Bob Roman (Fire by Design): How to Differentiate in a Sea of “Me Too” Contractors

Rob (00:01.729)
All right. Welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast. A very cool guest, Bob Roman from Fire by Design, had the opportunity to meet Bob at the Pool Spa and Deck Expo out in Vegas in 2025 and immediately fell in love with essentially how you help landscape contractors and others differentiate themselves. As a marketer for me, it’s like pulling teeth sometimes to get someone to be actually different. But when you told your story, I was just like, okay, this guy gets it. So I’m just super pumped you’re on.

Bob Roman (00:06.358)
Okay. Okay.

Rob (00:31.924)
the show to share today. So thank you for doing this, Bob.

Bob Roman (00:34.287)
Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I’m looking forward to it.

Rob (00:37.889)
So for context to the group, can you just give us a quick rundown what firebird design is and how the heck you ended up running this epic company?

Bob Roman (00:49.134)
Well, FireBuddes9 is a company that our primary focus is design of fire features, particularly custom ones. our real role is to provide the components, be it burners, burner pans, concrete bowls. Our forte is automated fire. Back in 2010, developed, with the help of another local engineer, I developed the first ever

ignition system specifically designed for outdoor use, meaning it can handle wind, it can handle water, and it does it very well. When I say wind, my goal was to have it operate in 60 mile an hour winds, and it does that. And we’re the only ones that I’ve ever seen produce videos showing that very thing. How I got into it, like I’ve said before, my background was flying airplanes. I was in military for seven.

years, I flew F-16s there and then I moved from there to commercial, flew for United for 13 years. After 9-11, the career really took a turn to where I really didn’t enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands. Over the years, my stepdad was a carpenter, so we had a chance to work with him, but also his brother, my uncle, was an electrician.

and they used to build homes together and my brother and I were laborers. And some days they didn’t need us, they’d say go work with the plumber, go work with the mason. And so we really got a lot of exposure in our teenage years. So when the airline business for me kind of took a turn for the worse, I thought, you know what, I want to start up a remodel company. Because I didn’t know what else to do. And so I started a remodel company.

Rob (02:38.422)
Right.

Bob Roman (02:40.887)
Gosh, for within three or four months of building patio covers, doing tile jobs, things like that, somebody asked us as part of a bigger project to build a freestanding fireplace for them. And I’d never done that. I was like, I want to build it at a block. I started looking online. I got some pictures. I sent them to her and I said, here, what do you think of these? And of course, he didn’t want to pick any one of them. She said, well, I like the characteristic of the mantle.

this one, I like the finish on this one, I like the heart on this one, so pretty soon I figured out I was gonna have to build a custom fireplace for her. And I did. She was very involved in the design as I was building it. I would send her pictures and she said, yeah I like that but let’s change this. So long story short, took me about six weeks to build that post one. And we put it in her yard, turned out great. Her son graduated high school, they had about 200 people there for the party.

I still look up more. Pretty soon I saw in the Vegas market there was an niche here that nobody was really fulfilling, particularly at the residential level. Yeah, you had fireplaces and restaurants and hotels, but nothing for residents. And so I started playing around with different designs, see-through design. I had one where water was coming out of the mantle into the swimming pool. And then I really, we became noticed.

by, I can’t remember exactly his name, but he was at somebody’s house and he was a supervisor on a commercial job. And he saw this and he goes, wow, I wonder. And then in those days, we could build a fireplace in three days. First one took six weeks. Now we got it down to a system. So pretty soon we started doing some bigger commercial jobs. We were doing a lot of condominium projects, 28 foot long fire.

a fireplace that was 14 foot tall, 12 foot wide, 10 foot deep, see through. So we started, yeah, was big stuff that we were doing. And somewhere in there, a restaurant owner who ordered two fireplaces from us, he had a sign, just had a sign put in, about 20 feet near the top of the sign, and he asked if we could put fire up there. Well, everything previous to this was you lit it with a match or a lighter.

Rob (04:43.295)
Epic.

Bob Roman (05:06.924)
And I said, well, you’re not going to be able to it. And he said, well, don’t you have like a remote control option? Yeah. And I was like, let me get back to you on that. And so I started doing some research and in short order, I was playing around with gas valves and I was, I experimented with this one in my backyard for about two, three days before I finally got it to light. And then I installed it, but then the problems began.

Rob (05:11.838)
Yeah, come on, Bob.

Bob Roman (05:35.852)
Because I was dealing with what a few other companies that were doing it, we were using gas valves that are meant to be in furnaces. Our controller, the circuit board that control them, they don’t deal with wind because they’re inside furnaces. And so the flickering, when the wind would blow, the fire feature would go off then back on what we’ve referred to as cycling. I ended up having to leave an extension at this restaurant in the back of…

Rob (05:43.86)
Mm.

Bob Roman (06:04.992)
because I had to go up there almost every other day in the windy days, which is in the spring, to fix this thing. It drove me crazy, but I learned a lot. yeah, and that’s when I said, well, let me see what everybody else is doing. So the two companies at the time that were doing it, I ordered ignition systems from them. And when I looked at them, I go, these are the same parts that I’m using, only they’re enclosed in a box.

