same million, priced as an asset at exit.

Your share

$100,000

10% of your book. Paid on top of every commission you already earned.

I keep four. You get one. Neither of us gets it unless the work gets done — and unless the company actually sells.

And so we're clear on both halves of that

That second condition is real, and it's written into the agreement. I'm not going to soften it.

But let me be just as direct about the other half. I've hired the broker. I've hired the CFO. I've spent real money getting this company sale-ready and I turned down the first offer because it wasn't my number. I'm not hedging and I'm not testing the water. We're selling. The only question left is what the number is and who's still standing here when it closes.

Check one — on every job

The 10/50/50 split.

No games and no house accounts that quietly pay less. Here is exactly how a self-generated job gets divided — and you get paid as the job moves, not at some quarterly true-up.

Step 1 — off the top

10%

of the contract goes to the company for admin, collections, production and supplementing. The back office that lets you sell instead of chase paperwork.

Step 2 — then costs

Job cost

Materials, labor, and everything it took to build the roof comes off next. Real numbers, open book.

Step 3 — what's left

50 / 50

Every dollar of net profit remaining is split down the middle. Half the company's. Half yours. Sell it right and you keep more.

Company-provided leads pay 8% — lower, and here's the honest reason: market-leading leads are expensive and we're the ones buying them. You'll never wonder where the difference went. And every neighbor you pick up while working a company lead is self-generated, which puts it back on the 10/50/50.

Check two — where the number actually comes from

The private equity staircase.

Here's the part almost nobody in this trade has had explained to them. The same dollar of profit is worth a completely different amount depending only on how big the company is that holds it. That's not opinion. It's the published market.

Company size, left to right What one dollar of profit sells for

Under $1M revenue

2.5–4×

Owner-operator shop. Buyer is purchasing a job, not a business.

$1M – $3M

4–6×

Starting to look like a company. Still owner-dependent.

Roughly here

$3M – $10M

5–7×

Real departments, real books. This is the landing I'm standing on.

$10M – $25M

6.5–9×

Multi-market. Institutional buyers start showing up.

The buyer's exit

$25M+ platform

9–13×

PE-backed platform. Same dollar of profit. Two to three times the price.

Read that again, because it's the whole game. Nothing about the roof changes. The crew doesn't get better. The shingle doesn't get more expensive. A dollar of profit inside a $5M company sells for about five dollars. That identical dollar, sitting inside a $25M+ platform, sells for nine to thirteen. Private equity isn't in roofing because they love roofing. They're in it to buy the bottom of that staircase and sell the top.

The part I'm not going to dress up: we're a storm restoration shop, and storm revenue takes roughly a one to two turn discount against a commercial platform with recurring maintenance work. That's why I say five and not eight. You'll find that in ten minutes of searching, so I'd rather be the one who told you.

What this means for your check

Every account you bring moves us up a step.

A producer running his own market is the single thing buyers pay a premium for: growth that isn't one lucky hail season, and a company that keeps producing whether or not I'm in the room. That's not a compliment, it's a line item. It's also the reason I can hand you a full turn without flinching — you're the reason there are five.

And when your payout is calculated, you get a choice almost nobody in this trade is ever offered: take all of it in cash, or roll up to 20% of it forward and ride this same staircase up with the buyer into their sale. Owners call that the second bite of the apple. Normally the owner is the only one who gets one — I've put real numbers on it further down this page.

Check two — the actual numbers

What your book pays when we close.

Your accounts get registered in writing on a schedule attached to your agreement. When the company sells, you're paid 10% of what those accounts produced in the twelve months before closing. Not a share of my sale price — a share of what you built.

Your book, last 12 months	Multiple	Your payout
$1,000,000	1.0×	$100,000
$1,500,000	1.5×	$150,000
$2,000,000	2.0×	$200,000
$2,500,000	2.5×	$250,000
$3,000,000	3.0×	$300,000

There is no cap. Build a bigger book, take a bigger check.

Three things have to be true

I'd rather you hear the conditions now than at signing.

A sale actually happens

This is contingent on Flagstone selling. If the sale doesn't close, there is no payout, and that's written into the agreement. Your commissions are never contingent on anything.

