Coatings and Community Insights from the RCMA - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Ryan Blad of RCMA. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Welcome to Coatings Cast, the ultimate podcast dedicated to the science, art and innovation of liquid and fluid-applied roofing, coatings for surfaces and waterproofing. It's time to roll up our sleeves, put on our lab coats and dive headfirst into the world of liquid protection that keeps your roofs and surfaces in prime condition. The future is here and it's liquid, so don't miss out. This is Coatings Cast where every drop counts in the world of roof and service protection.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Welcome to Coatings Cast. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here to talk about roof coatings. And where is the perfect place to be? At the roof coating manufacturer associations meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota. I am here with Ryan Blad, and we are wanting to talk about why. Why do you have associations? Why do roof coatings need associations? And it is so important you would know that just by being here at these meetings. So let's start with some introductions. Ryan, thank you.

Ryan Blad: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for coming. My name is Ryan Blad. I started in the industry as a chemist, turned to the dark side. I've now been able to work in this industry association for almost 14 years.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Ryan Blad: I've actually started out as a legacy RRCI, Reflective Roof Coating Institute, which we merged with the RCMA back in I believe, 2015 and it's been going strong ever since. So the value of an association, as contractors know from their side, it's probably invaluable in many ways that are hard to measure. But you know when you go because you see the people that are there, you're with people that care about the same things that you do and really what you see there is the amount of information that we can compile as a group, we would never be able to do that on our own. So to be able to get that converse with our colleagues, our industry friends and to be able to make the industry better is really our goal.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You know, in the meetings yesterday, as I was sitting there listening, some of it, in fact, I had one speaker for sure went way over my head, but it was so interesting because you're able to actually say to them, "Can you bring that down? Can we figure out...?" "Yes, here's the chemistry, here's the numbers, here's the data." But how does that affect that installer on the roof? And that really comes through during these meetings.

Ryan Blad: Sure. Yeah. The whole thing about it is, we're doing research that's very important, but we got to be able to convey that to the people that are installing it. And at the end of the day, they may not care about the research, but they care about how it affects their products and how it's going to make their laborers faster, better and how the materials are going to work longer.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, And really taking care of their customers and building owners.

Ryan Blad: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And so when we were listening to everybody yesterday, we had everything from talking about chemical additives, the raw materials, I should say, the raw materials that go into the coatings, all the way to testing of panels that had been out for over seven years and how they performed.

Ryan Blad: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: But let's talk just a little bit about the importance of the raw material vendors who are here working hand-in-hand with the manufacturers to make the products better. What kind of relationships are there?

Ryan Blad: So really, pretty much every major distributor of chemicals that supplies us is involved. So it gives us the opportunity to be able to meet a lot of people at one time. It gives our vendors the opportunity to meet the people they need to in a close-knit group. And really the relationships you can build outside of the event where dinners or group events are paramount.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah. And I learned a lot just in listening to what they're doing from their research in order to know that the products, the roof coatings, are going to perform long-term and also sustainability. I found that... I thought that presentation was really interesting. When you think about, it starts all the way at the very beginning with the raw materials and the research that goes into those.

Ryan Blad: And you can see when she paints the picture for sustainability of how coatings really fit that key, that void, to be able to solve that problem. Buildings are needing to become more and more efficient. Roof coatings allow building owners to be able to do this for much less cost.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah. So when you're looking at long-term with what the RCMA is doing, what are some of the things that they do to help the industry really go to that next level? Because you have some really strong committee meetings.

Ryan Blad: From an advocacy standpoint, the RCMA is heavily involved, especially pushing agendas in Washington. Obviously our agenda is to sell more fluid applied roofing. But really what it comes down to is to be able to group together and understand what's going on in the industry. Someone in California might be dealing with something different than in Minnesota, so we can take those ideas and we can see, oh, contractor training is a big issue. So we can look at how we can develop programs, unified programs as an industry, to be able to make it better.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. And working hand in hand with the contractors. Working hand in hand, again, you have the whole stream that it is coming together. Today we're going to have a contractors panel, and this is I think the fourth or fifth time we've done this. How valuable is that for you? And for you, not just for RCMA, but for your company?