Rob (06:12.648)
Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

Bob Roman (06:32.309)
So that’s when the light came on and I said, wait a second. These two companies, one of which had been in business, I think 20 years at the time, they’re using the same stuff I just found two weeks ago. So anyway, long story short, I thought if I can figure this out, this might turn into something. And I started doing some research and I found an engineer that worked for the county. He did all their IT stuff, but he wrote code and he built circuit boards.

And so we sat down at the coffee shop and by this time I had already figured out what valves I wanted to use, igniters, sensors, thermal sensors and things like that. And had these four parts. I put them on the coffee table and I said, look, here’s the four parts that I want to work together. Here’s a piece of paper. This is the sequence of operation. And this is how I want it to work. And he looked at it and he goes, yeah, I can do that. I said, okay, how long you think it’ll take?

Maybe about 30 days. And I said, oh, okay. How much? And he says, oh, about $5,000. And I thought, man, this is a smoking deal. Well, 10 months and $35,000 later.

Rob (07:47.464)
HAHAHAHA

Bob Roman (07:49.451)
I finally had my first ignition system, my first circuit board. Yep, and those 10 circuit boards, I didn’t know anything about building circuit boards. I got taken to the cleaners. Each circuit board that didn’t measure more than about two and a half inches by one and a quarter inches cost me $600. I had 10 of them made. So I had 10 of these boards and now I go to test them in my backyard.

Rob (07:53.759)
Epic.

Bob Roman (08:17.854)
The very first one I apply power to it, smoke comes off the board. And I’m like, it happened so fast, I couldn’t even tell what components smoked. So then I’m like, this isn’t good. So then this time I set up, I had one of those old video recorders. And now I’m retaping the board, because I need to see in slow motion what just smoked.

Rob (08:23.444)
Right?

Rob (08:30.207)
Right.

Bob Roman (08:45.994)
And so of course I applied power and I see three parts just smoke. So I call the engineer, long story short, he goes, yeah, yeah, we need to go bigger on those parts because they can’t handle the amps. was, but to back up, this is the part of the story that’s probably the scariest from an entrepreneur standpoint. Realized in 2007, 2008, what happened with our economy. In those days, I was using what’s called

Honeywell Smart Valve, which is all it is meant for indoor use. Honeywell sold that valve to a Chinese company. The first thing that they did with that valve was they went cheap on the electronics components. So the Honeywell Smart Valve was performing beautifully for me. Well, then when it got sold, which I didn’t know, and they started to produce these and put them out there, we’re putting these things in boxes, weatherproofing them, doing all that we do.

Rob (09:44.059)
like normal and it’s fine.

Bob Roman (09:44.074)
In 2008, yeah, yeah, I thought everything was fine until I started to get the complaints. Like, hey, we put four in, two of them didn’t work right off the bat. I would send them two more. Those two might work, but the other two would fail within two weeks. Pretty soon, we were in a slide where everything was failed.

Rob (09:49.598)
and then the complaints.

Bob Roman (10:12.766)
That’s really what forced me to go to that engineer. So by the time we had the Avis, all weather electronic ignition system, we call it, Avis, developed, which was May of 2010, after we upgraded the components. At that point in time, I owed 600 systems that were warranty replacements to different customers throughout the country. And this was 2010 and nobody stopped me.

Rob (10:36.831)
Yeah.

Bob Roman (10:42.313)
days because of what happened in 2008. Anyway, we developed the AWIS. I did 30 days of intense testing in my own yard, even in some pools in the Vegas area that had been having issues, particularly those jobs that experienced a lot of wind or they had waterfalls nearby and the wind would cause the water to spray down on the feature. Any place where I could put a system, I did.

And after 30 days, I was like, wow, this system’s pretty old. And so we started shipping them out for warranty replacements. We built 600 boxes. It took us about two months because we couldn’t get parts. We shipped those 600 out and the phone stopped ringing for complaints. Yes. Talk about stress. And then I had one of my best customers who’s in Florida, the Orlando.

Rob (11:31.648)
Bob Roman (11:41.737)
He said, Bob, we put in 10 of these systems and because he had a lot of failures, 10 of these systems, they’re all performing flawlessly. He said, we had a torrential downpour here in Orlando last week, and we actually sent guys out to turn these things on because you were bragging how well they work in the water. He goes, sure enough, he sent me some videos back, it’s pretty cool, where the rain is basically going sideways. The flames going sideways and they’re not going out.

And in one of the videos, he said, I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes. It has not gone out once. So yeah, it was, it was incredible. But to get through that, you know, those picks hunter. and in those days we were working out of the garage. had two employees. We were doing what we could to keep our head above water. and then finally the phone started ringing and people started buying and,

Rob (12:16.212)
Epic.

