About

I'm Jordan. I run a roofing company in Calgary.

Not a consultant who used to. I'm in it right now — the crew problems, the cash flow, the jobs that lose money. Every number I publish on the show came out of this week.

It's the third business I've built. The first two I sold. This one I'm running in public, with the books open, because I think the trades would be a better industry if more of us did.

And that's why. Four kids and a dog — everything I write about cash flow and margin and getting out of the truck comes back to them. A business that runs without me is the only kind worth building.

How I got here

The short version

My first career ended before it started

I pitched at Arizona State and went to the St. Louis Cardinals in the second round of the 2010 draft, 75th overall. Then my elbow went. I spent five years in their system grinding back through Tommy John and never made it past Double-A. At the end of it I was in my mid-twenties with no degree finished, no trade, and a plan that had just stopped existing.

So I built businesses instead

Freight first, then finance. S2 Freight and Swagerty Finance — built both, sold both. I found out I was decent at one specific thing: walking into an industry, finding the part of the process everyone tolerates because that's how it's always been done, and fixing it.

Then I looked at roofing

I wasn't looking for a trade. I was looking for a gap. Roofing had an enormous one — not in the work, which plenty of people do well, but in the process and what it's like to be the customer. Slow quotes, no communication, no idea what's happening on your own house. That gap was the whole opportunity, and it's why Calgary Roofing and Restoration exists.

What it cost me to learn the numbers

[ Still need this one from you. The expensive lesson — a job, a year, a partnership, a decision that taught you what the numbers were really doing. With a real figure in it. This is the paragraph that earns the entire show, and it's the only thing on this page I won't write for you. ]

THE COMPANY

Calgary Roofing
and Restoration

Roofing and storm restoration in Calgary and area. Still operating, still mine, still the source of every number I publish on the show.

Find me

Why this show

Nobody in the trades talks about money honestly

Contractors will tell you their revenue at a trade show and never once tell you their margin. Everybody's busy. Everybody's crushing it. Meanwhile half the room can't say which of their jobs made money last year, and the other half is one slow quarter from a real problem.

I got tired of it. So I started publishing my own numbers instead — the bids, the actual costs, the jobs that went backwards. Not because it's comfortable, but because a name like Open Book only works if you actually open them.

Be clear about it

What I'm not

Not a coach who's never run a crew.
Not selling you leads, or a funnel, or a done-for-you anything.
Not going to tell you to wake up at 5am and want it more.
Not finished figuring this out — I'm a few years ahead of some of you and a long way behind others.

Jordan Swagerty, owner of Calgary Roofing and Restoration

The actual reason

Still in the truck, most days

I'm not running this from an office somewhere. I'm on roofs, in trucks, and in the office at 9pm doing quotes like everyone else reading this.

Which is the point. Every number I publish came out of a week that looked like yours.

Start with the Monday sheet — it's the page I use to keep the first thing from eating the second.