Your book does $1M+

Your registered accounts have to produce at least a million in contract value in the twelve months before we close. Below that, the payout doesn't trigger.

The work was profitable

Across your accounts: 35% gross margin, or 10% net. Sell it right and this takes care of itself. Buy the business with price and it won't.

What counts as your book: accounts you bring and register in writing. Anything already sitting in our CRM before you start doesn't count — this pays you for what you bring, not for what we hand you. Timing: the final number is calculated within 90 days of closing and paid as the sale proceeds come in; escrow holdbacks can stretch that. Your choice: take it all in cash, or roll up to 20% into equity in the buyer's company — see below.

The second bite of the apple

You can cash out. Or you can stay on the staircase.

When your payout is calculated, you can take every dollar in cash and walk — no clawback, no strings, and I will never make you feel bad for taking it. Or you can roll up to 20% of it forward into equity in the buyer's company and hold a position going into their sale.

Here is why that is not a small decision. The buyer is not buying Flagstone to hold it. They are buying it to fold into a platform and sell that platform three to five years later — from the top of the staircase, not the bottom. Your rolled dollars ride that re-pricing with them.

Where your dollars enter

~5×

What a dollar of profit is worth inside Flagstone today.

Where the platform exits

9–13×

What that same dollar is worth inside a $25M+ platform.

A hypothetical, so you can see the shape of it

Say your registered book does $2,000,000 in the twelve months before we close. That's a $200,000 payout. Here are your two doors.

Door 1 — take it all

$200,000

Cash, on the normal schedule. No risk, no waiting, nothing left on the table. This is a completely respectable answer and plenty of people should pick it.

Door 2 — roll the max

$160,000 cash now

+ $40,000 rolled into equity in the buyer's company — the 20% cap.

Your $40,000 goes in at~5×
The platform sells at9–13×
Sponsors underwrite these at2–3× over 3–5 yrs

That $40,000 position, illustratively

$80,000 – $120,000

Total on this door: $240,000 – $280,000

Those are illustrative numbers on a hypothetical book, not a projection and not an offer. The 2–3× is what private equity sponsors typically underwrite a hold to — it is what they're aiming at, not what they're promising, and plenty of deals miss it. Your $40,000 could be worth more than the range above. It could also be worth nothing.

The straight version, because you deserve it: that re-pricing is real and it is published, but it is not a promise. Rolled money is equity, not a note. There is no guaranteed return, it is subject to the buyer's approval and securities law, it can be diluted, and it can go to zero. What it is — and there is nothing else like it in this trade — is the one door where a producer gets to stand exactly where the owner is standing. Most owners never offer it. I am offering it because I would rather you be on my side of the table than across it.

On the way there

The company sale isn't the only thing that pays.

Twelve months is a long time to work toward one check. So there's a board on the wall for the year in between, and everything on it is in the written plan.

$1.5M

Luxury destination trip

$2M

Rolex

$6M

Company truck

How the two work together

Your bonus is a budget. You decide what it turns into.

Hit a production tier and that bonus money is yours. Hit a prize tier and you have unlocked the prize. You don't get both on top of each other — you get one number, and you choose whether it becomes cash in your account, the thing on the wall, or both. We buy the prize out of your bonus and you keep every dollar of the difference.

Example — a $2M year

Accelerator bonus$10,000
Prize unlocked at $2MRolex
The Rolex you pick$7,000

We buy the watch. You keep $3,000 in cash.

Example — a $3M year

Accelerator bonus$15,000
Prize unlocked at $2MRolex
The Rolex you pick$9,000

We buy the watch. You keep $6,000 in cash.

Want none of it on your wrist? Take the whole bonus in cash. Want all of it on your wrist? Pick something that spends the whole budget. It is your money — I just think you should have the option to walk out of a year with something you can look at.

Annual production		Accelerator bonus
$2,000,000		$10,000
$3,000,000		$15,000
$4,000,000		$20,000
$5,000,000		$25,000
$6,000,000		$30,000

Accelerators are annual, paid on closed and collected revenue at 35%+ blended margin, and they're not cumulative — the highest tier you reach is the one that pays. Incentives require the same margin and good standing. Everything here is verified by accounting before it's paid.