Bob Roman (12:37.32)
Then we made those videos, the torture videos I was mentioning to you. That was huge in that it really differentiated us from our competition. When you can create a two minute video with a fire feature or two fire features, one was a TV torch and the other a fireball in the back of a pickup truck. And the first thing you see in the video is the speed limit sign, 55 miles an hour. And then you’re driving down the road and the cars are passing you initially as you’re beginning to accelerate.

and the flames are going crazy and the tiki torch in the bowl. But then we start to keep pace with the traffic. So you know we’re going in and around 50, 55. And in the video, we kind of do a countdown where we count up 20 miles an hour. And then the next frame might be 25 as we’re accelerating. And it was funny in there as I’m driving and then I got my one employee in the back of the truck with a regular video camera. I said, you know,

Rob (13:34.633)
Right.

Bob Roman (13:35.996)
I’d like to get a shot from the side of the road. And so I pull over and as I pull over, this other car comes in behind us. Turns out it’s an off duty fireman. He jumps out with the fire extinguisher, ready to destroy our display with a fire extinguisher. My employee doesn’t know what’s going on. Hey, there’s some guy out here with a fire extinguisher running up to us. So.

Rob (14:02.877)
Yeah

Bob Roman (14:04.163)
I had the remote control in my hand and I jumped out and I go, no, don’t do that. Then I hit the off button and it went off. And you could see he was just like the life was drained from his face. He thought he was going to be a hero. And he’s looking at me going, what is that? You know, we talked a little bit and we laughed about it. laughed about it.

Rob (14:16.788)
Right.

Bob Roman (14:24.881)
But no, was, you know, those early days of really kind of defining who we were, trying to make a name for ourselves after having all of those problems, all of those failed systems. It was a challenge for sure, but well worth it because I mean, our other option was to declare bankruptcy and then try to open up, you know, under another name, but that’s not me.

Rob (14:50.015)
Right.

Well, good on you. mean, and there’s a lot of magic in this story, right? Like, I think it can be easy to give up for a lot of folks when they’re going through the shit. And I’ve yet to meet an entrepreneur that hasn’t gone through tough times. So what was it that kept you going? Like, why not pack it up and just be like, OK, I’m going to go build some houses. This is not worth it. Like, you’re getting calls left, right and center. You’re probably to a point where you even want to answer the phone.

Bob Roman (15:03.216)
Look.

Bob Roman (15:16.422)
Thank

Rob (15:21.842)
and you’re just driven to figure this out. So what was behind that drive to get it going?

Bob Roman (15:27.537)
You know, in my early days of, you know, in my twenties or whatever, I used to read a lot of books about, you know, the seven habits of highly affected people. And I used to love to read stories about other entrepreneurs and what they had to go through. And, you know, when at the end of the day, if it, you know, what’s the old saying? If it was easy, everybody would do it. Yeah.

Rob (15:54.378)
That’s it.

Bob Roman (15:56.27)
And I knew that I knew I had identified a weakness in fire features for the outdoors. So now it was a matter of, okay, do you have what it takes to get through weather that storm? And the only thing that I had to lean on was knowing that others before me have encountered very similar, if not worse, circumstances in their drive to create something. And I thought we could.

I only have one choice. I have to prevail. Even though financially our back was against the wall, I thought I was going to lose the homes. I had three daughters living at home at the time. We had the house that I could afford as an airline pilot and I didn’t want to lose the home, the house that we called home for so many years. So it’s just one of those things where you just got to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. And I don’t know that I did it for myself.

Rob (16:46.911)
Yeah.

Bob Roman (16:54.892)
as much as I did it for my family. Because I did not want to, I did not want to uproot them and just really make it difficult for them in their teenage years. You know, that’s a tough time to begin with. So, you know, you have to look outside yourself, at least that’s what I did. And I said, I’m doing this for my girls. I’m doing this for my wife, even though I’m working, you know, 15, 18 hour days of having difficulty sleeping because of the stress. But, you know, you have to lean on the fact that it is possible.

Rob (17:06.708)
Right.

Bob Roman (17:24.741)
others have done before you, and then it becomes a personal challenge. Do I have what it takes internally to make this happen?

Rob (17:33.374)
Well, mean, and seemingly, and you can validate this, you wouldn’t be where you are now if you didn’t go through it.

Bob Roman (17:40.709)
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. I will tell you, it gives you thick skin. The guy that flew airplanes for a living, I’d go to work, you know, four or five times a month, go hop in the airplane, go do this, that, and the other thing. When I got home, I was done. I didn’t have to worry or think about that job until I had to go fly again. Not so when you own your own business, but no, you’re right. It’s,

It forces you to grow up and see things in a different light. You know, that’s what’s that?

Rob (18:14.994)
Not to mention the product itself got better. I said not to mention the product itself. If you didn’t run into a cheap product that was being produced by a new owner from China, you wouldn’t have invented your own thing. Well, maybe you would have, but you wouldn’t have been required to. And it almost seems like, at least in my experience, every time I’m getting kicked in the teeth and kind of feel down and out,

Bob Roman (18:29.806)
Correct.

