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“Because your company is only as STRONG as you are.”
Forward-thinking roofers tune in to get help building STRONG companies, sales teams, leaders, systems, marketing, relationships, culture, and financials.
Whether you own a own a roofing company, manage one, or sell roofs - subscribe to the channel for content that will help you:
1) Close even more roofing sales.
2) Adapt to new roofing industry trends and changes.
3) Take control of your roofing marketing and lead generation.
4) Improve D2D roofing sales.
5) Build the roofing company of tomorrow.
Hosted by Adam Bensman
- Started in D2D roofing sales in 2011
- Former Roofing Company COO (multi-state)
- Creator of the Roof Strategist Sales System (used nationwide for retail + storm)
- Founder of The Roofing STRONG Alliance by TAMKO™ (formerly known as the Roofing & Solar Reform Alliance)
- Author of the #1 Best-Selling Book: The Roofing Sales Survival Guide: Beat the Odds, Overcome Yourself, and Win Big
Content produced on or before 5/13/26 was previously produced by The Roof Strategist, TAMKO makes no representations or warranties regarding the content.
Burnout can dang near kill you.
It is real.
It is prevalent in the roofing space.
It ruins marriages, causes divorce,
has people turn to alcohol, drugs, or
other unhealthy behaviors to disconnect.
And if you're not careful, it will sneak
up slowly until one day you reach a
breaking point that you cannot ignore.
And at that point it is too late and your
two choices are to quit or bear down and.
Find a way through it, and it's often in
the hardest time of your life, like the
two times that I experienced burnout.
But before I share those
stories, this video is for you.
If you are someone who is nearing
burnout right now, this video is for you.
If you're someone like me who jumps outta
bed, wildly passionate racing through
the day, it's nine o'clock at night and
you just wish there was more time, but
that feeling is melting away and being
replaced by pure dread and drudgery.
And this video is for you
owners and managers and leaders.
When you're witnessing this in, in your
team and you know that they've been
busting their butt and they just need
some, some kind of a way and a path to tap
back into that passion that they had that
you're watching just kind of fall apart.
So if you're in any of those camps, Watch
this video and please share it because
it can help all of us survive burnout
and enjoy our life in roofing sales so
we can smash our income goal and give
every customer an amazing experience.
Welcome or welcome back, Adam Zeman
here and thanks for joining me today.
The reason that I do what I do is
because in my estimation, 66% or so
of first year roofing sales reps quit
or get fired, and burnout is an often.
Cause of that.
And some people burn out really early.
And for those that do survive,
many of them burn out later.
And it again ends up in divorce,
alcoholism, uh, destroyed relationships
that aren't ending in divorce,
poor health problems and more.
So in this video, I wanna share with
you two really quick stories of how I.
Burned out and the most recent
one was within about a month ago.
But the, the big life adjustments that
I've made, and you can say, Hey, great.
I'm watching a video from a hypocrite
who burned out twice and I was gonna
tell, teach me how not to burn out.
Well, the point is I'm not a saint, but I
do believe that I'm on the path upwards.
And I know that from the feedback from
the people around me because this video
is actually inspired inadvertently
from John Comerford on our team.
And John said to me, Adam, You've
got like a zen about you lately.
You're calm, you're focused,
you're present, you're here.
It's like a new version of you, and
it's largely in part to these seven
different tips I'm gonna share with
you that will help you avoid burnout.
So let's get started now.
First, quick story.
Uh, I, in my past life when I was
in roofing sales, I became hyper
focused on financial gain and growth.
And I, I got really messed up in my
head where I tied my net worth to my.
To my personal worth, and I remember
being on a treadmill before I, uh,
by the way, before I stopped using
the treadmill, because a 12 ounce
curl was a much easier way to relax.
I remember being on a treadmill,
running, visualizing my next
financial goal, hitting it.
I mean, if that's not screwed
up, I don't know what is.
Quickly thereafter, I ended up saying,
Hey, that's too hard to work out.
Let's just jump to the old 12 ounce curl.
That's easier.
I ended up gaining 30 pounds.
Uh, my health slid, my
personal relationship slid.
