Welcome to Panda Vision!

Host: [00:00:00] All right, welcome, everyone, to our first episode of Panda Vision. I'm thrilled to announce that our incredible staff has voted to name this podcast Panda Vision, beating out some of my favorites, Tucker Talks, Panda Perspectives, and Scott's Corner Panda Insights. But everybody came together for Panda Vision, so I'm so happy to get this off the ground. Just want to set the tone a little bit about what's to come, what to expect. We'll be bringing you a new episode every other week. And while we'll focus on answering your questions in some of these early episodes, we're excited to add more content as the show grows. My personal goal for this podcast is to really work on building a stronger connection with our team and community, sharing insights, and fostering some open dialogue.

Host: [00:02:00] Before we dive into your questions, I just want to start with the quarterly state of the Panda Union and update you on where we are. Our people right now, employees throughout the company, are really focused on securing their financial futures with some impressive momentum. We've been working with a host of different consultants, and what this has translated into in the second quarter of 2025 is that our employees have really been making contributions into their 401ks. We are actually up over 109% year-over-year comparison to the second quarter of last year, which is awesome, especially when you consider that the major market indexes right now are up 24% since April 8th of this year. They're hitting their all-time highs right now. I know a lot of our employees are super pumped to see the performances on their 401ks, so I just want to say, if you guys are not putting in right now, this is a really good time to get involved. We've had a rough six months; it was a little volatile for a while, but the second half of 2025, people are really, really bullish on, so please come and talk to HR and get that going if you haven't started.

Host: [00:04:00] On the other financial fronts, I think a lot of people knew we've been working hard with M&T to increase our credit lines so we could have more access for growth. We really struggled through that in 2024, but coming into 2025, we've been able to get M&T on board, and they've actually doubled our credit facility now, which is going to give us a lot more of what we need for all the growth plans that we have. Outside of the financial components, we've made some other huge investments over the last year from a leadership standpoint. Working with Sheba, Jason Daniel's sister, we've been working with her now for over a year. We've been working with Matt Foss for several years now, who's really helped us lay out the entire landscape that we work from. We had an amazing experience working in Austin, Texas with everyone. We were able to work with another consultant by the name of Steven, working specifically on the five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lencioni to really enhance collaboration and work on a host of things from top to bottom to just make us better leaders.

Host: [00:06:00] The coaching sessions have included AI-driven components, obviously, and getting Bamboo launched, text-driven lead generation components, TurboClaims tool for streamlined claims management. There really has been a lot going on. Our internal branding right now, I really feel, is thriving. The podcast with PandaVision is looking to become a cornerstone of our connection with you guys. We're also going to be rolling out some consistent content throughout the TVs in all of our offices and just delivering these brand presentations to unify our messaging. I think some of you have seen some of this going on in different offices. You've been checking it out. That's really a quick rundown. Obviously, there's a lot more going on than that, but let's get to your questions.

Host: [00:08:00] Getting to some of the questions, our first question comes from Crystal G. Crystal would like to know, what advice would you give an employee that just accomplished their first year in the company? It's a really good question. In the beginning with Panda, if you had been here for a year, you were a grizzled veteran. Now that Panda is coming up on five years, August 8th, so a little plug for Panda there. If you've been here for a year, I would say continue to work and refine your craft and really continue to excel on what's in front of you. I know we're in different times. You know, my grandfather worked at two places in his entire career. I don't know exactly what the math is right now, but it's something like by the time someone is either 25 or by the time they're 30, they've already worked in like seven or eight different jobs somewhere in that. And I think it's we've come into this place where everything just comes right away. We click a button. It shows up. It's your food. It's this. It's instant gratification. And so there's this Irish like I got to grow. I got to move. I got to go to the next thing. Well, growth isn't always about like, well, I need to be this job. I need to be this manager. Right. A lot of times, again, I'd come back to it's like just continue to focus on your craft. How are you better than you were yesterday? So I would say be patient. Right. Continue to excel at where you are. And more opportunities are going to be afforded to you before you know it. The company's growing super fast. And then I would say thank you for all your hard work and for being here for a year.

Host: [00:10:00] Our next question is coming from Andreas. If you made a lateral move as a CEO to another roofing company, what are a few of the skills and the strategies or knowledge you would use to be successful? The second part of the question is, do you think you would be successful? I'm going to answer the second part. Of course, I would be successful. Right. So I think obviously I would draw upon a lot of things that I've learned while I've been here. If I made a lateral move, I think one of the things it's become very clear to me is the absolute importance of having the right people and having the right processes in place. And you're going to need different people and you're going to need different processes as the company moves. And you could even look into the future and say, well, to be successful at this level, I'm going to need this person. I'm going to need this process. But the reality is, is this you're just not in a place to get there yet. Right. You can't bring that person on board yet because that person wouldn't even want to be a part of your company until you've gotten to the right place. So one of the mantras that we've used pretty much since the beginning is what got us here is not going to get us there. And I think I would take that to the next company or any company that I got to or was working with at any level. And just the realization that, hey, this is the way we're operating. This is the way that things were getting done. But if we're going to take it to the next level, we're going to have to have a different set of people and processes there.