Rob (18:39.988)
You know, they say that it’s always darkest before the dawn. There’s like this kind of magic that comes from getting through the whole thing that your words prevailing. So as you get through the whole thing and you’re scaling this thing, you know, outside of technology being a total shit show and not having the parts you need to deliver to customers as an entrepreneur, as you scaled this thing, cause you guys are, you know, seven, eight, your eight figure company.

Bob Roman (18:42.853)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob (19:09.726)
From like a leadership perspective, like, you know, being the person that’s at the helm of a company like that, what was the biggest thing that held you back and what did you have to do to kind of break through it?

Bob Roman (19:21.944)
You know, that’s a great question. And the reason I say that is because in the early days, particularly as we began to grow and we started to see success and the company growing, the sales growing, I was working harder. I was working longer hours.

And a good friend of mine whom I met down in California, he’s about 10 years my senior and he had grown a company. And he’s more of a control freak than I am. And one of the things that he said to me, he said, you know, I held my company with an iron grip. He said, and he was talking to somebody, I don’t know who it was, and the guy said, astutely observed, goes, his name’s Johnny, he goes, Johnny.

You’re the thing that’s holding your company back. He what are you talking about? He goes, you can only do so much in a day. He said, but if you will train people to do things that you normally would do and just keep tabs on them until you trust them to do that job correctly, he goes, your company will never grow. And when he told me that story, I thought,

answered emails, answered calls, I did the estimates, I did the design work, I did all of that stuff. I had people in my garage building the stuff, but I was still very much involved in customer relations, if you will. So I thought, well, I can see the wisdom in that, so I hired a gal, actually I hired a guy initially to answer the phones. He didn’t work out too well, however,

when all of a sudden I didn’t have to answer the phones and he was, all of a sudden that freed up time that I could then devote towards building my company. And I finally saw the light. So even though he wasn’t a good one for me to start with, one day I walked in the office and his head was on the desk and he’s sleeping and the phone’s ringing, you know, because he had it on silent. And I went, okay, this isn’t the guy I need.

Bob Roman (21:32.772)
So I ended up hiring one of my daughter’s friends, they were best friends, and she had just gone through esthetician school, but she had no clientele, no experience, so nobody would hire her. Sweetheart of a gal, very sharp, and so I spent time and I trained her. Well, she was awesome. Having her, bar was really low, so anything was an improvement. But no, all of a sudden,

Rob (21:51.349)
Yeah.

Rob (21:55.763)
Yeah

Bob Roman (22:00.951)
You know, first it was answering phones and I had to train a teacher a lot about fire. Yeah, the technical aspects, because people will call and they don’t just say, I want this part and this part and this part. They’ll ask, this is what I want to build. What do I need? And so now she had to, I took time to train her. We were in the shop building these things, two employees back there. And so we had to, there was a training involved.

Rob (22:07.134)
like the technical aspects of it.

Bob Roman (22:30.019)
And you know, you’re going, all this time training, is it worth it? But once I had her trained.

And she was answering calls and if she wasn’t, you know, cause we would be in the same office, but she was doing the phone calls and I was emailing and stuff like that. She would like, hold on. Yeah, exactly. So, so she would put it on mute. Oh, this guy’s asking this blah, blah. Can you help me with that? Yeah. Okay. I would explain it to her and then she would get off mute and she would explain it. And if she didn’t get it a hundred percent, that’s fine. But that was part of the training. So once I had her trained up, it was really cool because then I brought.

Rob (22:48.096)
but still in earshot, like.

Bob Roman (23:07.97)
another gal in. And Julie, that was her name, she trained the new gal. So now I’m looking at this going, hmm, I’ve got somebody answering the phones. This gal is really good with QuickBooks. So now I can get her to generate some of these estimates because all the pricing is in QuickBooks. I am putting it.

Rob (23:27.39)
Right. Yeah, it’s not like they have to figure it out.

Bob Roman (23:36.167)
And it was like, okay. And now all of sudden I found myself with way more time than I was used to having. So then I started to focus my efforts on how do I build this business. At the time, most of our sales were just in the area. I thought, how do I grow this outside of the Vegas area? Once you have that time to really think about how do I get to full business in Florida, New York, wherever, Texas.

That’s when I really started to realize how important it was for me to have that free time to focus. And that’s what I did. I started to use, took pictures of jobs in Vegas and then I created what’s called these design ideas. And then I did some data gathering online. There used to be a website called poolusa.com. You could put your zip code in.

And you can find all the builders within 200 miles of that zip code. So long story short, I figured out, I took a map of the United States, scaled it in my CAD, and I put 200 mile radius circuits all over the United States. And then I figured out what the zip code was in the middle of the circuits. So then I made an Excel sheet of all of the builders that came up.

within that 200 mile radius of that zip code. I made my Excel sheet and then I used a program called Send Blaster, I don’t know if it’s still around, but I started emailing and my initial list was 1,100 pool builders. I emailed and said, hey, these are some of the features that we did in Vegas using our system. But down at the bottom it was unsubscribe and the other one was subscribe and in my email I just said.

