Antis Roofing encourages employees, business partners and customers to join its quarterly team build projects for Habitat for Humanity.
In March, the company’s founder and CEO, Charles Antis, was elected to the board of directors for the NRCA. Later that month, he was honored by Alzheimer’s Orange County for his volunteer work on behalf of that organization and his company’s community service projects. In April, Antis was named to the board of the Orange County Ronald McDonald House.
For Charles Antis and everyone else at the company, it’s been a whirlwind year. “Someone was joking that it’s like Academy Award season,” Antis says. “I don’t want to get too caught up in it, but this may never happen again, so I want to enjoy every moment of it. I want to make sure my team enjoys every moment of it. It’s been really nice to be recognized for stuff that we think is important because it shows us that other people think it’s important, too. And there was a period where maybe it didn’t feel that way. It feels like it’s working and we’re making a difference, and that’s why it feels pretty awesome today.”
Filling a Niche
For Antis, the company’s community service projects are inextricably linked to its purpose and mission as a company. He says it just took him a while to realize that fact.
Founded in 1989, Antis Roofing has 90 employees and specializes exclusively in work for homeowners associations. Most of the roofing work involves clay tile, but it also does a lot of asphalt shingle roofs, metal roofs, and single-ply systems—primarily PVC. “Our only focus is HOA,” say Antis. “Our company services approximately 1,200 HOAs that average 200 units each. That’s 240,000 individual homeowners that could call us at any one time, so that’s a challenge.”
Charles Antis was recently appointed to the board of the Orange County Ronald McDonald House.
The demanding HOA market keeps the business running on all cylinders, notes Antis.“Because we were focused on this super-high customer care market, we developed some really great qualities as a business,” he notes. “For example, we photograph virtually everything we touch, everything we see, everything we do. We upload about 6,000 images per day because that’s what it takes to protect all of our stakeholders, from our material suppliers to our manufacturers to the individual homeowners association board members and homeowners. We memorialize everything that occurs with photographs and notes in our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, much like a property manager would.”
In the drive to improve his company, Antis asked himself a lot of questions, including basic questions about what motivates him and the true purpose of his company. “Somewhere along the line we discovered that our purpose is to keep families safe and dry,” he says. “That’s what helped lead us to our philanthropy. It brought us back to the community.”
Finding a Passion
Antis believes the company’s community service efforts help employees find their passion and make a connection with the community. “Our philanthropy is tied to our central theme,” he notes. “We believe everybody deserves an opportunity to live in safe, dry home and have a happy family there.”
The first board Antis joined was for Habitat for Humanity in Orange County, which embraces the same goal. He also serves on NRCA committees and will begin serving on the NRCA board for the same reason. “I’m able to give back in a way that lifts me, my people, my stakeholders and my industry,” he says. “I’m also on the board of Ronald McDonald House, which is again giving people a safe, dry place to live while they visit their sick children in the hospital. All of these board memberships that I do are focused on keeping families safe and dry, which is the central mission of Antis Roofing.”
The company has worked with Habitat for Humanity since 2009, and it also helps other nonprofit organizations by repairing, maintaining and replacing their roofs at no charge through the Antis Foundation “This year we are keeping 15 different nonprofits dry,” he says. “In fact, we have two complete re-roofs we are setting up this summer for the Boy Scouts of America and America Family Housing.”
Everyone at the company has found community service projects personally rewarding, notes Antis. It’s also helped the business grow and thrive. “We’ve discovered that the more we give, the more we grow, the more money we make, and the more we can give,” he says. “We are in this awesome little cycle where we have purpose in our work. We understand that there is something magical happening right now, and we just have a hard time saying no when somebody has a leaky roof.”
Antis Roofing CEO Charles Antis (left) accepts an award at Alzheimer’s Orange County’s 19th annual fundraising event from Jim McAleer, president and CEO of Alzheimer’s Orange County.
Changing the World
Antis is extremely proud of the awards his company has won. He is also extremely grateful. “Winning those awards from the roofing industry just filled my heart with such gratitude,” he says. “It was just awesome to experience the way our whole company received the Community Involvement Award. We all feel like we are making the roofing industry a better place. We all feel at Antis Roofing that we are working to lift the brand and lift the paycheck of all 250,000 roofers in America. We have that purpose in what we do, and it was gratifying to win that award as a team.”
Alarcon and Cortez, the winners of the individual awards, both lead by example, according to Antis. “It also felt really good to see two of our really hardworking employees honored with MVP Awards, one of them the Best of the Best,” he notes. “We are really proud of our team members achieving recognition because we are family.”
Charles Antis believes the company’s philanthropic efforts have inspired everyone at his company and made it a more exciting place to come to work.
Antis is thankful for the recognition his team has received, especially because it allows him to share his message with others in the industry. “We have this amazing story right now, and it is getting a lot of attention, but I don’t want to miss this opportunity to tell other business owners that this is not very complicated,” he says. “It’s just a slight shift in the way you look at business. It’s bringing a why—why you exist—into the picture. And suddenly, there’s a stronger culture. Everybody wants to come work here because there is purpose here.”
“We don’t consider ourselves lowly roofers anymore,” he concludes. “We consider ourselves roofing professionals that are truly making the world a better place. We have a very important service that we provide, and we provide it in the best way possible.”
Photos: Antis Roofing & Waterproofing
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