Ryan Blad: For us as a company, it's really insightful to be able to work with these roofers, have them come and open for them, tell us some of the wants and the needs that they have. Things that they maybe wouldn't say in a normal setting, but they feel comfortable in this whole group. And our moderator, Heidi Ellsworth, does a great job of being able to capture, get those personalities really to show.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I think it's really important because one of the things I've noticed 30 years in this industry is that sometimes we just kind of silo, right? You have the contractors over here grumpy about this not working, or excited about that working, but they aren't always communicating that to the manufacturers. And then are the manufacturers communicating that to the raw material vendors? And that's one of the things that I love about this, is you really can bring everybody together and have honest conversations.

Ryan Blad: For sure. And it really helps the vendors too, because a lot of vendors are, in the case of business, the coatings, sealants, elastomer. So what that means is they're selling a lot of products to a lot of manufacturers. They can sit here in this group and they can hear insights from the applicators that we sell to as manufacturers. And what it does is it gives them more strategies, it gives them more understanding as to what our needs are to be able to develop better fillers, better resins, better additives to make those products better.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. Right. One of the things that we're going to talk about a lot today is really the pain points for contractors. And I'm always, we think, oh, it has to be sustainability or, what's going on with the architectural community and stuff. Sometimes it's just the coating gums up my spray gun, right?

Ryan Blad: Sure, yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And so I think it's interesting to have that breadth of knowledge, of going, "Where is your pain? Where's your pain on the roots?" And for production and for labor shortage.

Ryan Blad: Yeah. And the beautiful thing with what most of our contractors are dealing with is the coatings tend to be a fix for many of the problems they're dealing with. We solve the labor problem. We tend to solve the cost problem for building owners. We give a long-term sustainable solution. We can keep products out of the landfill. So it becomes a really good wicket in a toolbox for our roofers to be able to offer as a solution. And as we've seen, when you can solution sell to building owners, you're going to be able to get more deals closed and you're able to sell more roofs.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah. Solutions sell. I like that.

Ryan Blad: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is so true. Future. What are you looking at in the future for RCMA? What are some of the things people should be looking for?

Ryan Blad: I think people will be excited to see the contractor program getting more legs. We're very excited about our association management company taking some really strong effort into developing that. Our committees are strong. So we're looking forward to developing more of a pipeline of people to get into our committees. We have subcommittees. That way we can kind of succession into the board because there's a lot of good young people in our industry that we want to be able to leverage their knowledge and their insights. I guess moving forward, just trying to capture more of that pie and understand where fluids fit in, where maybe some of our downfalls could be and how we can continue to leverage and move forward.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Project of the year is pretty exciting.

Ryan Blad: Oh yes. Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. So brand new, you're going to be seeing this on Coatings Coffee Shop and Roofers Coffee Shop, is a new award for Project of the Year. I really like, they really look across the board at installation, performance, sustainability, innovation. And so contractors, this is for you to submit your projects that you think are award-winning.

Ryan Blad: Yep. There'll be an independent panel of judges that will judge on the rubric that Heidi mentioned. And the whole goal is to be able to give contractors another opportunity to be able to talk about what they do. And we as RCMA are trying to really leverage that to show them that we can help them grow their business by promoting the good news of roof coatings.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And you know what I love is I love that when we celebrate the beautiful roofing jobs that are out there.

Ryan Blad: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It makes me so happy because a lot of times people forget about it because they don't see it.

Ryan Blad: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's up above them. Right?

Ryan Blad: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And there are some amazing jobs out there. So show us your job. So be sure to check out the RCMA, all the information, the data on Roofcoatings.org. It is really something that can help grow your business, differentiate your business, but you can have the research and the data behind it. Of course, they're on both Rufus Coffee Shop and Coatings Coffee Shop in the directories where you can get all the information that you need. Ryan, thank you.

Ryan Blad: Yeah, thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is great. From the road, here we are with the Coatings Cast. So we'll have another day today. We have the contractor panel. We have some awards going out. So we'll probably have some more information for you later on.

Ryan Blad: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you so much for listening to this Coatings Cast. Be sure to check out all of our Coating Cast underneath the RLW navigation or on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Coatings Cast.

Outro: Thanks for joining us on this coating adventure. Stay tuned for more episodes. And in the meantime, be sure to follow us on social media to stay updated with all things roof coatings. Until next time, stay coated. For more information, go to Coatingscoffeeshop.com.