What happens when you treat roofing like a finely-tuned trade? Meet Blake Chavis, president of FGA Roofing, who shares his unconventional journey from a high-pressure sales job to revolutionizing the roofing industry. Blake's meticulous approach to understanding roofing systems, much like a mechanic understands an engine, has set his company apart in a market flooded with insurance replacement companies. Discover how his dedication to quality and expertise has built a thriving business with five offices across Metro Atlanta and a commercial satellite office in Nashville.
Join us as Blake recounts his path from stumbling into a roofing gig to identifying an underserved market in Atlanta. Hear how he broke away from the norm to focus on providing top-notch repairs and installations, from minor shingle fixes to luxury slate installs and commercial re-roofs. Blake’s story is not just about business success but also about the importance of mastering your craft—a lesson that resonates well beyond the roofing industry. Tune in to learn how expertise and quality workmanship can elevate any trade.
What happens when you treat roofing like a finely-tuned trade? Meet Blake Chavis, president of FGA Roofing, who shares his unconventional journey from a high-pressure sales job to revolutionizing the roofing industry. Blake's meticulous approach to understanding roofing systems, much like a mechanic understands an engine, has set his company apart in a market flooded with insurance replacement companies. Discover how his dedication to quality and expertise has built a thriving business with five offices across Metro Atlanta and a commercial satellite office in Nashville.
Join us as Blake recounts his path from stumbling into a roofing gig to identifying an underserved market in Atlanta. Hear how he broke away from the norm to focus on providing top-notch repairs and installations, from minor shingle fixes to luxury slate installs and commercial re-roofs. Blake’s story is not just about business success but also about the importance of mastering your craft—a lesson that resonates well beyond the roofing industry. Tune in to learn how expertise and quality workmanship can elevate any trade.
Speaker 1:
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, north Atlanta, where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, stacey Risley. Hello friends and neighbors, welcome to North Atlanta's Good Neighbor Podcast. Today we're here with Blake Chavis with SGA Roofing. Hi Blake, how are you? Hey Stacey?
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:
You are so welcome. It's a pleasure to have you on here. What our listeners don't know is Blake is our expert roofer in both North Buckhead Neighbors and Dunwoody Neighbors publications and it's really plugged into those communities. So I'm really glad to have you on here and introduce you to North Atlanta. So welcome, and we'll just go ahead and get started by having you tell us about your business. Tell us about FGA Roofing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean FGA Roofing. We're a very specialized roofing company. We're not just an insurance roof replacement company. We have five offices scattered all over Metro Atlanta and a bit of a satellite office, mainly for commercial, in Nashville. In Murfreesboro. We can do anything from a small shingle repair all the way to a high-end luxury slate install or a flat re-roof on a commercial building.
Speaker 1:
So you do it all.
Speaker 2:
I didn't realize you had five locations.
Speaker 1:
So that's wonderful. Well, tell us about your journey into this business. Wonderful, well, tell us about your journey into this business.
Speaker 2:
I said this on the radio on Sunday in an interview, and I always hate saying this.
Speaker 1:
I did not mean to be a roofer. That can happen by happenstance Not at all I mean.
Speaker 2:
One of my first job was a sales job for a gutter guard company and it was high pressure sales and I was miserable. I quit after three months, Didn't think I wanted to do sales again until I got a job that was not related to sales. And then I wanted to find a good sales job, Got in with a roofing company and they were primarily residential. It was when insurance really was a craze. There had been a lot of storms. It was a local company, so they were staying busy. Their niche was they weren't storm chasers. So that was a good introduction for me to get into the business. But after a few years of being with them, I saw that the market was being underserved. A faux storm market was created in Atlanta. We're not a storm market. We had a weird pattern of a few storms that we don't usually get for decades, Hit back to back around 2012, 2011. And then there was a discontinued shingle craze, primarily in the Northeast Metro, in the Southwest Metro area. The shingle was discontinued because of a silly defect.
Speaker 2:
Houses were not falling in, but insurance companies Were very proactive and replacing them for the first 10 years. And so all of these roofing companies popped up, but they really weren't roofers. These roofing companies popped up, but they really weren't roofers, they were insurance replacement companies and they were totally subbing these jobs out turnkey. And as soon as insurance work slowed down they were out of business. And what I felt was nobody was treating roofing like a trade. And I have other trades tell me all the time roofing is not a trade because you can't go to trade school for it. But it's incredibly similar to a trade.
