Meet Rosie Romero

Rosie Romero, Founder & Owner

Rosie Right Design Build Remodel — Scottsdale, Arizona

Beginnings

My full name is Rosamond C. Romero, Jr. That’s R-O-S-A-M-O-N-D, R-O-M-E-R-O, Jr. Everybody calls me Rosie. I’ve been known that way my whole life.

We moved from South Louisiana — my parents, seven brothers and sisters and me — to Phoenix, Arizona in 1966, when it was a small village of just a half a million people. We settled in the Scottsdale–Paradise Valley segment of the valley. I went to local schools, local high schools, public schools. My dad was a successful physician, and it was discovered early that I wasn’t fit to be a doctor.

So I got into the construction field very early. From the time I got a driver’s license in 1972, I had a tool belt in the back seat and started learning construction hands-on.

Learning the Trades

I was always a pretty good tradesperson. I could always finish concrete, frame up walls, hang sheet rock, and paint — as much as I hated it, I could do it. A lot of trim carpentry, too: cabinets, doors, millwork.

And that just led one day to an opportunity to quit working for somebody else and start my own company. I did that about 1988.

Why I Started a Company

What actually drove me into entrepreneurship and owning a company was my growing family. My wife and I decided, let’s take a gamble at owning a business and maybe doing it a little bit better than an hourly wage. I really enjoyed the men in the companies and the women I worked with in my prior life, but we decided to give it a go as self-employed. That’s really what drove it — the growing family.

Surviving the First Few Years

I do a lot of consulting with contractors all across the country, and the failure rate in remodeling is so high. The reason it’s so high is the first year in business. Everybody knows you just opened the remodeling company, so it’s your friends and your family all calling for favors — and they’re really not interested in you making a profit. They just want you to complete the favors.

So I’ve told people many, many times: the first few years are tough. But if you can survive the family and friend favors, you have a pretty good chance of making a good, successful run of it.

The Dare That Started a Radio Show

The little remodeling company my wife and I founded, basically in the garage of our home, continued to grow. It was growing at a pretty good clip, but it was still subject to the ebbs and the lows of construction. We’d have times where I was so busy and doing well financially, but I could never spend time at home or on vacations. Then things would slow down, and I’d have lots of time available, but we didn’t have the resources to do anything.

So I came up with an idea after being challenged by a contractor in Atlanta, Georgia. He said, “Why don’t you see if there’s a radio station in town that’ll put you on Saturday mornings to answer homeowner questions about their home?” And he dared me. He double-dog dared me. That was all it took for me to start knocking on radio stations’ doors.

In 1988, I got on. Once I got on and earned a reputation of having the right answer for homeowners’ questions and dilemmas, the company we had at the time literally exploded. We rode a very big wave of success for a long time.

Getting on the Air

When I was challenged to try this weekly call-in home improvement talk show, I did reach out to a couple of the radio stations, and they were somewhat interested. One of the bigger stations here in town said, “I think we would air this content, but we need to see your broadcasting resume.” Well, there was no broadcasting resume.

So the programming director at that station actually gave me the name of three program directors at smaller stations right here in the community. The first door I knocked on — it was a Thursday afternoon, I’ll never forget it — he accepted me. We talked for 10 minutes. I presented the idea to him. I thought Saturday morning was the best time to air the show; homeowners would be listening, they’d be on their way to the hardware store to pick up the nails or the drywall mud or the paint, picking the project for the weekend. About Thursday at 3 o’clock in the afternoon we wrapped up the meeting, and he said, “You’ve got two hours starting Saturday.”

I was on that station for a couple of years, and then the larger station I’d first approached called me and said, “We think you’re sounding pretty good. Would you consider moving over to us?” I’m blessed — it’s the biggest radio station in Arizona. Then we spread that to cover the other major cities in Arizona as well. We’re on in Flagstaff. We’re on in Tucson. So we cover the state with time-appropriate, correct information about how you should manage, remodel, maintain, live in and enjoy your home. That’s our show.

