Before building his remodeling business, Tim Shigley earned his keep in part by competing in team roping competitions at rodeos across the West. The Wichita, Kan.-based Shigley, owner of Shigley Building Co. and the 2016 NAHB Remodelers chair, says he owes his success as a remodeler partly to what his rodeo mentors taught him 25 years ago about how to rope a steer. Here is Shigley's explanation of the four key elements in team roping and how they apply to your work.
| Roping Term | What It Means | Remodeling's Translation |
| Position | A well-trained horse will gallop to the right spot alongside the steer every time. A horse that takes the right "shot" makes it possible for you to make the same type of throw every time, thus increasing your chances of success. | "I was lucky. I had a horse named Tommy that took me to the exact shot every time," Shigley says. Then in remodeling, I put myself in the same position in the marketplace so that my story was the same with my marketing and advertising. I put myself in the spot to make a good pitch." |
| Swing | As your horse comes to the right spot aside the steer, figure out how big a loop in your rope that you'll need to cast it over the steer's horns. Over time, you'll get to the point where you'll act so naturally you'll need to make only minor adjustments in the loop before you throw. | "The swing is my message, with minor tweaks. It wasn't sizing up the customer so much as it was sizing up the market and then getting same message getting out there." |
| Target | Locate where you want to cast your rope. | "This was determining where in town I wanted to do the work and what scale I wanted to do--what target I wanted to hiti. That niche was my customer base." |
| Delivery | Throw the rope, pull the slack, "dally up" (by wrapping the loop around the saddle horn), slow the steer, and turn him to the left so that your teammate can do his job: Making a clean shot roping the steer's back heels. | "Delivery is about what mechanisms I was using. At one time I had radio, print, and direct mail. Those were the ways I had to hit my target. Then I learned with time to how to adjust my loop. My target was hitting that group of people, and slowly had direct the customer after the delivery. You didn't want the steer to get out of control." |
"If you don't execute all of them perfectly, it won't be a successful run," Shigley says. "If you don't, you're just throwing out there in the wind." We're not sure if he was referring here to team roping or to remodeling. Probably both.