Speaker 2:
And so I broke off, started my own company and largely focused on repairs, especially in the residential sphere, because most companies wouldn't even do them. And if they did do them, they did not do them very well because it was such a low ticket item that just wasn't prioritized. And you want to. If you have to have a mechanic replace your engine, you want to use a mechanic that understands your engine. That's a mechanic that can fix it. You don't want to just use a mechanic that can only replace the engine. He can never fix it because he doesn't really understand the product, understand the system. And so after a few years of really focusing on repairs, re-roofs started to come up and our specialty and our process and our understanding of the roof really separated us from the market.
Speaker 1:
Well, that is fantastic. I love the analogy of a mechanic. You would want someone who understands the engine, because that really brings it home to a lot of people. You don't want somebody who can only replace it, because then what happens when something does go wrong with your engine? Very good business model that you created there. Well, are there any myths or misconceptions about the roofing industry that you would like to clear up with listeners today?
Speaker 2:
Well, I don't mean to piggyback on the same thing, but I always do. There's quite a few. All roofers are not terrible, I promise, and over 80% of roofs that are replaced in the United States are not replaced by insurance money. They're replaced by building owner funds or homeowner funds. It really is a proactive purchase most of the time, unless it's an emergency repair Insurance companies who do not replace your roof because it's old, they do not owe you for it. And I'm the big bad roofer when I say that, because most roofers are saying the opposite. Insurance paid for by roof Insurance is an obligation to pay for your roof. When there is documented damage that's covered by your policy, they absolutely owe for it. Unfortunately, that's usually not the case, and what's happening right now in Georgia, in the last 48 months especially, there's been a major crackdown and tightening up of the insurance market when it comes to roofing. I'm not going to mention insurance companies by name because I don't need the litigation, but several have pulled out of the state entirely for home insurance, and it's because of roofing.
Speaker 2:
Vandalism is rampant in the industry and you know, if you have a three-tab shingle, which is a flat shingle you know more of, have a three tab shingle, which is a flat shingle. You know more of your. It looks cheaper. That's not a 10, 12 year roof. That can be a 20 year roof if you maintain it. I don't mean to start rattling off so many misconceptions, but I'm glad that you asked the question. There's so many. You're going to see lifetime ratings on packages and on your contracts at, say, 25 year and 50 year shingles. That's a factory rating that is very rarely accounting for the elements. Um, so you know, you know 25 year or 50 year shingle on your contract or on a package. In reality, the industry will tell you that the 25 year shingle will be closer to 12 to 14 years, you that the 25-year shingle will be closer to 12 to 14 years, 50-year shingle closer to 22, 23 years.
Speaker 2:
One thing with insurance replacement, if you do have claimable damage, if that roof is older than 20 years old, you are going to have a very, very hard time getting it replaced, even if you do have legitimate damage, because at that point they can really point to wear and tear and the aid starts to really morph what is damage and what is blistering, which looks very similar to hail. But I'm bouncing around. So the big thing that I want to hammer in is roofing really is a proactive industry. Most of the warranties that are going to be filed for your roof are purely on material, that's covering manufacturing defects, and you know we like to think those would be honored. But I mentioned that discontinued jingle earlier in the show. It really wasn't. Probably five to eight percent of homeowners, from what I understand, got any money at all for the shingle fanning and it was prorated. So you know, if you had $7,000 worth of shingles, you maybe got $800 after a lengthy, lengthy claim process and you had to replace the roof to get the money. So workmanship, maintenance and being proactive with your roofing system is absolutely key. And just to repeat what I said, it's a proactive industry and not an emergency insurance industry.
Speaker 2:
Now that we're against insurance replacement, well, we're happy to take their money.