The Rosie on the House program has been airing on KTAR 92.3 FM in Maricopa County for 37 years. It’s got a long relationship with management, and we all look to have it last quite a bit longer.

Sticky Notes and Two-Hour Sermons

When the programming director at that first radio station put me on Saturdays, I basically had to go into that program every Saturday morning like a Baptist minister with a two-hour sermon, because you did not know if anyone was listening or whether you’d get a single phone call. It was a couple of weeks after we were on that people started realizing, oh, this is a call-in show. Then the calls started coming in, and it was great. I loved it in the beginning.

We were in a very small station. I was in the broadcast room and the engineer was across the hall in a glass booth — I could see him. He was answering the phone and he’d write the caller’s name: “Janice, line 2, drywall question.” He’d put it on a sticky note and give it to one of my children, and they would run in and hand me the sticky note. I’d have four or five sticky notes: line 2, line 3, line 4, line 5, line 6. It got on pretty quick.

Trapped in the Hardware Store

Then we moved to the larger station and our audience expanded exponentially — to the point, between the radio show and the website and some TV that I was doing on local news, that I had to send my kids or my wife into the hardware store to pick up anything we needed, because I’d get in there and I’d be trapped. Everybody would want to know: is this the caulk I should be using? Is this the outlet I need? I’d walk into a neighborhood Ace Hardware store and be trapped in there for 20 or 30 minutes just answering homeowners’ questions. And that’s fine. I just always had to add that time to my trips.

On the radio broadcast, we’ve been blessed to be the number one radio talk show in Arizona for 37 years. At any one time when you tune into the show, you’re one of about 100,000 people listening. It’s hard to talk about.

Selling the First Company — and Coming Back

We started a company in 1988, and my wife and I sold it to the employees in 2002. At that point it was 100 employees — a pretty good-sized operation. I went into the radio broadcasting and the construction consulting full-time.

After about 10 years of being out of the industry, I decided we’re going to get back in. That’s kind of a funny story. On the question-and-answer format of our home improvement radio show, I answered a question about tiling a shower for a homeowner. When we went to the first commercial break, my son — with the mics turned off — whispered over to me, “Dad, they don’t do it like that anymore.”

It was at that moment, in about 2013 or 2014, that I decided: okay, let’s open another little company just so I can stay current with how things are being done. And that was the birth of Rosie Right.

I came this close with the first company to having a perfect remodeling company. We were voted the best remodeling company in America in 2000, out of over 20,000 applicants and 800,000 remodelers. I came this close to having a perfect company. So I thought, okay, if I’m going to open another company, we’re striving for perfect.

How Rosie Right Got Its Name

The name Rosie Right actually came from the team. I was absent from the presence of the business for about a year, and when I came back, it had a new name. They had elected to name it Rosie Right.

The concept behind that is to put 50 years of my home remodeling experience to work. A big part of that experience was consulting with top-of-class remodelers all across the country, finding out their best practices in every dimension of running a company — from first contact to final warranty walkthrough and everything in between. So as I was traveling the country consulting with these companies, I was picking and choosing and copying what I thought were the best practices. We kind of put all that together and said, you know, this is going to be the start of our pursuit of remodeling perfection. We’re using the best minds, the best successful companies in the country, and putting it all together in one place.

What Homeowners Bring Through the Door

What we hear from our customers, whether they have or haven’t had prior remodeling experiences, is that they come into the adventure with some apprehension. There are a lot of unknowns, and homeowners have no clue — in just a kitchen remodel — how many different decisions they’re going to have to make. They can get overwhelmed pretty easily, and it’s easy for them to process that anxiety with a lot of apprehension about going forward.

So what we do is foresee a lot of that and assure them we’ve been through this. We’re going to narrow this down from 400 tile selections to eight. We’re going to narrow this down from 300 different cabinet makers to two. And based on what you’re looking for, this is the direction.