If there’s somebody else in your office that might be interested in these design ideas, forward it on to them. My email list grew from 1,100 to 15,000 within about three months. Yeah. And the phone started ringing. And all of a sudden, and my design ideas were just some pictures, some drawings, and a little narrative about some of the challenges of the feature. But the pictures is what really grabbed their attention.

Rob (25:38.708)
What?

Bob Roman (25:55.716)
By doing that, all of a sudden we just launched. We went from our sales to here, just rocketed. Because now we have a new system. It was a magical time because finally I started to make some money and I could pay bills.

Rob (26:12.736)
Wait a second, this whole business thing’s working out. So wait, hold on, but let’s just quick, quick, quick wind back. When you were answering the phones and fully involved and you know, maybe you didn’t have the iron fist, but you had your hand on everything, what was the revenue of the company? Ish.

Bob Roman (26:16.698)
Yeah, exactly.

Bob Roman (26:30.932)
Bob Roman (26:35.142)
I would say it was less than 100,000.

Rob (26:38.684)
so you’re just like tiny, tiny getting going, still in the garage building stuff for your full shoestring. And then you start training some people to lift you up to then start being a visionary to go after the North American market.

Bob Roman (26:43.621)
Yeah.

Bob Roman (26:53.382)
Yep, and when we did that, our revenue jumped from one year to the next five times. And we still had the same number of employees. They were just easier. So we went from probably 100,000 revenue to 500,000 within a 12-month period of time. And then…

Rob (27:02.9)
Boom. Yeah.

Rob (27:12.308)
And then how many years did it take you to get north of 10 million?

Bob Roman (27:18.79)
I think it was about six years when all of a sudden we got…

Rob (27:21.502)
So from 100,000 to 10 million plus on six years, on the back of, well, some ingenuity and vision, but the idea that if you can train some folks, you can kind of let yourself be the person that you need to go be to grow this company.

Bob Roman (27:36.997)
Yeah. And, and, and that’s the biggest thing is you have to focus on growing your company more so than doing the mechanics of estimating answering emails. Um, and that’s a huge lesson because now I’ve trained both my middle daughter, my youngest daughter to run the company, um, because of that mindset that I can’t, I shouldn’t be doing. So when I see people here in Vegas, whatever, I’m like, how long have you been doing that?

I’ve been doing it for 20 years, whatever. And you’re still driving a truck with stuff on it? You know, and then I’ve asked the question, do you have people that do what you do? Yeah. And again, you know, I’m not, I’m not a genius or anything like that, but that one bit of advice that I got from my friends so many years ago, you keep carrying that on and saying, I want to make myself worthless to this company in a way that I don’t need to be there.

Rob (28:37.588)
Yeah.

Bob Roman (28:37.667)
And that decision was made four years ago. I trained my daughters to run a company. And now I do stay involved. look at emails. We talk occasionally, but for the most part, I’ve trained them. It’s like they would come to me before and say, Hey, this is what’s going on. How do you want us to handle it? And that’s, and in the beginning I say, okay, I think you should handle it this way. Well, I then got a similar question two months later. I’d say, well, let me ask you, how would you handle

And all of a sudden, we would do this. That’s exactly what I would do. And if it wasn’t exact, it was pretty close. And then I would say, you might consider this, but I’m going leave the decision up to you. And then there came a point where they no longer called me. And they said, what would that do type thing? And because I’ve worked with them in the past, now they have it. And that’s really a lot of my employees, my production supervisor, my metal shop supervisor.

Rob (29:23.583)
Love it.

Bob Roman (29:37.733)
all of these guys that used to lean on me, I would help them figure out how to make those decisions. And now they make those decisions. Don’t run them by my daughters occasionally if they feel like they need to, but they’re like, we don’t need to bother them. We already know what to do. And I’ll tell you what, it’s awesome.

Rob (29:56.157)
Epic. It is awesome. Well, I think there’s there’s some inherent magic in the way that you’ve, you know, framed all of this in that you didn’t just say I’m going to hire somebody and then.

Well, you did, you’re like, I’m gonna hire someone, someone else came to the phone. So that didn’t go so well. So they fell asleep while the phone was ringing on silent. Not so good. But also illustrates what happens when you hire somebody and just say, it. Then you bring somebody else in and you’re with an earshot. You’ve got fly on the wall training and mentorship 24 seven. You literally go out of your way to help people understand how to answer technical questions. You train them up on not only the technical aspect of the business, but also probably some like soft skills when it comes to customer service and salesmanship.

Bob Roman (30:16.343)
Yeah.

Rob (30:38.74)
You do it again, you do it again, and you start to model for people how to think about things. And then after modeling it, ask them how they think about things. When they get it right, you say that’s exactly right. When they get it off, you say, here’s something else to think about. That’s like coaching slash mentorship. And so you’ve almost like kind of.

Demonstrating in the story that you told about the difference between training supervision coaching and mentorship I think that’s that’s something that a lot of entrepreneurs You know, maybe learn later or don’t necessarily understand out of the gate is that there is like a set of You know steps that are required to get someone into a spot where they can kind of run on their own

And I think that’s just, it’s kind of beautiful because the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve met pretty much across the board all perceive their companies as training and development companies first and they just happen to do a business of X, Y and Z.

