By Emma Peterson.

Trent Lovewell shares how customer service, attention to detail and learning from mistakes have guided his roofing career.

From understanding the basic terms like fascia and lap to being able to navigate jobsites and rooftops safely, there’s a lot for newcomers to the roofing industry to learn. This learning curve is something the Trent Lovewell of Weatherguard Inc. knows well. Roofing was not Trent’s first career; in fact, he spent decades as a basketball coach. To learn more about how he made the switch to roofing, we sat down with him for an episode of Stories from the Roof.
 

The switch to roofing began as a summer gig for Trent, before it eventually became his full-time occupation. And, looking back at that time in his life, Trent mostly recalls how much he was learning. He shared, “I learned a lot from John Higgins. One of the first things he taught me was to prioritize patience and customer service.” He elaborated, “Whenever someone has a leak, it feels catastrophic to them. But not every leak is a ceiling caving in. I had to learn how to help customers calm down and understand that.”

Another thing he remembered learning early on was that he would never be done learning. He explained, “There was definitely a learning curve and one of the things I quickly realized was that if you're in this business and you're not learning something every day, then you need to quit. Because it might be day 10 or day 410, but you’re still learning.”

And it is this prioritization of continual professional development that Trent highlights to any of the new guys working under him. He shared, “Pay attention to detail and do your best to make everything good for the owner, pretend it’s your house or building. Treat it like yours.” He continued, “You will make mistakes, I've had tears down my face before because I messed up. But what matters is that you learn from that and work to make sure it doesn’t cost the owner or the client. You make it right and grow from there.”

Listen to the whole episode to hear more of Trent’s insights!

By Emma Peterson. 

Contractors from Greater American Roofing and Weatherguard, Inc. discuss why DaVinci products have become a go-to solution for their clients. 

In a new episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Megan Ellsworth sat down with Crystal Watterson, CFO of Greater American Roofing, and Trent Lovewell, VP of sales and operations at Weatherguard, Inc., to hear why their companies install DaVinci Roofscape’s composite roofing products.  

For Crystal and the team at Greater American Roofing, DaVinci composite roofs have been in their portfolio since 2021. And in the five years since they started installing DaVinci, they’ve seen a distinct shift in their clients towards using composite. Crystal explained, “If you had asked me in 2020 how many asphalt roofs we were doing, it would have been 95% of our work. And now looking at last year, I think I did five asphalt roofs total.”  

The reason Greater American Roofing’s clients are largely making this shift is simple – composite performs better for longer. Crystal shared some thoughts about this, saying, “The longevity is unmatched. We installed our first DaVinci roof in January 2021 and when I go back and look at it today, it looks just as beautiful today as it did the day that we put it on.” She went on, “And it’s not just that the roof has lasted that long, it’s also that it lasts long with low maintenance. I think out of all the products we offer, DaVinci is the lowest maintenance.”  

As for Trevor and Weatherguard, DaVinci has been one of their offerings since 2005. In that time, they’ve installed countless squares of DaVinci composite products. He shared, “We’ve installed composite on everything from million-dollar homes to pump houses for swimming pools.” And for the main reason Weatherguard has used DaVinci on all of these different projects over the years, Trevor cites that same longevity that Crystal mentioned, “We install other materials beside composite and nothing really compares to the longevity of composite.” 

Want to learn more about composite roofing? Listen to the whole episode or Watch the recording on YouTube.  

By Emma Peterson. 

Former basketball coach Trent Lovewell discusses the unlikely path that brought him to roofing and helped create the ROOFEREES brand. 

For the last 26 years, Trent Lovewell has worked with Weatherguard, Inc., an Omaha-based company and home of the ROOFEREES. Who exactly are the ROOFEREES? To answer that question and more, Megan Ellsworth sat down with Trent for an episode of Stories from the Roof, sponsored by SRS Distribution. 

Meeting on the court 

To answer the question of where the term ROOFEREES comes from, we need to go back to before Trent joined Weatherguard, Inc. and was coaching college basketball at Iowa Western Community College. He recalled, “I was a college basketball coach, and John Higgins was, at the time, a college basketball official. And I would have him come to speak to my sports officiating class over at Iowa Western Community College, we got to know each other and became friends.” Little did Trent know at that point that becoming John's friend would change his career trajectory entirely.  

Enter Weatherguard, Inc. 

In 1984, John started Weatherguard, Inc. and over the next decade or so worked to convince Trent to join him. Trent shared a bit about this time:  

John kept telling me I needed to get out of coaching and into roofing. And I was always like, ‘I don’t know anything about roofing!’ And at some point, I decided I was ready for a change and listened to him. 

The transition from basketball coach to roofer was a challenge that involved a lot of on-the-job learning for Trent, but it was a challenge he rose to with the support of John.  

Becoming the ROOFEREES 

The team moniker of the ROOFEREES came from the shared career shift that Trent and John experienced. As Trent put it, “John was a referee and a roofer, and in my spare time I was still refereeing and coaching a bit, and that's how we came up with the ROOFEREES...It was a joke at first but the local radio station thought it was cool and our community really liked it and we just ran with it.” 

Now, 26 years into his roofing career, Trent couldn’t be happier about being a ROOFEREE, sharing, “It’s a new adventure every day, you never know what happens and it’s great. I get sentimental about it.” 

Listen to the whole episode to hear more of Trent’s story.