Host: [00:12:00] Our next question is coming from Brian A. Talk to us about, ask not what your employer can do for you, but what you can do for your employer. I think that was something I said in one of our trainings. So he's putting it back in front of me. So, you know, as we're working on and implementing different processes, whether we're talking about culture or values or work processes or whatever might be going on, we're a community. This is not a top down. Everybody do what I say scenario. We are looking for people in this organization that are willing to hold themselves accountable. They're willing to hold other people accountable. If it's always following on us as the owners to come down and check to see if people are doing the right things. Are you embracing our values? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? Then we're not going to make it to where we're trying to go. Right. So for me, this is about people doing an accounting of themselves and what have they done to invest back into the company versus it coming from the company perspective and us just constantly investing into the employees, which you are happy to do. We will continue to do. And we're always going to be looking to improve upon that. But I honestly believe at this point where Panda is at, we need to get everyone involved in doing the same thing.

Host: [00:14:00] Next question is coming from Jason S. They're asking, you know, what specific cultural elements do you believe are the most critical to your long term success? That's a really good question. I don't know if I'm going to look at it from a perspective like my long term success, more like from, you know, Panda's long term success. You know, we have our vision. We have our mission. Those are the things that really define who we are, more importantly, where we're going. You know, I think for the company to have a success for any company to have a success, they really need to have a target. They need to have something that they're working on and heading towards that, in my view, really goes beyond, you know, I'm just going and punching a clock. Like, why are we here? Why are there individuals out there that are so in love with the brand that they would put it on their body? That they would put a Harley-Davidson tattoo on their body, right? You know, the people working in that company and working at Harley-Davidson, you know, have to feel this massive sense of pride that the consumers and the people that they're working with, their customers are so embedded in their brand that they're willing to put it on their bodies for life. Because they believe that they're working on something that's much larger than themselves. So, I think it's important that we continue to work on and embody a culture where we're really focused on working on something bigger than just going and punching a clock.

Host: [00:16:00] And what we have right now, guys, our final questions coming from Roland D. And they're asking, what does the mission statement mean? All right. So, what does it mean, you know, a better home for our employees and a better experience for our customers? You know, that's what the mission statement is. That's what's being asked. Well, what it means, if you notice, is that the first half of the mission statement is about you. It's about the employees. It's about the people that are here at Panda. And what it means is, and why are we using the word better and not best, right? Because I don't believe that it's realistic to say that we are the best at this, that we have the best culture or we're doing the best for our employees. There may be a rating system at some point in time, some magazine that comes out and says, yeah, these people are the best. But are they really? You know, and for me, it's not about us being better than our competition. It's about being better than we were yesterday. So the idea is that we're constantly investing. We're constantly changing. We're constantly reaching out to you and trying to find out what's important to you. And then it's on us to try to work back and try to meet that standard.

Host: [00:18:00] And then secondly, and this was not on accident, we actually made a decision to do this, but a better experience for our customers. Our customers are super important to us. We believe that if we invest in our employees first, they will take care of our customers. That's the idea. But when we talk about a better experience, it's how can we go beyond just checking the box, just showing up and putting a roof on there? What can we do to have to really like just blow their doors off, have them be so excited about the experience that we just had that they're going to go tell their friends and family about it? We've been in situations and I had this conversation yesterday and we have an app called GTR we use to it's a way of us getting customers or would be people into our business that will actually go out there and refer business on our behalf. We've had situations where people that haven't even had work done by us were just so excited to be around us in different conversations that they got onto the app and they actually went and told their friends and families about us and they hadn't even gotten work done.

Host: [00:20:00] And so we want to talk about these things, but we also want to walk them as well. We know that we're not hitting the middle of the target on every single job that we're doing, but we work hard to audit those times when we don't get it right. And we're trying to increase our communication with our customers so we can continue to improve upon that. So we can really master building a better environment for our employees and we can master a better experience for our customers who bring those two things together. We just see very long term success. Before I wrap up, a few things. A long awaited naming of our panda mascot. And actually we attempted this a few years ago and then it just kind of fizzled out. We really didn't follow through and name it. So there's some very interesting names that were thrown out, but there was really overwhelming support for two. The winner is Bamboo Panda, obviously Bamboo being the name of our new CRM, so I think it's pretty fitting, and Bamboo is a pretty cool name for a panda. A close second was Ferg in light of Daniel Ferguson, who's no longer with us, so a very close second followed by Pandy in third. So I'm happy to say Bamboo is the big winner. But in the end here, thank you for joining me for our first episode of PandaVision. Keep sending in your questions, and we'll see you in two weeks. We are the bear.