Bob Roman (31:33.535)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that 100 % and again, I didn’t have that mentality but that one bit of advice really got me thinking differently in that.

Bob, you’re holding your company back. If you want it to grow, you need to let loose of the reins a little bit and trust others to be able to do some of the things that you do now. And like my tech support guy, he’s better than I am. And I’m the one that developed this and I’m the one that did all the installs. But through working with him and him experiencing things on the phone where

Sometimes they’ll text me, not very rarely anymore, hey, I got this going on, not really sure how to think about it, what are your thoughts? But I get texts like that once every two months. And then once he gets it, he’s like, oh, this reminds me of the job we talked about last July, blah, blah, blah. So I told him to check this, that, and the other thing, and sure enough, that’s what it was. So now, sometimes I’ll call him and say, Brian, I have a friend of mine, because it’s funny.

Rob (32:22.175)
Yeah, it’s awesome.

Rob (32:34.207)
Epic.

Bob Roman (32:38.848)
My phone number was the phone. My cell number was the number that everybody called. Well, when I decided I need no longer, but it’s funny because still to this day, if they call the 800 number and they get a voicemail, I mean, we’re real good about calling back, but if they get a voicemail, but they need an answer right now, they’ll call my phone. And I have them say their name is in there. I know who it is. Hey, Blaze, what’s going on? man, I got this thing. I’m sorry to bog you.

Rob (32:45.214)
Right.

Rob (33:02.516)
Right.

Bob Roman (33:08.661)
cell phone blah blah you know and it’s funny because sometimes like you know I haven’t heard of that but let me call Brian and I’ll call you right back we’re all having him call you and sure enough I’ll call Brian and say hey Blaze got this going on what have you ever seen this yeah this this this all right can you call Blaze and let him know yeah and it’s funny I still get these people from I’m talking customers from 2006 and 7 that are occasionally will call me yeah but for the most part people you know respect it they don’t bother me

Rob (33:31.43)
Yeah, that’s amazing.

Bob Roman (33:38.144)
you know, on my cell phone. Sometimes I’ll get just text messages, hey, Merry Christmas or Happy New Year, you know, hope everything’s going.

Rob (33:43.616)
You know, and think there’s also some, there’s some humility though in still having access to the customer and being involved at some level with, you know, kind of an infrequent pulse of the business and the customer, because that’s like what matters most. So one of the things that struck me when I was like, dude, we got to do this podcast was when we were talking in Vegas and you were like,

there’s this opportunity, there was a story I think you said about a landscape contractor who, maybe it was even you when you were doing the installs, when you would bring that display on the back of your pickup truck and like light this fire with a remote and it made people just go, whoa, I gotta hire these guys. Can you just help people understand the power of that differentiated approach and how it made you stand out across competition?

Bob Roman (34:30.253)
Well, and I did tell this story and basically what it was was at some point, and this was before we developed the newer system, the all weather electronic ignition system, it was when we were using the Honeywell. And in those days, I was kind of between building fireplaces and trying to promote the ignition.

And there was one guy that I knew, this guy Brian, who worked at a local pool builder. And I was telling, I would tell him, yeah, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. And he says, man, I’d love to see what you’re doing. He says, can you bring one by the shop? So, there, his, by this time we were out of the garage. And actually, no, we were still in the garage. I said, yeah, I’ll throw a bowl in the back of my truck. So I went over, I put this display together.

And I go back there and the little remote that I had was very small. I pushed the button and his eyes lit up. He goes, hold on a second. I got to get the other sales guys. So they come out and they watch me just push the button and the fire comes on. And their reaction was like, this is pretty impressive to these guys. To me, it was nothing because it took me so long to get there. You kind of get numb to it, if you will.

And so I’m like, you guys really like this? yeah, we need pricing, we need this, we need that. I was like, okay. So I didn’t have any of that stuff, so I had it created and I got it to him. But then I thought, I wonder how other pool builders in the area would react. So on a Saturday morning, so I started looking at pool builders trying to create a map, okay, who’s closest? And I want to get there first thing in the morning. And so sure enough, I took my truck and I went, I went back up.

to the, so the back of my truck was like adjacent from the front door. And I had the remote in my hand, I had the gas on and I would walk in and I’d say, hey, I’ve got something I believe will help you sell more swimming pools. They’re like, I don’t sell swimming this is all I need. I said, well, I’ve got a bowl, you know, I know, cause I’m that guy, also, I’m like, okay, whatever. So I said, well, it’s a fire bowl and it’s in my truck and it’s on fire. Oh, really?

Rob (36:31.42)
Yeah.