I chased money and I ended up in the
ICU thinking I was having a heart
attack before I was even 30 years old.
With a chest infection.
And that chest infection is,
when I say chest, that's the,
uh, sac surrounding your heart.
And they said it's
heavily linked to stress.
And the outcome was, you'll be fine.
It'll hurt, whatever, it'll go away.
Or option two, they need to go in and
actually relieve the pressure and the
fluid buildup from that infection.
And again, heavily linked to stress.
So the, the nurse comes over, she
goes, are you under any stress?
I'm like, honey, sit down.
Grab a notepad.
Let's chat.
So the answer is stress
is not good for you.
Next time I burned out, which was not
too long ago, it was about a month ago,
and it was coming off the tail end of the
highest stress time in my life, speaking
at 50 different events in 26 weeks.
So it's six months.
I spoke at 50 events.
Um, Bouncing off in from
literally coast to coast.
Like I went from Philadelphia
to la, uh, all over the place,
two to three events in a week.
I did have Christmas and New Year's off,
but high stress, high pressure to perform,
lowest sleep, especially with time zone
changes, poorest diet and no time for,
for fitness and really no personal life
because I was only home a few days a
week and I was trying to get caught up
with, with my business and my personal
life, and then back on the road again.
So, uh, during that time, which then
later led to high, extremely high levels
of anxiety, anxiety attacks, which I
had never had, uh, as an adult before.
I had them as a child,
but not as an adult.
And it was just a, it was a, it
was a horrible, horrible thing.
And it was a wake up call.
So, uh, I'm not sitting here
preaching as a saint, like I've
got everything figured out.
Zen meditation guru.
But what I am sharing is
practical advice that's helped
me, and I hope it can help you.
And I do hope that you can contribute by
dropping a comment in the comment section
below, sharing your tips to avoid burnout.
So let's jump right into
tip number one, shall we?
Uh, tip number one is probably the most
important, uh, change you can make.
And it's this little thing, your
phone, get it outta your bedroom.
Uh, what we often do is we have it set
on our end table, and it's our alarm.
And it buzzes.
And then we wake up and we're like, oh.
And we turn the alarm off and
then we see our, our phone
calls, missed calls, voicemails.
We have our text messages, we have
our team chat, and then we have our
emails, and then we, we we're into it.
And then we're in reactive
mode, absolutely instantly.
The first, second of the day,
we literally wake up to work.
We wake up in reaction mode.
I gotta do this, I gotta do this.
And then we're frantic and we're anxious.
So what Sheena and I say is,
there's no contraband, meaning
your phone allowed in our bedroom.
We keep our phones plugged in, in the
laundry room, which is a separate room.
We have alarm clocks in the room.
That's it.
Now I get up.
I don't have this stuff, uh, fully
flushed out on today's agenda, but with
my morning routine, I don't even go in
my laundry room to get my phone until I'm
done and ready to actually start my day.
So tip number one, get your
phone outta your bedroom.
Buy a digital alarm clocking, get 'em
on Amazon for stupid, stupid cheap.
All right.
Tip number two is boundaries.
If you're anything like me, I used to
respond to calls all the time, day,
night, weekend, text messages, coming
in, emails all the time, and someone once
said to me, Adam, you teach people or
train people how to communicate with you.
If you respond on a Sunday at
6:30 PM they expect to respond
at seven when they email back.
So instead, what you can do is simply.
Set boundaries.
You can do that in your email signature.
I check email Monday through Friday,
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM That's it.
I'll get back to you during then.
All right, then in your voicemail,
what about this example?
Hey, thanks for calling
Adam, the roof strategist.
Thank you so much for calling.
I check my voicemails Monday through
Friday between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM If this
is an emergency, please shoot me a text.
We'll get you taken care of right away.
Thank you so much again for calling.
I can't wait to serve you.
All right.
Just something like that where
it says, here's the timeframe in
which I'm available to serve you.
And that way for the people that
push back at me and they say,
Adam, what about an emergency?
They'll call twice.
If you say it's an emergency, text me.
You're going to look at it and
see, okay, crap, there's a leak.
I gotta go run this thing.
Right?
