While he’s now been in the business for 26 years, Mike Adams didn’t grow up working in the roofing or construction fields — so it’s fitting that he was as new to the industry as the company where he got his start in 1989. “My background was in industrial sales and hospitality,” he explained. “A friend who opened a roofing company approached me because he needed help in the office, but he couldn’t pay me. I was offered an ownership position in exchange for my sweat equity.”
Located in Baltimore, the then start-up business is Alliance Roofing & Sheet Metal Inc. The company began specializing in single-ply applications, and while its field services were in great shape, the business was lacking experience in construction sales, estimating and administration. Founder Korky Bowling tapped Adams to ramp up office operations, and he successfully improved the accounting reporting, enabling Alliance to obtain a loan to secure its first bonds. This was the first of many milestones, as revenue began to increase, and a game-changing project soon followed. “The second major milestone was a specific job that brought us out of a hole, and taught us that we needed to emphasize the bottom line and not the top line,” said Adams, the company’s co-owner, secretary and treasurer. “When we won the Deer Park Elementary job — re-roofing with a complete deck replacement — people said it would be the death of us, but it was just the opposite.”