Why I’m doing this. And why I might not.

I’ve built things, shipped things, and learned hard lessons. Most of those products had one thing in common. I was too excited about my idea to spend enough time on the problem. I’d talk to ten people and feel like I understood. I’d build for six months. Then I’d find out the thing I’d built solved a problem nobody actually had quite the way I thought they did.

Some of those products survived. Most didn’t. The ones that survived had something else in common too. They got out of my head and into a real customer’s life early, and they were shaped by what I heard there, not by what I’d been imagining.

That’s the lesson. It only took me a few attempts to learn it. I’m not making the same mistake again.

A few years ago I started helping roofing contractors with their marketing. Not as a side project — as real work, with real clients, trying to help them get more jobs.

What I noticed was that every roofer I worked with had been burned in the same specific ways. The agency that quietly took control of their domain. The ad budget that kept going up while leads went down. The monthly report full of charts that never said which jobs came from where. The lead they called back Monday morning who’d already signed by Sunday afternoon. The competitor with worse reviews and a faster quote eating jobs out of their territory.

None of that was unique to one roofer or one market. It was the pattern. And once I started seeing it, I couldn’t unsee it.

I have an idea for what to build for this audience. I think it could be valuable. But I also know myself. I know what happens when I get excited and rush. So I’m doing it differently this time.

I’m spending the next several months talking to fifty roofing contractors. Twenty to thirty minutes at a time. No pitch. I want to understand the problem inside and out before a single line of product code gets written. Here’s the deal.

I’ll do most of the listening. I’ll ask about your business, your slow season, your marketing, and what would actually make a difference. You’ll talk. I’ll learn.

I won’t try to sell you anything that isn’t ready. Nothing is ready. Nothing exists yet. There is nothing for sale.

If, after fifty conversations, I find something I can build that’s an order of magnitude better than what already exists, I’ll build it. I’ll come back to you and offer it. The contractors who helped me understand the problem will get the best deal that exists, locked in, in writing.

If I find I can’t, I’ll write up everything I learned and publish it for free. The conversations won’t have been wasted. They’ll become an industry research report that contractors and journalists can use for years. Either way, your time produced something useful.

That’s the only commitment I’m willing to make right now. It’s also the only one I think is honest.