And if you'd rather build a team than a bigger personal number: you earn 2% override on collected revenue from reps you recruit and keep developing. Overrides need $25,000 a month in personal production to stay active, and you can't draw an override and a stage commission on the same job.

How I know any of this is true

I didn't read this in a magazine. I interviewed the owners who already sold.

I'm Justin Ledford. I've owned Flagstone for over fifteen years. I'm an owner, not an operator — there's a real company behind me with an accounting department, payroll, supplementing, collections, legal, marketing and recruiting.

Last year private equity put a letter of intent on my table. They flew me in, wined and dined me, and I turned it down — the number wasn't my retirement number. So I hired a broker, hired a CFO, spent real money getting the company sale-ready, and gave myself twelve more months.

Then I went and interviewed the owners who had already sold. I host The Real Construction Owners Podcast — over a hundred episodes, including Adam Coffey, who's done roughly $2.5 billion in home-services roll-ups. I wrote what I learned down in Roofing Secrets Blackbook. I asked every one of them the same question: what would you do differently in the last year before the sale?

What you're reading on this page is the answer. Almost every one of them said a version of the same thing — they wish they'd shared the upside with the people who actually built the number, while there was still time for it to matter.

I live in Costa Rica with my family. I built passive income on the side while I built this. I'm telling you that because it's exactly what I want for the people who sell with me — this business should buy you land, not just a truck payment.

Justin Ledford in front of a hillside property in Costa Rica, branded Roofing Owner Mastermind. — Roofing Owner Mastermind

Justin Ledford holding a copy of Roofing Secrets Blackbook outside a house. — Roofing Secrets Blackbook

The people I've been interviewing sold to these

This is what the staircase looks like from above.

Thirty-eight private-equity-backed platforms. Two hundred and forty-three-plus roofing companies already bought. Every logo in a colored box used to be somebody's family name on a truck. The consolidation isn't coming — you're looking at it.

Map compiled from public announcements, industry sources and market intelligence by Thomas Basch. Updated May 2026. Reproduced here for reference — verify anything on it yourself.

What's behind you

You sell. We carry everything behind it.

Most guys who try to go independent don't fail at selling. They fail at collections, at supplementing, at chasing a sub who didn't show, at the customer who decides not to pay the last draw. I built departments so you never touch that. That's the ten percent off the top — and you can see exactly what it buys.

Your own follow-up admin

Books your adjuster appointments and your closings. One person, assigned to you, so your calendar isn't your second job.

Production

Schedules every build and coordinates the homeowner and the subs. Straight answer: in a brand-new territory you're the project manager until we build it out and hire one. That's the trade for getting the market first.

Supplementing

A department whose entire job is getting the carrier to pay what the job actually costs.

Collections & in-house legal

When someone decides not to pay the last draw, that becomes our problem.

Accounting & payroll

You get paid on schedule, correctly, without asking twice.

Over 20 admins

That's the actual headcount behind a producer here. It's a company, not a logo you borrow.

On leads — the straight version

We buy market-leading leads twenty at a time. You know as well as I do that some of them are junk — wrong number, or they tell you to get off the porch. Flag it within twenty-four hours and we credit the lead back. You don't eat a bad lead here.

One condition, stated plainly: we start investing in leads for a rep after you've brought us $25,000 in business. Not a hazing ritual — leads cost real money and I put them behind producers who've shown they'll work them. Hit $25K and the spend starts.

And when there's no storm damage, we'd still rather you sell the homeowner a two-to-four-hundred-dollar maintenance repair. You get commission on it, and you get paid for the labor if you do the work yourself. Feed the machine and the machine feeds you.

Why this isn't a recruiting gimmick

You're not a cost to me. You're the thing the buyer is actually paying for.

When private equity evaluates a roofing company, two things move the number more than anything else. They want consistent, unbroken growth — not one good hail year. And they want a company that is owner-independent — one that keeps producing whether or not I'm in the room.

A producer running his own territory is both of those things at once. Every market that stands on its own makes this company worth more, in the exact way the buyer is measuring — and moves us up a step. That's why I can hand you one of my five multiples without flinching.