Bob Roman (36:45.253)
So they got up and they’re like, hey, come check this out. Yeah, you need to come check this out. So it wasn’t on fire at the time, but as I hit the door, I would push the button and it would take a few seconds for this thing to erupt in flames. And they come out and everybody’s jaw dropped. And they’re like, that is the coolest thing. And the way I had it set up, I could lift the burner and the burner pan out so that they could see the little box that

Rob (36:47.409)
Well, I mean, it helps when it’s actually cool.

Bob Roman (37:14.357)
had the gas valve and the controller and all that stuff inside of it. Can you like that again? Let me go grab, you know, the manager or whatever. And I think I hit anywhere from 10 to 12 pool builders that morning. And every one of them said the same thing. I want photos, brochures, catalogs, wherever you got pricing, technical information, whatever you’ve got we want. And sure enough that

One Saturday morning that I did this at all those places, everybody had the same reaction. We need this, that, and the other thing. And that was really what kind of, I’ll never forget, one of the bigger pool builders, Anthony Silden here in town, he called up and he said, we need four systems installed at a pool we just finished.

Originally it was four fireballs that were going to be manual light. But then when they told them that we can automate it and control it through the pool controller, the customer bought it. That was the most money I had made in years. When I sold four systems, I was like walking six feet above the ground. I thought I could pay the mortgage this month. know, and yeah, that helped.

Rob (38:21.551)
You’re right.

Rob (38:27.233)
You’re like, let’s go.

Rob (38:32.479)
That helps.

Bob Roman (38:36.926)
Yeah, it was pretty cool because then, and I did all the installs in those days. And part of the reason that I did that was, you know, there were no classes. There was, it was no training. The only training was at OJT. You know, there were things I was learning as I went, you know, I mean, I was safe about it. didn’t endanger anybody. I’m dealing with gas and electric, but I knew enough about gas and electric from my remodel days and my earlier days that

You know, I had the skill set to at least not be dangerous. Although I did lose my eyebrows a few times to flames, you know, just because I was learning. Yeah. One time I had to jump in a pool because I thought my face was on fire. You know, it was like in November, so was freezing and I’m working over the thing. And it’s funny because the homeowner was trying to figure out how to turn on his pool lights. Well,

Rob (39:12.555)
Couple burnt hair knuckles.

Rob (39:20.009)
dude.

Bob Roman (39:31.423)
In those days, I didn’t realize you really need to shut the gas off if you’re going to be on top of a feature working on it. And all of a sudden I hear the click and I note the click is the main valve opening because when the pilot valve opens, you don’t hear it. But when you got a click and it’s day, so I can’t even see a flame. All of a sudden I hear click and I’m thinking there’s going to be a ball of flame.

Rob (39:55.393)
Yeah

Bob Roman (39:58.214)
before I know it and I, you know, it’s winter times, we’ve got a sweatshirt on and sure enough, I stand up and I’m literally, it’s a column with nothing around it. It’s just sticking and I’m standing on the column. Meanwhile, my legs are spread and I’m like, this ball of flame comes up and I just dove in the pool and he’s over there doing this, trying to turn his pool lights on.

Rob (40:22.559)
It’s like a scene at a diehard.

Bob Roman (40:25.821)
He looks at me, he’s like, isn’t that cold? I’m like, yeah, yeah, and you’re the one that turned that on. He’s like, you know, I said I was trying to turn the lights on and I’m thinking, why would you turn the lights on in the middle of the day? So whatever. He was playing with the remote, but that was the last time I ever worked on a fire feature where I didn’t turn the gas off first. So.

Rob (40:33.908)
Yeah.

Rob (40:41.629)
Either way, maybe he didn’t.

Rob (40:49.663)
Smart play. Okay, so then if somebody’s listening to this and they want to use it to help differentiate their landscape or pool company, what do they do to reach out? Where do they go? How do they figure out if this is a good fit for them?

Bob Roman (41:02.409)
You know, our website is firebydesign.com. We have a lot of information on there, but even more so for the new, the new builder or landscape or whatever that has never been involved in it. We have resources on our website. Like one of them is AutoFire 101. It’s a 14 page PDF, mostly pictures and illustrations that I put together years ago. And we’ve revised it just a couple of times, but.

Basically, if you have no knowledge and no understanding of how automated fire works, it’s a great starting point and it’s an easy read. Or you just call and if we don’t answer the phone it’s because we’re busy, but our routine for the day is we do emails, which is primarily how people communicate up till about 12 or 1 in specific time. And then after that we call back people that have left and wasted.

And so, and like I said, we’ve got a great tech support team, Brian and Steven, and then I got Skyler. All three of them are really good. The nice thing is what we do is very simple. We’ve simplified it. It’s just like, as we tell people at the shows, it’s like putting the barbecue oven with power. That’s all. It’s got gas, and now you’ve got electric. And the same thing holds true for these fire goes. We do probably. Yeah.

Rob (42:24.682)
I know, they just look way cooler.

Bob Roman (42:27.934)
Yeah, you know, and so, and we do a lot of custom. So we, think the number one question that we’ll get is we’ll get a set of plans and they’ll say, Hey, this is what the designer or the architect has put together. Can you help us figure out how to do this? Like one of your biggest challenges is fire features that are deck level and there’s no drainage in the yard. Well, what, and if you’re, if you’re in Florida, you get a differential downpour, that feature is going to fill up with water.

