A FIELD MANUAL FOR ROOFING COMPANY OWNERS DOING $2M–$20M A YEAR
Your agency's report says you're winning. Your phone says you're not.
The Roofer's Field Manual shows you where the calls actually went, why the people you pay every month can't see it and how to install the fix once and own it for good. The whole system is in here, including how to build it without us. No retainer, ever. Read it in a couple of evenings.
REQUEST FORM 01/04
FIG. 1 — THE ROOFER'S FIELD MANUAL, FIRST EDITION
SECTION 01 / WHAT MOVED
The shift has numbers now.
1 in 100
Local businesses ChatGPT recommends when a homeowner asks who to call. Everyone else is silent.
SOURCE: SOCI LOCAL VISIBILITY INDEX, 350,000 BUSINESS LOCATIONS — CITED IN CHAPTER 2
45%
Consumers who used AI to find a local service last year. The year before it was 6%.
SOURCE: BRIGHTLOCAL LOCAL CONSUMER REVIEW SURVEY — CITED IN CHAPTER 2
19 → 14 → 9
Inside the book: a roofer's June call counts across three years, while eighteen months of agency reports showed green arrows. He had paid them $39,600.
FROM CHAPTER 1
The book walks you through running these numbers on your own market in about an hour, on a Sunday morning, without paying anyone.
SECTION 02 / YOU HAVE FELT IT FOR A WHILE NOW
You have felt it for a while now
The trucks are still moving. The crew still shows up. The work is still good. But the phone rings less than it did two years ago and nobody can tell you why.
You half-blame the agency you pay every month. You half-blame the economy. You half-blame Google for messing with the algorithm again. Half-blaming three things means you act on none of them, so the summers get quieter and you keep paying for the version of marketing you signed up for a few years back.
The agency in Atlanta sends a PDF every month with green up-arrows on it. Rankings up. Impressions up. Something up. Meanwhile your actual calls are down and those two facts sit on the same page like they have nothing to do with each other.
That gap is the whole problem. The report measures things that go up while the thing that pays your guys goes down. The agency hasn't lied to you. They have told you the truth about something that stopped mattering. The book gives that gap a name, a mechanism and a fix you can own.
SECTION 03 / WHO THIS IS FOR
If this is you
You started in the trades and went out on your own somewhere around year eight. Or you took over from your dad. You have got a yard, a foreman you trust and a husband or wife at home who knows what payroll Friday feels like. You have spent fifteen years building a reputation in two or three zip codes.
The peers you would call to compare notes are quiet about it, because they are doing the same math at their own kitchen tables and landing on the same non-answer. The supply rep at the counter has watched it happen across half his accounts. He is not going to be the one who explains it to you.
If you run storm work out of Texas or Oklahoma, it looks a little different and it is the same shift underneath. The out-of-town crews that used to win on door-knocking now show up online the morning the hail hits, before your trucks are even loaded.
If that read like your week, the book was written for you.
REQUEST FORM 02/04
First name and email. That is the whole form.
SECTION 04 / CONTENTS
Seven chapters. Short on purpose.
I cut everything that was not earning its place. About 120 pages, roughly 29,000 words. Most owners will finish it across two evenings on the couch.
Why the calls slowed without you changing anything, and how your own phone records prove it faster than any report your agency ever sent.
Where the calls went. How homeowners pick a roofer in 2026, why there is no page two to climb anymore, and the twenty-minute test that shows whether you are in the answer or in the silence.
Not crooks. A model. How agencies get paid, why the honest answer to your AI question costs them the account, and why nothing on that call is a lie.
The fix gets a name: the Compounding Visibility System. Why it is not more ads, more blogs or a new website, and the difference between renting your calls and owning them.
The whole blueprint. The Foundation that gets you readable to the tools homeowners now ask, the Engine that compounds your visibility week over week and the Iteration Loop that learns what is working in your market and doubles down. Enough detail that you or somebody you hire could build it without us.
Two weeks of install, week by week. Why the first thirty days look quiet on purpose, when the first signals show up, and the front-office work almost everyone misses.
Three things to do the morning after you finish reading. Half an hour each. None of them costs a dollar.
EXHIBIT A / FROM CHAPTER 1
The supply rep at ABC Miramar leaned on the counter and said three of his biggest accounts had gone quiet on him. Same neighborhoods, same homeowners, same trucks driving past. Different result. He'd been selling shingles long enough to know what a slow week feels like. This wasn't a slow week.
He didn't say what was wrong. He didn't have to.
“You're recommended or you aren't.”
THE BOOK IN ONE SENTENCE. CHAPTER 2 SHOWS YOU WHICH ONE YOU ARE.
SECTION 05 / FROM: A. MACARTNEY — TO: THE OWNER
I watched this happen for a year before I understood what I was looking at.
Roofing companies I worked with were running the same trucks, the same crews and roughly the same marketing they had run for years. The phones were ringing less. The owners knew it. They told themselves it was the economy. I told myself something close to the same thing, because the dashboards I was looking at weren't telling me anything different. Pattern recognition is most of what I have ever been good at and the part of me that should have caught it sooner was looking at the wrong dashboard.
By the time I worked out what was actually happening, two of those companies had lost ground in their own markets that I don't think they will get back. A homeowner who hired a different roofer for a job your trucks used to win is a homeowner you don't get a second swing at for fifteen years. The neighbor across the street watches the new roof go on and does the same math when her own roof starts to fail.
This book is the version of that year I wish I had been able to hand those operators twelve months sooner. The work would have been the same. The losses would not have been.
