Interview With a Roofer: Travis Sellers on Herding Cats, Small Business, and the Work Behind the Work
Interview With a Roofer: Travis Sellers on Herding Cats, Small Business, and the Work Behind the Work
Ask Travis Sellers what a normal workday looks like as Controller for Freetail Roofing and his first answer is probably the most accurate one.
“Herding cats.”
Then comes the actual list.
Building proposals. Scheduling work. Sending invoices. Collecting invoices. Running payroll. Maintaining the systems everyone uses to know what is happening. Monitoring the company’s financial health. Keeping information current with insurance companies, manufacturers, suppliers, government agencies, general contractors, subcontractors, banks, payment processors, financing companies, software providers, employees, and customers.
Then he creates reports from all of it so ownership can make educated decisions about where the business goes next.
So, yes. Herding cats seems fair.
Travis has been in the roofing business for 11 years, although roofing itself was never exactly the plan. He grew up in Austin and still calls Austin home. What always appealed to him was small business.
“Small business has always been my calling,” Travis said. “I just never wanted to be the front-man.”
That arrangement worked out pretty well at Freetail.
Finding the Right Seat
Travis describes the way he joined Freetail with one word: serendipity.
A mutual friend saw that the business had a need and Travis had a need, and suggested that he and Michael Kalish get together to see if there might be a fit.
“Turns out it worked really well!”
Part of that fit came from understanding his own role. Travis did not need to be the face of the company. He liked building the structure that allowed the company to operate.
As he puts it, “Michael is the company’s spirit animal,” and attaching yourself to someone with strong vision made sense to him.
The appreciation for small and family-owned businesses started much earlier. Travis credits his parents with establishing his work ethic, while his grandfather showed him how much fun running a small family business could be.
One lesson from his upbringing continues to shape the way he approaches work today: empathy.
That may not be the first word people associate with the person handling financial reports and invoices, but it comes up repeatedly in the way Travis talks about customers, employees, and roofing itself.
Doing a job right, he says, means “finishing what you start, caring about the final product, putting yourself in the customer’s shoes, and doing right by them.”
What Happens Behind the Roof
Most homeowners understandably judge a roofing company by what happens at their house. Was the crew on time? Was the property protected? Does the roof look good? Was everything cleaned up afterward?
But there is a whole other side of the work happening before, during, and after the trucks arrive.
Travis lives in that side of the business.
One thing customers probably never think about, he says, is just how unpredictably communication happens. Phone calls rarely arrive one at a time at convenient moments. Instead, they seem to come “in batches, back to back or overlapping.”
Meanwhile, every project is moving through a network of schedules, payments, materials, insurance requirements, customer questions, crews, suppliers, and paperwork.
The goal is to make all of that complexity feel simple on the other end.
That becomes particularly important when insurance is involved. Travis believes homeowners should understand that the insurance process itself can be confusing, and one of the most useful things a roofing company can do is provide clear and concise information.
The patience required can be significant.
Asked what part of roofing requires the most patience, Travis pointed to “working with an insurance company to help them do the right thing for their customer, on a roof where they are not incentivized to do so.”
For the homeowner, all of that eventually comes back to one thing: peace of mind.
Whether that peace comes from good communication, a warranty, clear information, or simply knowing someone will answer the phone, Travis believes customers need certainty that the company they hired can be relied upon.
The Small-Town Roofer
Travis has one of our favorite descriptions so far of what a local roofing company should look like.
“Small town roofers are like the vision we have of the classic rural doctor,” he said. “We make house calls, bring a little expertise on-site, and help folks make an educated decision over a conversation at the kitchen table.”
There is, however, one important distinction.
“Except our medicine involves more hammers and nails than the good doctor’s.”
That picture captures a lot of what Travis values about doing business in Central Texas.
“This is a friendly part of the world,” he said.
He appreciates that local homeowners are both friendly and smart, and he believes a roofing company earns trust over time through the way it treats people. For Travis, honesty in roofing is not primarily a slogan. It looks like a business that has been around for more than a decade, serves its community well, and continues to survive largely because previous customers send new ones its way.
That history matters because roofing projects are not interchangeable.
Freetail has worked on homes, nonprofits, churches, HOA facilities, fire stations, police stations, and businesses throughout the area. Travis says each project serves as a reminder that neither people nor roofs should ever be treated like numbers.
“Every person and every roof deserves special attention.”
Building Something That Supports People
There is another side of roofing that Travis wishes more homeowners could see.
“Our goal is to provide for the community, by providing shelter, by providing livelihoods, and by providing service in whatever additional capacity we are able.”
A roofing company obviously exists to put roofs on buildings, but there are families attached to the people doing the work. There are employees relying on the company. There are subcontractors and suppliers. There are homeowners relying on the finished product. There is an entire small ecosystem behind every project.
For Travis, being responsible to that team and community is part of what keeps him going on difficult days.
It is also why he wants the people he works beside to see him as reliable. His ideal description of himself as an employee has very little to do with being noticed.
He hopes people would say he “makes the business run more smoothly, and makes others’ jobs easier and more fulfilling.”
That is probably a pretty good description of what a strong Controller is supposed to do.
Roofs, Kids, and Questionable 4Runner Decisions
Of course, work is not the whole story.
Travis is a dad, and much of life outside Freetail currently revolves around whatever his kids happen to be interested in that week. He is proud that his three-year-old is becoming a strong swimmer and that his five-year-old is already doing flips off the diving board.
He also used to consider himself a night owl. Several years of children waking up between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning have apparently made that distinction less meaningful.
His gas-station food of choice is tacos, putting him firmly in line with Michael and proving that Freetail may need to eventually disclose tacos as an unofficial employee benefit.
He is strangely loyal to Zebra pens, finds most music too distracting while working, and apparently has a complicated relationship with 1999 Toyota 4Runner Limited 4WDs.
“This is not my first 1999 4Runner Limited 4WD,” he said. “Nor is $4,500 the least I have paid for one…”
We are going to leave that story exactly where Travis left it.
Texas weather, meanwhile, gets no such restraint.
“Melting, freezing, flooding, droughting, storming,” Travis said. “Even the mosquitoes are big enough to knock granules out of your shingles.”
Making the Right Choice
When Travis drives around Central Texas, he regularly passes homes and businesses Freetail has worked on over the years.
His first thought is not always sentimental.
Sometimes it is, “Man, there are a lot of branches and leaves on that roof.”
Apparently even off the clock, the Controller is looking for preventative maintenance opportunities.
But there is pride there too. It is rewarding to drive through a community and see buildings you helped protect, especially knowing the work behind them involved far more than a transaction.
Travis wants customers to finish a project feeling confident that they made the right choice. He wants them to encounter a company that listens, communicates clearly, and treats their individual situation like it actually matters.
And after 11 years helping build the systems that keep Freetail moving, his final message to the public is perhaps the clearest expression yet of the company’s commitment to quality:
“This roof is free-range and grass-fed. Never given hormones or penned, like at those giant commercial roofing outfits.”
For additional context, Travis completed this interview at 12:31 in the morning.
We feel that explains some things.