The rooftop might be the last place you’d expect to find a happy roofing contractor with more than 400 employees, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of completed projects, and the wisdom that a dozen years of leading a successful, growing business provides. 

But that’s how you’ll find Jonathan Schilling. The owner of JR & Co. has a passion for running a business that puts people first, both inside and outside the organization. But get him talking about the process of tearing off and installing a new roof — and all the intricacies that the job entails — something unlocks, and he kicks into another gear. 

“I do love roofing, actually, to be perfectly honest with you,” he said with a wide smile, recounting how he helped install a new roof earlier this year on a Space Force facility on Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. 

“You know, the office is stressful. Running a business is stressful. But out on a job, when you’re outside … working next to a group of guys, where there’s a lot of camaraderie and a sense of being on a team? There’s just a lot of reward in seeing the success of a project at the end of the day. You don’t always get that in the office as you grind through different tasks.”

Schilling’s love for roofing developed organically and wasn’t homegrown, necessarily. JR & Co. was an established company, founded in 1986 and growing in the Kansas City area, when it hired Schilling’s father as a service technician. It was a job at the time, and his father was not a career roofer. He did, however, encourage a teenage Schilling to leave his job selling women’s shoes to join the warehouse crew at age 16. 

It wasn’t long before he hit the rooftop and ran a crew of subcontractors before becoming a foreman. He then progressed to a superintendent, then project manager, and estimator, touching all facets of the organization. 

“It was a pretty small company, and I had the opportunity over time through a lot of hard work to move up through the organization,” he recalled. 

When the company founder, J. R. Schuller, moved to Western Canada to open a branch there, he tapped Schilling as general manager. When Schuller decided not to return to Kansas City in 2017, Schilling, then 29, went all-in and bought the company. 

At the time, JR & Co. generated roughly $11 million in revenue and had 54 employees. His vision to grow the company into a force continues playing out. JR & Co. expanded geographically, moving into new markets like Florida and Colorado. He also expanded service officers and brought in hands-on expertise for sheet metal, solar, and general contracting divisions. Within three years, revenues swelled beyond $60 million, and a staff that grew to 280 serviced clients in more than 20 states.

With a GED and no formal business education, Schilling said he learned everything as he went, and it wasn’t always a smooth ride. But his work ethic and drive for results helped him overcome challenges. 

“It was a pretty simple recipe back then; bid as many roofs as we can, win them, and then perform them as quickly as you can,” he explained. “As a budding entrepreneur, I thought that’s how you fix (your problems), right? Not exactly. So, I’ve had lots of lessons to learn.”

Photo: JR & Co.

Military Might

A lot of what Schilling learned came off the rooftop. He is one of 11 children in a family that moved quite a bit and seemed to always be growing. Schilling’s parents were altruistic to the core and consistently shared what they had with others, including strangers who needed a lift in life. 

Being around that many siblings — and others — created a sense of comfort with people from all backgrounds, and built a deep commitment to taking care of one another within the family and greater community. 

His real sense for teamwork, unity and discipline developed during his decade-long stint in the U.S. Army Reserves. His time included deployment during Operation Enduring Freedom, where he was stationed in Africa for a year. 

It also provided the perfect training ground for the leadership skills he uses daily at JR & Co. 

“I learned some good things about leadership from the U.S. Army, on leading by example and just taking care of other people. Those are things that are fundamental to how we operate today as a company.” 

Schilling said he also kept his roofing skills fresh during his deployment, volunteering, so to speak, to reroof a special operations base for the U.S. Navy Seabees in Djibouti, East Africa.

“They were like, ‘This reservist guy knows how to do roofing,’ so they came and asked me,” he recalled. “And to this day, I have a certificate that’s a joint achievement award for installing a roof in Djibouti, Africa, in support of Special Operations Command. I’m probably one of the few roofing contractors to hold one of those.”

Honors aside, the roofing job with the military also proved to be a valuable business experience, spurring Schilling to think about the government’s reach and need to roof facilities throughout the Midwest. Today, the military accounts for a healthy revenue stream and a growing list of impressive projects for JR & Co., including memorable ones like the U.S. Air Force Academy reroof in Colorado Springs, Colo.; Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City; and roofing and sheet metal work at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. 

Those also led to other projects with major federal and state stakeholders like the Kansas City International Overhaul Base, the U.S. Department of Energy, and several K-12 schools and local universities. Major companies like Cargill, DuPont, FedEx, Amazon, Safeway-Albertson’s, Lowe’s, Toyota and Lockheed Martin also cover the JR & Co. client list. 

You know, the office is stressful. Running a business is stressful. But out on a job, when you’re outside … working next to a group of guys, where there’s a lot of camaraderie and a sense of being on a team? There’s just a lot of reward in seeing the success of a project at the end of the day.

Back to the Roof

Keeping all those clients happy while enriching a growing team of hundreds of employees takes delegation and organization. JR & Co.’s branch managers are responsible for sales, production and results at their respective locations, including profits and losses. Each specific business unit has a director, reporting to a corporate vice president or the CEO. All locations have roofing, sheet metal, and solar installation capabilities, as well as roofing maintenance and repair.  

There’s also a huge emphasis on and investment in safety. From bootcamp for new employees, mandatory OSHA 10-hour course training for crew members, 30-hour OSHA training for supervisors, safety is a priority. There are weekly video toolbox talks with mandatory attendance, and it’s also promoted externally with clients so they can see beyond the modification rate, which was at an impressive .62 coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Simply put, Schilling said he takes it seriously because there’s no better indicator of how they take care of their workers, but also meet the high safety standards required to perform so much federal and state government contract work. 

The safety record helps build team success just as much as the client-first approach and skill at running roofing operations in key Midwest markets. And while that success may be felt at the office, Schilling said it’s completely different when you can see a finished project, or rows of buildings with new roofs.

Getting on the roof isn’t all that common anymore, as other priorities running a multi-state roofing operation take hold. Yet, the fact that he still relishes the opportunity surprises no one, especially his youngest sister, Rachel Schilling, who handles JR & Co.’s marketing.

“It’s not the roofing, necessarily, it’s about being with the guys,” she explained. “If you gave him that opportunity to go it by himself, he’d lose his mind. He loves being with his team.” 

To which the older Schilling agreed. 

“100 percent!” he replied. “If you made me do it myself, I would die. Or die inside, at least.”