I am not a roofer. I have never carried a bundle up a ladder and I'm not going to pretend I have. I started out a private before I ever made officer though, so I know the view from the bottom of the ladder. What I know is where homeowners look before they call, and where they have started looking instead. You know roofing. I know the other half. The book is me handing you that half, in plain language, with nothing held back.
Alastair
SECTION 06 / INCLUDED WITH THE BOOK
The book, plus the two pages you'll actually pin up
The Roofer's Field Manual
The full book. Seven chapters, about 120 pages. Read it on your phone or print it for the truck.
The Monday Morning Checklist
The three actions from chapter 7 on one printable page. Half an hour each. The first one takes thirty seconds and most owners do it before they finish their coffee.
The Agency Report Decoder
One page that tells you, for every number on your agency's monthly report, whether it is a phone call or a step on the way to a phone call. Bring it to your next agency call.
An agency would call the decoder an audit and bill you for it. You get it free, plus the book and the checklist, because some of the people who read it will want help installing what it teaches and they will remember who handed them the whole blueprint and asked for nothing.
REQUEST FORM 03/04
The book and both checklists, in your inbox in about a minute. If chapter one tells you nothing your agency hasn't, delete it. You've lost ten minutes.
SECTION 07 / THE PART MOST BOOKS LIKE THIS LEAVE OUT
Three honest ways forward. The book treats all three as real.
OPTION A
Build it yourself.
Take the blueprint in chapters five and six and put it in with your own team or a nephew who is good with computers. You will get the pages and the content engine working at a level that moves your numbers. The book gives you enough to start.
OPTION B
Hire someone else with the blueprint in hand.
Take it to a freelancer or a smaller shop you trust and have them build it. You control the cost. You own what they build.
OPTION C
Have us do it.
If you read the whole thing and decide you would rather we built and ran it, that is what we do. One-time build, then we hand you the keys. You own the pages, the content engine and the system they run on. Not a license you rent. Not a thing that vanishes the day you stop paying. No monthly retainer dressed up as a service. The agency model is the thing this book is trying to get you out of, so we are not going to sell you another one.
That is the spine of the whole thing. Own what gets built. Fire the agency if you decide to. Stop renting results that vanish the day you stop paying. The book shows you the entire system so you can choose for yourself, including the option that never sends us a dollar.
SECTION 08 / WHAT THIS BOOK WON'T DO
It won't make you a marketer. The skill is still reading what is in front of you and acting on it. If you can read a roof from the truck before you climb the ladder, you have got most of what you need.
It won't replace doing the work. The system makes the phone ring. Your crews still climb the ladders.
It won't sell you something on every page. There are three places in the book where I mention what we do at Strategyc. You can ignore all three, finish the book and walk away with a working plan.
It won't promise you overnight results. The mechanism compounds. It does not spike. The first thirty days look quiet and anyone telling you different is selling you the same shape of problem you are already in.
It won't tell you to fire your agency tomorrow. You might. You might not. The book puts the real numbers in front of you so you can make that call honestly, instead of on a Tuesday in a bad mood after a slow weekend.
“WHAT'S THE CATCH”
Fair question. You have been pitched by every agency on earth and your bullshit detector is working. Here is the straight answer.
The book is free because some of the people who read it will want help putting the system in and they will think of us when they do. That is the whole model. We give away the entire blueprint, including how to do it without us, because the people who decide to hire someone want to hire the team that had nothing to hide.
You give an email so we can send you the book and a few short follow-ups about what is in it. No card. No salesperson calling your cell. If the follow-ups aren't useful, one click and they stop. That is the deal, start to finish. It arrives as a digital book you can read on your phone or print for the truck.
WHO IT IS FOR
- You run a roofing company doing two to twenty million a year.
- You have a real crew and a real reputation in your market.
- You suspect something has slipped that the monthly report isn't showing you.
- Retail or storm. San Diego or Mesquite or Tulsa or Greenville.
WHO IT IS NOT FOR
- Guys looking for a hack or a hostage agency to blame.
- Anyone who wants a magic Tuesday instead of something that compounds over months.
- Owners who would rather not know the number.
SECTION 09 / ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SERVICE
Started out as a private in the Territorial Army, Britain's version of the National Guard, then joined the regular Army as an officer and finished as a major. The trade he kept from it is the one that matters here. Reading the difference between what the dashboard says and what the patrol coming through the gate says.
SPORT
Held a BASE jumping world title. Wrote a book about that life, Perfect Madness. Relevant here for one reason. He finishes what he starts and he does not bluff about risk.
BUSINESS
Ran four startups. Now builds owned content and visibility systems for home-services companies at Strategyc, where he watched the shift in this book happen in slow motion across his own clients.
He will be the first to tell you he is not a roofer. The book is built on the half he does know, handed to the half you do. He lives on Whidbey Island with his three kids.
The Roofer's Field Manual
Free. Yours in about a minute. Useful whether you ever hire anyone or not.
TIMING / READ THIS NOW
Every month you wait is a month the fix is not compounding. The install runs two weeks. The first signals show up around week eight. Real growth builds from there. Start now and by the time your busy season comes around the system is already answering homeowners in your zip codes, running on infrastructure you own. Wait and you start the clock later, a season behind the contractors who did not.
The book takes two evenings. The math takes one.
REQUEST FORM 04/04
PS. If you only read one chapter before deciding anything about your marketing, read chapter 3 before your next agency call. It will change the questions you ask on that call, and the answers will tell you most of what you need to know.
END OF TRANSMISSION