If you’ll just follow us and let us walk beside you, we’ll get you to the start point, and we’ll get you to the finish point with the fewest amount of surprises, the fewest evenings of anxiety or apprehension, and no unanswered questions.

I think our client surveys are testimony to that. If you take a hard look at what people say about us, it was the best remodeling experience they’ve ever had.

A Million Steps: The Rosie Right Way

The biggest part of our end product is the result of a million steps that we’ve identified, defined, and refined over all the years we’ve been in business. We’ve got some subcontractors that we’ve used for over 40 years. But we’re never not looking for new guys who have proven they’re successful in their field.

We’ll very regularly meet with these guys on jobs and say, “What do we do that other general contractors don’t ask you to do?” And they’ll give us a pretty good list of things we insist on that other contractors never think to ask. But we never end that meeting without asking them, “What can we do better?” When you’re leaning on trusted subcontractors producing the finest work available that hands can produce, and they’re constantly giving you that feedback — “well, you know, here’s a tip” — we’ll take those tips and continually compile them into our specification manual that’s unique and proprietary just to us.

How things are done, from the way ditches are dug to the way trim plates are mounted on the wall with the electrical devices — every single step along the way, we have an identifying mark of what is right and what is wrong. And we only accept it one way: the Rosie Right way.

We Ask a Lot of Questions

When you’re dealing with Rosie Right, and you’re talking about things that are different from what you might encounter with other contractors, the first thing you’re going to notice — from the very first time you call our office — is that we ask a lot of questions. A lot of questions. Those questions help guide our process and our experience to help this process be as trouble- and anxiety-free for you, the homeowner, as possible.

Sometimes we have to take a pause of our questions and everybody takes a breath, but the questions we ask have a lot based on the experience of how is this all going to come together. Have you thought about this? How are you going to use that? What traffic pattern in your home is broken? People never even think about traffic patterns in their home. And we always ask: is there a critical date you’d like this completed by?

So we’re proud to say that in all these processes we’ve put together, we’re finishing about 99 percent of our jobs on time and on budget. We’re not at 100 percent — but that’s that ongoing pursuit for perfection. We’ll finish every job on time, on budget, with incomparable workmanship, incomparable experience that you just couldn’t have anywhere else.

The People

One of the things I love about this industry are the people you get to meet, and your clients. When you’re remodeling their bathroom or their kitchen or their bedroom or their family room or putting a second-story addition on their house, it’s more than just a one-time encounter — they’re not coming in to buy a tube of caulk. You’re engaged with their life and their family for a certain amount of time.

And the relationships that I’ve been able to develop with our homeowners, and what they have been able to teach me — we’ve done work for Fortune 100 CEOs. When Phoenix started recruiting professional sports, we did several of the coaches’ homes and several players’ homes. We were doing work for some of the most successful people on the planet, global entertainers. I’d mention names, you’d know every one of them.

You get to know these people on such a personal level, and I never, ever lose an opportunity to ask them about their pursuit for excellence. The things I’ve learned from homeowners — our clients — have really done a lot for me in building the company.

A Word from My Dad

And the company, in its inception, all goes back to a word of encouragement my dad would recite often as we were growing up around the house.

It takes a lifetime to build a reputation. It takes one minute to lose it. Don’t ever forget that.

Our pursuit is always for doing the next right thing.

Who We Are

Rosamond Romero. Everybody calls me Rosie — it’s been that way my entire life. We’re with Rosie Right Design Build Remodel, a remodeling company located in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I’m the host of the Saturday morning radio program Rosie on the House, where we strive to become every Arizona homeowner’s best friend.

Rosie Right Design Build Remodel is the firm that gets you closer to remodeling perfection than any other company on the planet.

Rosie Right Design Build Remodel is a remodeling company that handles all size jobs. We’ll replace 4×4 rotten wood posts on the back patio, and we’ll also put in an elevator in the middle of your house in some of the finest neighborhoods in the Paradise Valley–Carefree area. There isn’t anything we can’t do or get done.