During a recent trip to Atlanta, Georgia, Roofing Insights CEO Dmitry Lipinskiy caught up with one of the owners of ESCEX Roofing, Nick Barzegar.
Barzegar, like many other roofing contractors, is an entrepreneur.
But it took Barzegar time to develop into a successful businessman.
To better understand his background, we have to go back in time, to a point when Barzegar was a recent college graduate who was just finding his place in the world.
“I’m in corporate America,”
Barzegar recalls of those earlier days.
“I’m working for TJX. They’re a Fortune 500 company, and in corporate America, it’s all politics. You climb the ladder and god knows when the ladder ends because you’re slaving yourself away for someone else.”
Barzegar knew working for TJX wouldn’t make him happy, but he also didn’t have an exact plan for how he was going to be able to escape the rigors of corporate America.
Then one day his father-in-law began pushing him to start his own business, something that is common practice in Iranian culture.
“When you meet an Iranian, they’re usually an engineer, doctor, or they own a business,”
explains Barzegar.
“If you’re not a doctor, your mother says you could have been an astronaut, and it keeps going and going. That’s just how it is because nothing is ever good enough.”
Feeling the heat from family, and from himself, Barzegar made the bold decision to start his own business, but in order to do so, he also had to find a business partner.
He then took to his social media accounts to see if anyone in his circle was at a similar juncture in their professional career.
This is what led to him reconnecting with a past acquaintance by the name of Adam Humphrey.
“My friend Adam sent me a private message and asked me what I was looking to do. I told him I was looking to start a roofing company,”
Barzegar begins.
“He called me a son-of-a-gun because he told me to do the same thing six years ago.”
Fortunately for Barzegar, Humphrey proved to be the ideal candidate for a business partner because he had years of experience working for Storm Team Construction.
In addition to having a solid background in roofing, Humphrey was also looking for a new career path after Storm Team tried to convince him to move his family to Ohio.
Says Barzegar:
“Adam told them, ‘I can’t move my kids to six feet of snow, strip malls, and TGI Friday’s. I’d like to stay in Atlanta.’”
Besides not wanting to move states, Humphrey also wanted to invest in Storm Team, but they were unwilling to commit to that type of partnership.
These differences ultimately opened the door for both Barzegar and Humphrey to begin their partnership.
“I got the gas. I’ve got the car. I’ll put you in the driver’s seat and give you all the gas you need, and I’ll teach you how to drive it. You just have to promise that you’ll trust me,”
Barzegar remembers Humphrey telling him all those years ago.
Barzegar told Humphrey that he could trust him, and from there the two launched ESCEX Roofing.
As they say, the rest is history, but you can also check out more of the ESCEX Roofing story by watching the video above!
And before you go, don’t forget to smash that subscribe button on all of Roofing Insights’ social media channels!