Licensed to actually open your market

We hold the NASCLA accredited commercial general building contractor credential — the exam a large block of states accept by reciprocity instead of making you sit their own. That's the difference between "we're thinking about expanding" and a territory you can start working.

Fourteen states in motion right now

Lawyers paid, filings in, licensing underway. Three of them are already licensed and sitting empty — the map is below, and it isn't theoretical.

Where you'd actually be working

Three markets are licensed and empty right now.

Most recruiters sell you a territory that exists on a slide. Here is the real board — what's running, what's licensed with nobody in it, and what's still at the lawyers.

Running

Dallas · Houston · San Antonio · Austin

Four Texas metros, staffed and producing. When you knock a door here you've got a Google profile with over 600 five-star reviews answering the homeowner's first question before you do.

Licensed · nobody in it

Atlanta · Tennessee · Kansas

We paid the lawyers, sat the exams, and hold the license in all three. What we don't have in any of them is a producer. That isn't a pipeline promise or a someday — it's a market you could be selling in next month with a full back office already behind you.

And you wouldn't be inventing the playbook. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin didn't exist for us either, once. Now they have six hundred five-star reviews between them. You'd be running a route we've already driven four times.

Claim one of these three First producer through the door doesn't join a territory. He starts one.

Days out

Oklahoma · Colorado

Filings in, licensing underway, close enough that I'd hold a seat for the right person.

In motion

Fourteen states total

Lawyers paid and filings moving. The NASCLA credential means a lot of these open by reciprocity instead of starting from zero. If your market isn't on this board yet, tell me on the call and I'll tell you honestly where you sit in the queue — some are weeks, some are further out, and I'll say which is which.

Why the clock matters

The way we make money in this industry is being closed off.

Don't take my word for any of this. Go look it up — I'd rather you show up to our call having already checked.

Then: the adjuster wrote the check

Independent adjuster came out after a hail event, approved the roof, paid in full. Few questions asked.

Then: partial payments and rising deductibles

Depreciation held back until completion. Deductibles walked from $1,000 to $2,500, $5,000, $10,000 and up.

Then: actual cash value roof endorsements

Replacement cost quietly swapped for ACV on the roof surface. The homeowner eats the gap — and the deal gets harder to close.

Now: managed repair programs

This is the one that ends the business as we know it. Under a managed repair or direct repair program, the carrier routes the claim to their network contractor. You knock the door, you find the damage, you file the claim — and the preferred roofer shows up to do the work.

This isn't a forecast. A fourteen-year veteran in Houston told me last week he's already hit it on live claims this year. Look it up before we talk.

I think we have two to three good years left. I intend to use all of them, and I'd rather use them with people who can actually sell.

Straight answers

The questions you're already asking.

What exactly counts as "my book"?

Accounts you bring and register in writing on a schedule attached to your agreement — we both sign off on the list. Anything already sitting in our CRM as an active lead or customer before your start date is excluded. The principle is simple: you get paid at the sale for what you brought, not for what we handed you. Bring the list to our call and we'll go through it line by line.

What happens to the second check if the company doesn't sell?

Then there's no payout, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise — it's contingent on a completed sale, and that's written into the agreement. What isn't contingent is your commission. You'd have spent the year on a 10/50/50 split with twenty admins behind you, which is a good year on its own terms. The second check is the upside, not the offer.

For what it's worth, I'm not planning on that outcome. Broker hired, CFO hired, money already spent getting the company sale-ready, and I turned down the first offer that came in because it wasn't my retirement number. I intend to sell inside twelve months.

Do I have to move?

No. We're opening territories, not filling seats. We have an office in the Dallas region and we're standing up new states continuously — Oklahoma and Colorado are days away as of this writing. Tell me the market you want on our call.

Do you actually give leads, or is that a recruiting line?

We buy them twenty at a time and they're market-leading. Two things to know up front. First, we start investing in leads for you once you've brought us $25,000 in business — before that you're on self-generated work at the full 10/50/50. Second, company leads pay eight percent instead of the 10/50/50 because we're carrying the cost. Junk leads get credited back inside twenty-four hours. And every neighbor you pick up off a company lead is self-generated, which puts it back on the full split.

I have my own company on the side. Is that a dealbreaker?