Or some, the crew just
fell through the roof.
Something crazy happened.
I gotta jump on it.
All right, so that's
number two is boundaries.
Tip number three is sleep.
I drank, started to drink the Kool-Aid
that like sleep was for the week and
that, you know, the real people get up and
start their day at three in the morning
and I became, I was inching my time up.
I became a about a 5 35 5:00 AM
to 5:30 PM natural wake up time.
I started inch it sometimes about
4 45 or so, but I kept finding that
I'd go to sleep a little bit later.
And then I, I started finding that I
was just really draggy all the time.
Uh, my brain wasn't like working properly.
I just saw David Goggin speak at the
Owens Corning Platinum Conference,
and he said I, that he was, you
know, surviving on minimal like.
Two hours of sleep a night.
For many years, his adrenals went haywire.
It's called adrenal fatigue, and
it turns out it's a real thing.
And that was happening to me.
And he says now it's eight
or nine hours of sleep.
Non-negotiable.
So now I have a bedtime.
I'm in bed between eight 30 and nine.
Lights out at nine.
My alarm goes off at six.
And I used to be ashamed to say, oh, I
sleep, uh, I sleep until six o'clock.
Well, guess what?
I sleep until six.
I do a meditation while I'm laying in bed.
Instead of zipping myself
up, I calm myself down.
And that leads me to tip number four.
So tip number four, after I wake up
for my eight to nine hours of sleep.
And I do my meditation instead of, again,
waking up, grabbing my phone, being
zipped up into phone mode, and then
drinking coffee and getting zipped up.
I zen out and do my
meditation to calm down.
And then David Goggins
inspired this one as well.
He says, I do something that sucks every
single day, and for me that's running.
And I began to run every single morning.
Get my workout in.
Doesn't matter how cold it is,
doesn't matter how crummy it is.
I'm out there.
I had a flight the other day.
It was, I had to leave for like 7:00 AM
I got up, I went to bed extra early, got
up about five or five 30, I can't recall.
I threw a headlamp on, I live in the
middle of nowhere in the mountains.
It's pitch black in 20 degrees out.
And I went for my three mile run cuz
that was part of my, my self care.
So exercising first thing, cuz otherwise,
if we exercise after work for many
people, I know some folks are good with
this, but for me, after work, I'm tired,
I'm hungry, I'm ready to eat dinner.
And then I, instead of getting my workout
in, I'm, I'm like, well, I gotta go eat.
But then that takes time and then it's
too late to work out or I eat and then
I'm too full and I don't wanna work out.
Cause I feel like I'll barf.
So I just get it in and I don't
have to worry about it later.
All right.
There's tip number four, exercise,
first thing in the morning,
whatever that means to you.
If you're not a runner, who cares?
Go lift weight, sit on
a rower, go for a walk.
I started doing this, by the way, by
simply going for a walk, ease into
it, and then it turned into running.
All right, tip number five.
This is more of a recent
one for me as well.
And it's reading something
non-work related to disconnect
from the day I got lost in these
fantasy books, and I love it.
I get lost in this new world.
I felt weird, like a, like a, like
a bizarre teenager, like a dork.
And then I, now I'm, I've finished this
one, it's like 750 pages or something,
and it was like, I'll try something new,
but there's a second one in the series.
Let me try the sample.
Well now I'm halfway through that,
Sam, that second book and there's
a third one, but I love that.
I get sucked into this story.
I'm not watching tv.
I'm lost in a new world.
I disconnect and then I just,
I fall asleep and I love it.
It's amazing.
And I wish I had done that earlier.
So there's tip number five,
reading something to disconnect
each and every night.
All right, that's not business related
cuz I used to do that at night and then my
mind's spinning all night long with ideas.
Tip number six is planning an
organization every single day.
Doesn't end like today, will not
end until tomorrow is planned.
So tonight, by the time I'm done with
work, and I'm filming this now at,
uh, five, just drive 5:40 PM my day
will not be done until I finish this.
I look at what I'm doing tomorrow,
when my meetings are, and what tasks
I need to get done, and I'm organizing
my day, what gets done when, and now I
know exactly what I'm doing tomorrow.