Speaker 2:
There's just I'm afraid too many homeowners have bought into having to rely on it. They do not owe for old roofs, they owe for very specific damage and I see lots of roofers really pushing homeowners who are frustrated about a roof claim to change insurance to a certain carrier purely for the roof. The insurance companies are not silly. These are very, very serious companies with large legal firms. They see that you filed a roofing claim. They see you didn't replace a roof and they see you trying to replace it eight months into a policy. It's not going to work, it's going to get you dropped and you're going to lose coverage unless you replace a roof for cash. So, don't you know? Focus on keeping up with the Joneses in the neighborhood and the other people that got lucky with their insurance policy. Maintain your roof and replace it when you're ready or when a real storm comes. There are lots of storms driving around with trucks and ladders, unfortunately, and you have to be really, really careful with that. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
I think that is very good advice for our listeners and just honest truth. You know, I think a lot of people have those misconceptions that insurance owes them, you know for, the worst.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's not. It's not sexy. I'm probably telling people stuff they don't want to hear, you know, but it will. I've seen so many homeowners just get dropped because they kept fighting it and it really wasn't there and they were being led to believe it was there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah Well, so let's shift gears a minute and let's tell our listeners, let's get to know the man behind FGI Roofing. And what do you do for fun when you're not working?
Speaker 2:
I don't have fun. I'm just kidding. I used to work out. I don't do that much anymore, but I really do like to read, mainly nonfiction I find it interesting. I've always been a bit of a history buff. I'm a big nerd for current event podcast, not necessarily politics, but anything current I really enjoy. I like to travel and I'm a big Florida Gator fan. That probably hurts me in this market.
Speaker 1:
But in Georgia I hurt you a little'm a Falcon fan and a Gator fan so I like to lose. Well, you lose with grace, right, that's right. You have to learn that with our teams. Well, so, shifting gears again into something a little more serious. We ask this of all of our guests but has there been a life challenge or hardship that you've faced and overcome and that now you can say, for having been through that difficult time, you're better or stronger for it today?
Speaker 2:
Well, I mean, I think most people today can cite COVID, which is taboo to even discuss now. But COVID was really really hard, professionally and personally. I mean, we could not get material. Number one, so you're trying to scale, we just shot up on our business and then we couldn't get material. So we had to get really creative at the same time and not to totally change the course of our, of our podcast here.
Speaker 2:
My grandmother was in a dementia facility who I was very close to and she passed away from COVID, so COVID was a was a big challenge for me, as it was for everybody else.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, for sure. And then it was so difficult when we couldn't see our loved ones who were in in facilities like that. So I know that was challenging and I appreciate you being willing to share that with us. Well, is there anything else? We're really kind of about to wrap up. Is there anything else you would like our listeners to know about your business?
Speaker 2:
You know now that I've killed the entire mood of the podcast. One thing that we really are trying to push right now is anybody that wants an asphalt shingle. There's nobody better to do it than us. We're happy to give you one. But when it comes to being proactive, there are some incredible synthetic slate, synthetic cedar products, synthetic tile and you know the manufacturers call it a polymer-based product. It's a hard plastic but it does not fade. It's mixed with raw materials and it's incredible. It looks like a real slate and it looks like real cedar at its best, and it will stay that way for 50 years.
Speaker 2:
And it absolutely will not leak. You can walk on it. You cannot walk on real stone or real wood. It's on the roof and those are 75-year systems, the best stone and they're eight times the price. So we're really encouraging people to look into that One. It's a defining feature on your house when you're in a neighborhood and you have a faux slate roof. That looks incredible and the longevity of it and they're maintenance free. So that's something I'm really excited about right now and I hope we can get more people into.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, that sounds amazing. I mean faux, that you can actually walk on and not have the downsides of something that's, you know, seven times more expensive.
Speaker 2:
We see no quality drop off at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
That's awesome. Well, if our listeners want to learn more, if they want to reach out and talk to you about their roof or refer someone to you, what is the best way for them to get in touch?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, firstgaroofcom, we're on all the socials as well. You can call the office 770-209-3823. You'll probably talk to Armina. If you really want me to bore you, you can ask to speak to me. I'm happy to talk to anybody that calls with questions, if you really want me to bore you, you can ask to speak to me.
Speaker 1:
I'm happy to talk to anybody that calls with questions. Well, that's great. Well, thank you so much for being here. It has been a pleasure, and we will have you back for more episodes as you submit articles for the magazines, and we look forward to having you back on, blake. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:
Great, thank you.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's all for today's episode. Blake, Thank you so much for being here, Great Thank you. Well, that's all for today's episode Atlanta. I'm Stacey Risley with the Good Neighbor Podcast. Thanks for listening and for supporting local businesses and nonprofits of our great community.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast.
Speaker 1:
North Atlanta. To nominate your favorite local businesses, visit gnpnorthatlantacom. That's gnpnAtlantacom. That's GNPNorthAtlantacom.