Tell me on the call. I'd rather hear it in the first twenty minutes than find out later. The comp structure already separates self-generated work from company leads, which handles most of what both of us would be worried about. Bring it up and we'll be adults about it.

Am I going to be forced into somebody's sales system?

No. If you've been doing this a decade you don't need to be retrained into a script, and I'm not going to put a leash on a closer. Sell the way you sell.

What about commercial? I have my own subs.

Then bring them. We've done commercial but it isn't the bulk of our volume, and I'd rather say that plainly than oversell it. If you vouch for your subs, you'd introduce them to our production department, we run our own due diligence — references, insurance, the usual — and then we go.

How does the first conversation actually go?

A twenty-minute call where I learn about you and you learn about the company. If there's alignment, my team emails you the written compensation plan. You read it on your own time. Then we do a Zoom face to face and I answer every question you have. I'm not going to try to close you on the first call — that's not how this works.

I'd rather do it on video than over the phone. I want to see you eye to eye and I'd expect you want the same from someone asking you to move your career.

If we both want to move forward after that, there's one last step. I'll ask for three to five references, and something that backs up the production you told me about — a CRM export, a commission statement, a 1099, whatever you're comfortable sharing. I'm about to spend real money opening your territory, buying your leads and assigning you admin support, so I verify before I do that. Every real producer I've ever hired had that documentation sitting in a drawer already.

My state isn't open yet. How long?

Ask me on the call and I'll tell you where you are in the queue honestly. We're standing up fourteen states right now — lawyers paid, filings submitted, licensing in progress — and the NASCLA credential lets a lot of them move by reciprocity rather than starting from zero. Some markets are days away. Some are further out and I'll say so.

I'm currently in a dispute with a former employer. Does that disqualify me?

Not automatically, and I'd rather you tell me up front than after. I'm not an attorney and I won't give you legal advice about your own agreement — talk to your lawyer about that. What I'll tell you is that we can talk about timing.

Before you click anything

Most people reading this should not book a call.

I have twelve months and a finite number of twenty-minute windows. I'd rather have an empty calendar than spend them being polite to people who were never going to move. So let me disqualify you and save us both the Zoom.

Don't book if you're actually happy where you are.

Not "it's fine." Happy. If your split pays you what you're worth and the company you're at isn't going anywhere, then there is nothing on this page for you, and I mean that without an ounce of sarcasm. Close the tab and go sell a roof.

Don't book if you want to be talked into it.

I'm not going to. I'll ask you questions for twenty minutes, then email you the comp plan and leave you alone with it. If you need somebody else to build the belief for you, I am the wrong owner and this is the wrong offer.

Don't book if you'd need permission.

From a manager, a mentor, a recruiter who owns your phone. If you're not the person who decides where you sell next year, then I'm talking to the wrong person and neither of us gets that time back.

Don't book if you've never done this math before.

If it has genuinely never crossed your mind what a year of your production is worth to the person who owns the company you hand it to — this whole page probably reads like noise. That's not an insult. It just means the offer isn't built for you yet.

Don't book if you don't have a book.

The second check pays on accounts you bring and register — not on leads we hand you. If every job you've ever sold came off somebody else's list and nothing would follow you out the door, then the headline on this page isn't available to you, and I'd rather say that here than let you find it in the agreement. The commission structure still stands on its own. The second check would not.

Don't book if you can't back up your numbers.

Before anything gets signed I'll ask for three to five references and something that shows the production you quoted me — a CRM export, a commission statement, a 1099. Not a hoop to jump through. I'm about to invest heavily in your market and the guys who really produce have this in a drawer already. If that sentence made you uneasy, we've probably found our answer.

And don't book if you need a base salary.

Say it now. I won't think less of you for wanting a floor under your family. I just don't have one to give, and you deserve to hear that in a sentence instead of on minute eighteen.

Still here?

Then you read six reasons to leave and didn't find yourself in any of them — which means you've already run the arithmetic on what your production is worth to whoever owns it, and you didn't like the answer. That's the entire reason this page exists.

Alright — book the 20 minutes You'll leave with the written comp plan whether we work together or not.

Why I'm handing a slice of my exit to the people who built it.

Get paid twice on the book you already own.

Two checks. Same work.