“Take the tradesman out of the trade, but you can’t take the trade out of the tradesman,” Rick Studley says. “It’s just who I am.”
He was explaining why he tries to be involved in every job All Phase Roofing LLC takes on. Studley owns the company, and he doesn’t pretend the habit is easy. “That gets kind of hard,” he says, “but that’s just me because I am the tradesman.”
Customers have noticed. One homeowner had the company put on her roof before a run of hurricanes, then asked for it to be checked after the storms. Studley showed up himself. He went up on the roof, took pictures and showed her it had come through fine. She wrote afterward that the visit gave her peace of mind.
Studley has worked in construction for 39 years, and roofing is only one of the trades he knows. In 2021, the company described itself as a division of All Phase Building Concepts, a construction outfit that handled projects from the foundation to the finish. Today it bills itself as both a certified building contractor and a certified roofer.
The company installs, repairs and maintains shingle, tile, metal and flat roofs on homes and commercial buildings, and it holds TAMKO Pro Gold certification. It is based in Lutz and works across the Tampa Bay area, from Citrus Park and Lake Magdalene to Land O’ Lakes. The license lets Studley go much farther when a job calls for it. “Depending on the size of job, we are state certified, so we can go anywhere in the state of Florida,” he says. “If it’s for residential, we try to stick within a 50-mile radius.”
Showing up is a matter of time as well as presence. Studley never served in the military, but a lot of his family did, and he grew up among people who treated being early as the baseline. He says the habit has won him work, particularly from customers who served. “They’re like, you’re on time,” he says. “You know, 10 minutes early, you’re on time, and they respect that.”
He traces his idea of a promise to the same upbringing. He is Gen X, and he was raised to mean what he says. “When I grew up, your word should be as good as gold,” he says. “You should mean everything that you say. And if you don’t mean it, don’t say it.”
He can still picture how that worked, though he knows it belongs to another time. “A handshake was damn near like a signed contract,” Studley says. “You can count on that handshake. It’s not like that any longer.”