Hidden Gems: Meet Constantine Anest of Ethos Roofing & Restoration

Today we’d like to introduce you to Constantine Anest.

Hi Constantine , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Shortly after I was born in Denver my parents moved to Nebraska where I grew up on a farm and ranch. I am grateful for my upbringing because it has played a significant role in getting to where I am today. From a young age I always knew I wanted to run my own business as that is what I saw my Dad and Grandfathers do. I saw the sense of freedom they had carving their own path and it really appealed to me. I also saw the incredible amount of risk, hard work, and responsibility that comes with it as well. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 2006 with a business degree, I moved to Denver to be a personal trainer. I always had a passion for fitness and thought that may be a good route to entrepreneurship. Things were going well with training, but I wanted more. Interestingly enough, in the summer of 2009 I had a conversation with a friend who was running a small roofing company out of his garage. I was convinced to start helping him with sales on my off time from personal training. After he broke down the opportunity the roofing business due to all the hail Denver experiences it was a no brainer. After six months I had sold enough projects to transition to roofing and construction full time. I quickly fell in love with it as I was utilizing my passion for fitness and hard work I learned on the farm by climbing up and down roofs 14 hours a day. After 2 years I was given an opportunity to run an office for the company in Ohio where I really learned how the business worked. One year later, after building and running the office successfully, my friend had a falling out with his business partners and asked me if I wanted to start a new company with him. I agreed and that was the birth of Ethos Roofing & Restoration in
Denver. We ran the business successfully together until our visions for the company didn’t align and I bought out his interest in the company in 2016. I have been running Ethos on my own for a decade now and it has been one of the most challenging/rewarding experiences of my life.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been everything but smooth! I don’t think anyone truly knows what they are signing up for when they first start a business. Especially with all of the noise out there about how easy it is to start a business and make money. In order to succeed you need to be able to foresee problems before they happen, mitigate unnecessary risk, differentiate yourself from your competitors, constantly find ways to make things more efficient, all while maintaining the trust of your employees and clients. It is impossible to learn all of these skills in a short amount of time, it takes years of failures and modifications to start getting traction. Once you do get traction there is something else that comes up that needs to improve. Going through all of this helped me realize that the owner’s willingness to grow and adapt and skillset are the most limiting factors of the business, not external factors. I have learned when I hit a scenario I feel I can’t overcome, it always comes down to finding someone to help me or my team implement knowledge that we would have never learned on our own. To sum it up, all of this means making hard decisions quickly and most of the time that leads you down the path less traveled where the real opportunity lies.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
From the conception of Ethos I knew we had to find a way to be different to succeed as a new company with no history or track record in the Denver market. My time running the office in Ohio taught me that it was valuable to do other trades like siding, painting, stucco, and not just roofing. A large majority of roofing companies just want to do the roof and get out, as additional trades add so much time and complexity to the job. However we were finding we could provide so much more value to the customer because hail damages more than just the roof.  When we saw a majority of companies were doing just the roof in Denver, we knew this was our advantage. It took us roughly 10 years to dial in the proper people, processes, and systems to make things run smooth, but now our competitors are coming to us to do work for them outside the scope of the roof. Had we not made the hard decision to take on this task, we would be a commodity like most in the industry. We now have an incredible team of employees and contractors that have been working with us for over a decade. We have specialty crews for all types of roof repairs, roof replacement, gutters, paint, stucco, siding, windows, fences, garage doors, and more. Our value proposition to our customers is when you choose us you get all of the damage repaired at your property, not just the roof, saving you tens of thousands of dollars down the road in overlooked damage the insurance company missed. They also get a contractor that facilitates the whole process saving them time and headache. 

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I am a firm believer in stepping into the unknown based on the level of your real world skills you can fall back on to bounce back should things go wrong. So many times people take irresponsible risk and lose everything, taking them years to recover (if ever), because they don’t have the necessary skills and resources to recover. Before making a decision work through worst case scenario in detail. If it is something you can survive based on your skill and circumstance, go for it! If it is a no, go back to the grindstone gaining skills and building resources, until you are ready. For instance I did personal training and roofing until I had a year of living expenses saved up for my worst case scenario. I then made the move to roofing full time.  When it came time to start Ethos I had spent a year honing the skills required to run an office and again had saved up a year of expenses for a worst case scenario. I then made the decision to buy out my business partner and carve my own path based on the experience, relationships, and resources I gained as an owner. Bottom line, once you have this theory down, keep taking risk, it’s the only way to advance if that is what you are looking for.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ethosroofing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethos.roofing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EthosRoofing
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethos-general-contractors/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPqxavnXP7UqM-eL1zbL_Fg
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ethos-roofing-and-restoration-centennial
• Other: https://local.google.com/place?id=15292542822002860017&use=srp&hl=en

Image Credits
Constantine Anest