Earlier this year, Roofing Insights CEO Dmitry Lipinskiy sold his roofing business, Storm Group Roofing.
There were several reasons why Lipinskiy decided to sell his roofing business, but unlike some roofing business owners, it wasn’t financial hardship or legal entanglements that precipitated his dissociation from Storm Group Roofing.
“I am no longer the owner of Storm Group Roofing, the company I started over seven years ago,” Lipinskiy says.
“Nothing bad happened. There was no bad event like a lawsuit. We weren’t running out of money. Everything was good, but I want you to know why I did what I did.”
Keep reading to learn the seven reasons why Lipinskiy sold his roofing business!
1. Owning a roofing business was never the end strategy
For Lipinskiy, being the owner of a profitable roofing company was rewarding, but he also knew that his career as an entrepreneur would also involve other ventures.
“I always knew that my roofing business was not the end game,” he says.
In addition to his roofing company, Lipinskiy also owns and operates several other businesses related to roofing.
This includes Directorii, the only homeowner-contractor connection platform that promises to back up each job registered on the site with a $20,000 guarantee.
“I’m going to dedicate ten to fifteen years to Directorii and then I’m either going to sell it or pass it on to my kids,” says Lipinskiy.
“I love the roofing business. I love the clients. I love my team, but I always knew that I was destined to do more beyond owning a roofing business. Selling it was the best way to move on instead of closing it or running it into the ground.”
2. Lipinskiy is not money-driven
Some of Roofing Insights’ detractors are convinced Lipinskiy is just another money-hungry roofing contractor, but that notion could not be further from reality.
“When I was running my roofing business, I would sign a contract for $50,000 or $100,000 to do roofing jobs. I would go home with a check in my pocket, but it never motivated me,” Lipinskiy says.
“On the other hand, if I taught a class for free to fifty people, or even made a YouTube video, it would give me goosebumps because that is what I always wanted to do. I’m a teacher by heart. I never wanted to have the biggest roofing company. I am a competitive person, but once the roofing business reached $5 million per year in revenue, everything just became about the numbers.”
3. Tired of doing the same thing
Lipinskiy has shown over the years that he isn’t afraid to take on new challenges.
When it came to his roofing business, Lipinskiy had built the company to the point where it no longer needed him to be an active presence in order to be successful.
As a result, Lipinskiy found himself seeking new ways to stimulate his creative and entrepreneurial spirit.
“Once I built my roofing business into a machine that could run itself, I didn’t have problems that needed to be solved,”
he says.
“To compensate for this, I started teaching and inviting people to my business. We had over 500 companies visit us in the last few years.”
As many know, having more free time also led to Lipinskiy establishing the Roofing Process Conference, as well as the Roofing Business School.
4. Lipinskiy’s educational background
Many years ago, Lipinskiy had ambitions to teach theater back in his native country of Russia, but through a series of events, Lipinskiy ended up immigrating to the United States and eventually embarking on a career in the roofing industry.
Through everything, Lipinskiy still maintained his desire to teach and give back to others, and thanks to YouTube, Lipinskiy was afforded the opportunity to pass on his extensive knowledge regarding how to run a roofing business.
“When I started making YouTube videos, I felt like I had found myself. Now I can actually release that inner Dmitry who can go and become a creative person again,” he says.
5. The roofing business is a liability
As mentioned, Lipinskiy built his roofing business to the point where he no longer had to oversee the daily operations, but that didn’t mean that he was off the hook if a problematic situation ever arose.
Not being present every day also left Lipinskiy susceptible to missing foundational flaws in his roofing business, which if left unaddressed, could have the potential to cripple his roofing company.
“For the last couple years, I was not involved with the roofing business. My team did not see me because I was only there five to ten hours per week,”
he says.
“The only time I had to be involved was when someone in a major position had to be terminated, if someone quit, or if we had an accident.”
Ultimately, Lipinskiy realized he could not be a part-time business owner, and thus began looking into how to sell a roofing business.
“When you own a roofing business, it’s 24/7, 365. I accepted that, but the problem is it started jeopardizing my other businesses,” he says, revealing another reason why he felt it was time to sell his roofing company.
6. Roofing Insights
At the time of this writing, Roofing Insights has over 42,000 subscribers on YouTube.
To this point, Lipinskiy has created valuable roofing-related content, but he admits that much of the content he produced in the past had to be modified in order to not subject his roofing business to legal action or irreparable harm.
“You have no idea how many times I got legal letters related to the content I was publishing. I always had to be cautious about the content and how it could damage my roofing business,” he reveals.
“All of that wasn’t fair to the employees at my roofing company, so now whatever content I do for Roofing Insights isn’t going to hurt my former roofing company.”
7. Directorii
At this rate, Directorii could outperform Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, and BBB (Better Business Bureau) and become the largest homeowner-contractor connection platform in the roofing industry.
To accomplish this feat, it will take a large amount of capital and man-hours, but already Lipinskiy is seeing progress.
“It’s going to cost me a couple hundred thousand dollars just to finish the initial website, but we already have over 500 contractors on Directorii,” he says.
That’s quite impressive for a company that just launched in late 2020, and it is why Lipinskiy is convinced his method of connecting homeowners and contractors will work.
“Nobody has yet to connect homeowners and contractors in a way that makes people say, `yes, this is how you connect the two,’”
he says of Directorii.
“We are already connecting at least 200 contractors with homeowners every month. That’s huge results for a company that has only been in business for around six to seven months.”
The rise of Directorii, plus the conflict of interest the platform created with his roofing business, is just one more reason why Lipinskiy had to say goodbye to his former company.
“With Directorii, I had to remain impartial, so I sold a profitable roofing business in order to build another profitable company that realistically has the potential to solve a huge problem within the roofing industry,” Lipinskiy says.
To learn more about how Directorii is already connecting homeowners and contractors around North America, visit their website today!
