“There are times where we’ll go through a number of crews until we find the exact fit,” Melody Cain says.
Cain owns Tier-1 Roofing and Exteriors, a Monroe, Ohio, company that takes roofing and exterior jobs across Greater Cincinnati and Southwest Ohio. She is plain about her role on a site. “I don’t do the work, but I do go to the job,” she says.
That puts a lot of weight on the crews. Cain says she leads by example, and when a crew is not the right fit, she moves on to another. When one is, she works to keep it. Crews get paid on time, and she makes a point of being fair with them. “We’re treating our people the way we would want to be treated,” she says.
She came to roofing sideways. Before Tier-1, Cain worked in fire and water cleanup and restoration for a company that had its own construction group. Roofing caught her interest. She spent about a year with another roofing company, then started her own, which she runs as sole owner.
Her rule for showing up is short. “You have to do what you say you’re going to do and be there when you say you’re going to be there, otherwise it ruins your reputation,” she says.
She credits upbringing more than training. “It’s just something that you’re embedded with from the time you’re young,” she says. “Either you work hard or you don’t.”
Going to the job means more than checking on a crew. A homeowner who called about a leak around some skylights described Cain booking the visit quickly because rain was coming, photographing and explaining what she saw on the roof without pressing for more business, and getting the skylight problem fixed the same day.
Customers, Cain says, tend to like that the company is woman-owned, and they like the communication. She knows of three women-owned companies in her part of Ohio and northern Kentucky.
What the company should be known for is still being worked out. “It’s been kind of a process finding our exact niche,” she says. Roofing, residential and commercial, remains the core, with siding, concrete and other exterior work around it. The work she most wants more of is decks and what she calls additions, such as porticos and three-season rooms. Tier-1 used to lean toward commercial jobs and has been building up its residential side. “Commercial property is more of a longer sale, so to speak,” she says.
Each new line of work gets learned on its own. “You want to get in and learn each little niche that you’re doing,” she says.