Rob (42:28.864)
haha

Bob Roman (42:57.202)
And there are ways for us to combat that, but we just give them, these are the options you have in Florida or anywhere where it’s pretty flat. don’t have any elevation changes. You know, so, then like the feature I was just telling you about, you know, how do we, we’ve got 150 feet of fire here. One of them is like 90 and one of them 60 or whatever. Before they even broke around, they’re like, you know, how should we run the gas? And so we designed it. gave him drawings.

very simple drawings and then they ran with it. So this stuff’s getting installed next week. The project started August of 2024. It’s a huge project. But you know, and we don’t charge for the drawings.

Rob (43:40.767)
Epic. So there’s technical support in behind the whole thing, so if you want to figure out how to do it, your team’s there to support you guys. Your Instagram, firebydesign, is also a sweet handle. If anybody wants to take a quick look, if you’re listening to this, check him out, firebydesign on Instagram. A resource, an inspiration outside of this person that had a mentor tell them that they needed to let loose of their iron grip.

Bob Roman (43:45.65)
Yep.

Bob Roman (43:49.65)
Yep.

Rob (44:04.212)
What is a speaker, author, some sort of resource that you think people should check out that inspired you as an entrepreneur?

Bob Roman (44:13.872)
You know, again, I’ve read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. For some reason, that book for me, it did a lot. I’ve read that thing a half a dozen times. I have it on my bookshelf.

That’s, know, I mean, there’s a lot of great books out there. But that for me was the one that really grabbed my attention. You know, it’s funny and I got to…

Rob (44:40.0)
Well, as… Sorry, go ahead. Your audio is a little tough right now, so I’m hoping the whole thing will record well, but go for I missed you there.

Bob Roman (44:48.036)
Okay, I would say The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is really the book that I go to when I have questions. I mean, there’s a lot of other books that I have that I’ve read, but that one there has helped me more than anything. I’ll tell you something else,

Rob (45:07.042)
Well, and I love, but I was gonna say quickly, the fact that you said that you’ve read it many times, I think a lot of people lose sight of the fact that just because you read a book once doesn’t mean it’s done. And so just that reminder in itself, if you’ve read Seven Habits, read it again. Anyway, you’re saying I didn’t mean to interrupt.

Bob Roman (45:22.916)
Now another video that I, everybody knows who Steve Harvey is, he’s a game show host or whatever. But the thing about Steve Harvey that they don’t realize too is that he’s like a motivational speaker. And I love his, there’s one podcast, it’s not very long, and it’s Steve Harvey, The Parachute. And the first time I listened to that, I thought, wow, was he watching me from like the window or something as he was thinking about this story?

Rob (45:29.441)
Yeah.

Bob Roman (45:53.007)
You have to listen to it if you haven’t, but I’ve had my daughters listen to it. And the gist of the story is he talks about how when you make a decision to leave your nine to five job, that the security of your nine to five job, you decide to embark out on your own and try to create your own destiny or build your own company. He likened it to standing on the edge of a cliff of a mountain and you have a parachute.

And you see people out there soaring with the eagles with their parachutes on. You know, and you’ve got this visual going on. goes, now you decide you’re going to leap. You’re to take a leap of faith. He goes, and you jump off the edge of that cliff and you pull the rip cord. He goes, but something doesn’t happen. He goes, the parachute doesn’t come out. He says, so now you’re tumbling down the side of this mountain, getting beat up, not, I mean, just getting damaged.

And you, there’s no end in sight. You’re just falling down the side of this very tall mountain, getting bruised and beaten up. He goes, then at some point, the parachute opens. And now you’re soaring just with the eagles, just like you see everybody out there. And his story is very much like that. If you hear his story, how he became somebody from nothing to somebody. And then he gives you other stories of friends that he knows that

This is what they have to endure in order to be able to soar with eagles. For me, it touched my heart because I was like, wow, I’m tumbling down the mountain getting beat up and bruised. It’s like the early days, you know? And it’s powerful.

Rob (47:38.146)
And it won, think it’s like, you you, I mean, you suffer the pain of discipline or you suffer the pain of regret. And you know, it’s like, whatever life we lead, know, suffering comes in one way, or another. And I think the idea of like intentional disciplined pursuit of a life by design, pun intended, fire by design.

Bob Roman (47:47.493)
Yeah.

Rob (48:04.002)
is a worthwhile endeavor. And if it was easy, everyone would do it. you know, taking those lumps down the mountain was just part of the process. So I love that. And I’m going to check it out. We’ll put the link in the podcast for people to check out in the summary. Bob, you’re the best. I really appreciate you doing this. If anybody wants to check out Fire By Design Instagram, firebydesign.com, reach out to their team. Maybe even Bob will answer the phone once in a blue moon. Thanks again. Thanks again for doing this, man.

Bob Roman (48:29.752)
yeah. All right, thanks, Rob. Have a good day. Thank you.