Finding the path to roofing

By Emma Peterson. 

How taking risks—and refusing to quit—launched Ian Davis into industry‑leading success.  

Recently, TopShield sponsored an episode of Stories From the Roof featuring Ian Davis, the founder of Cairn Contacting. Established in 2017, Cairn has quickly raised the bar on ethics, service and quality with recognitions such the BBB Spark Award for Ethics and a business standard of Lifetime Workmanship Warranties. While the path ahead for Ian and his team seems clear now, it wasn’t always that way. 

In fact, roofing wasn’t really on Ian’s radar when he graduated high school. He shared, “My background is architecture. I went to college for architecture and I got a two-year degree in that, and then realized that I had more of an appreciation for the art than a desire to be the artist in architecture. So, I switched gears and went over to business administration.” It wasn’t until he graduated college and moved out to Colorado that Ian got involved in the trades.  

In those first few years out of school, he worked as a project manager for an exterior paint company. It was in this role that he learned more about the trades. He explained, “The company I was at actually expanded their business beyond paint to kind of doing just about everything on the exterior side. And I was the one managing those multi-trade projects.” Soon, Ian was ready for a new challenge and set his sights on new construction project management, which led him to a new company.  

At that company, he worked as a 1099 independent contractor, which made him realize that he could go a step further and just start his own company! From there, the rest was history:  

It was good timing. I was working as a 1099 and then a couple of friends came to me in 2017 and said, ‘Hey, that first company you worked for, they scaled it back. They're only doing paint now. The doors are open.’ That’s where Cairn Roofing came from. Fast forward to today, we’ve renamed to Cairn Contracting as we have grown from just roofing to just about everything on the exterior except for paint. 

Looking back at his journey, Ian’s advice for others finding their paths is to keep going. He explained, “Don't quit. It is absolutely worth it. It doesn't feel like, I've heard it said that an entrepreneur never has two great days in a row, and it's honestly true. But the other truth is that it is going to be so much more worth it and fulfilling if you just don't quit.” 

Listen to the whole Stories From the Roof episode to hear more of Ian’s insights!