RCS Influencer Ken Kelly says that there are many ways that contractors can make a difference in their communities from a roofing standpoint. 

Editor’s note: Ken provided this video of he and Ivan Elias during their participation in Roofing Day 2019. He offers great ideas on how to get involved locally from a governmental standpoint and a community service standpoint. You can watch the video or read the transcript below.

Hey, RoofersCoffeeShop® community. This is Ken Kelly, Kelly Roofing from Naples, Florida. We're up in Washington DC today, taking part in Roofing Day. Our goal is to spread the good word of the roofing industry, hopefully get some senators and house representatives, congressmen, and women to support our industry. So, thinking about this event, and this month's topic of how we as roofers go about helping the community. I've got Ivan Elias with me. He's our operations manager. He runs 230 employees. Everything from inside office on the operation side all the way through supervisors, crew foremen, and roof technicians out in the field.

And a couple of things that we've come up with when it comes back to how we serve our communities from a roofing standpoint, a couple of things, you can get on local committees and boards. For instance, if you have Code Enforcement Agency or a Licensing Department, they're always looking for volunteers who are willing to help out and dictate new legislation codes, enforcement, or help decide on cases or things that are going on in your community. It also helps you look like the expert to say for instance in a sales presentation, that you're on the Code Enforcement Board. It really helps give a lot of credibility to making sure that you're going to do the job right if you are awarded the bid.

Some other things you can do is help by volunteering, giving away free roofs, helping veterans, participating in honor flight, and those types of things. And when it comes to the government, there's always issues that are coming up that impact us as business leaders, as individuals, as community, as a general community population and whether it's city council, or it's county commissioners, they're always looking for input from the public. So, don't be afraid to attend those meetings, sign up and speak because it really does make an impact.

We're in DC today, and it's really amazing to see how well received our message is. We're sitting down with our senators and our congressmen and they're listening to us. They care. They want to do what's right. The thing that surprised me the most is they don't always know; we assume that they know what our industry issues are. And they don't. They don't all come from a contractor background. They might be in different industries and they just don't know the challenges that we face.

So, if anything, you're helping to educate them so they can make good decisions, which will eventually help us. When it comes to you supporting the legislative side of your community, just participate. Everything from the smallest town hall meeting all the way to something grand like this here in DC. Whatever you do, just participate. So anyways, thanks RoofersCoffeeShop community, and hopefully we'll talk to you again next month.

Ken Kelly is President of Kelly Roofing. See his full bio here.