And in fact, I already have most of
my week pre-planned from last week
as I'm going through everything now.
What does that mean to you?
Plan your day the night before.
Every day you plan the next day.
That also means batching
your time in your mornings.
You wanna do your non-income
producing activities, meaning you
can't be selling it's seven to,
you know, 10:00 AM in the morning.
What we wanna be doing is
our administrative work, our
maybe our follow up emails.
Some follow up calls with with
folks on their way to work, so I
guess that is income producing.
You could be doing your supplements, your
paperwork, updating your crm, all those
activities that kind of bog you down,
get 'em outta the way at the right time.
So when you do get busy, all that
stuff can get filled up with the real
income producing activity, your sales
appointments, generating leads, knocking
doors, meeting with insurance adjusters.
Again, storm retail doesn't matter,
but planning your day in organization.
And on that light, one of the, the
pro tips that I have is when you are
working in roofing, uh, in roofing
sales, what we end up doing, and
for many of us is time just fills.
And then we try to like sprinkle in
our personal life around work, but then
we get busier and busier and busier.
So those sprinkle times dwindle.
And then a year, two years, the
five years, 10 years goes by, you're
like, I haven't taken a vacation.
Which happens to me, by the way.
It was like, Up until this
year, I think it was like three
years before I had a vacation.
And instead, sheen and I sit
down and we have planned out
our entire year vacations.
We just got back from a
four-wheeling trip to Moab.
It was amazing.
Okay, our we're going to
to on a vacation, to Cabo.
We're gonna go see my
family for a family reunion.
We saw her family, which was
pre-planned for a lake house
weekend and we rented a lake house.
All of these things are pre-planned,
so that way when work gets
busy, we just work around it.
So if you're someone that feels like
work, just kind of overwhelms you,
pre-plan your stuff and, and you'll
just work your stuff around it.
I know it'll be scary.
It was scary as heck to me,
but I promise it'll work.
Which leads me to tip number
seven in my absolute favorite one.
This comes up a lot in the
studies of anxiety and health and
wellness, uh, which is having fun.
Go do something that is fun.
You need to fuel yourself.
People would tell me this.
I'm like, that's boring.
Just work.
Get it done.
Let's go.
And now I've found just such
rich refueling of living life.
And speaking of fun,
that's why we went to Moab.
I mean, I just got back last night.
Sheen and I, we hooked
up our four-wheeler.
Her mom and her and her, her stepdad
came out and we went out and just were
in the desert and it was gorgeous views.
We had some super fun four-wheeling, one
really sketchy spot where everyone got
out because if I was an inch over, I'd
roll hundreds of feet down a mountain.
Really not a fun time.
Whew.
Makes me sweat thinking about it.
But we had a blast and
we built that time in.
So do what fuels you.
Have fun.
Do the hunting trip, the fishing
trip, the outing, the bucket list.
Trip.
I, I, I'm making up for lost time.
My friends.
I just went to see the Northern
Lights in Alaska, uh, not long ago.
This winter is in March.
And again, built that in right after
my, my breaking point, by the way.
It's what, what prompted that one?
Uh, it was just gorgeous.
So have some fun.
So in summary, quick the seven
tips to avoid burnout, phone.
Get it outta your bedroom,
get an alarm clock.
Number two, set boundaries on your
phone, uh, in communications for
your voicemail and your email.
Number three, sleep.
Don't shortchange yourself
eight to nine hours a night.
Number four, exercise
first thing in the morning.
Number five, when you go to bed at
night, read something that allows you
to get lost in a world and disconnect,
and don't read business books at night.
Number six, plan and organize your days.
Plan the night before.
Structure in all your vacations
so everything can build around it.
And then number seven, have some fun.
Go do it.
That's all for this video.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Just cuz our time here
is about to wrap up.
Doesn't mean your in my time has to.
So if you haven't yet done it, I
invite you to join me inside our free
training center right here or text
the word free to 3 0 3 2 2 2 71 33.
That's 3 0 3 2 2 2 71 33.
Or if you wanna hang with me here
on YouTube, you do things, you're
really gonna love this video and
I'll see you in the next one.