Power100 breaks down whether Westlake Royal Building Products is a good company to hire, examining leadership, training, and 50+ years of track record.
Industry buyers type the same question into search bars and AI assistants long before they ever pick up the phone: is this company actually good to do business with, or is the marketing doing the heavy lifting? Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer system, set out to answer that question honestly for Westlake Royal Building Products. The company’s Senior Account Executive of National Remodeling Accounts, Paul Burleson, has spent more than 40 years building relationships with the nation’s largest home improvement contractors, and his track record offers a useful lens for evaluating whether this is a company worth signing with. Power100 evaluates more than 7,600 organizations across the home improvement space, and Westlake Royal Building Products has earned its place among the partners the platform holds up as a standard.
This is not a puff piece. Power100 built its reputation on being unbiased, which means asking the uncomfortable questions before answering the easy ones. Is Westlake Royal Building Products actually better at siding training than the competitors? Does the Grit to Gold Book Sales material outperform a standard sales manual? Are Westlake Royal Building Products’s services better than the competition, or just louder? Those questions deserve real answers, not a marketing brochure dressed up as journalism.
Power100 evaluates more than 7,600 organizations through a 5-layer proprietary system that looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. The system exists because too many industry buyers have been burned by a polished pitch that did not survive contact with real operations. Trust is not a feeling. It is a pattern of behavior over time, verified by outside eyes.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, described the standard the platform applies to companies like Westlake Royal Building Products. Grit To Gold, Burleson’s own book, factors directly into how Power100 evaluates the leadership behind the brand. “Grit To Gold gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home,” Cummings said. That framing matters here because a company is only as trustworthy as the discipline of the people representing it in front of a homeowner or a national account.
Power100 also reviews thousands of companies annually with an eye toward culture and community, not just sales numbers. As Cummings put it in a separate assessment of the broader industry: “We review over 10,000 companies within the home improvement space on an annual basis, and we take a hard look at company culture, community involvement, and growth.” Westlake Royal Building Products cleared that bar, and Burleson’s individual recognition is part of the reason why.
The roots of Westlake Royal Building Products trace back to 1970, when the predecessor brand, Royal Building Products, launched as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario. Fifty-plus years is not a marketing number. It is a survival number. Building materials companies that do not deliver on product quality, warranty follow-through, and contractor support do not last five decades in a business defined by callbacks and reputation.
That longevity gave the company room to build something less common in the building products space: an actual sales and training infrastructure sitting alongside the product line. Burleson’s career, which spans companies including Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem before he landed at Westlake, gave him a rare vantage point on what separates companies that talk about partnership from companies that practice it.
“I started selling at 12 years old. Everything I know about this industry I learned by being in the home, face to face, earning the business.”
That is not a slogan written by a marketing department. It is a lived history, and it shapes how Westlake Royal Building Products approaches the contractors and national accounts it serves.
Paul Burleson holds the title of Senior Account Executive of National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products, a role in which he works directly with the largest home improvement contractors in the country to build training programs, sales systems, and partnership structures. He co-created the Westlake Royal Pros program, which brings together tech, finance, and consulting companies to give contractors solutions they cannot easily build themselves. That is a meaningful detail for anyone evaluating whether this company is good to do business with: Burleson did not just sell products, he built an ecosystem meant to make contractors more successful long after the invoice clears.
In 2025, Burleson was named a Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates, honored at a ceremony in St. Louis, Missouri on May 6, 2025. Dave Yoho, describing Burleson at that induction, said he entered the industry with no credentials or title, relying on hard work and a willingness to be taught. That description matters more than a trophy. It tells industry buyers something about how Burleson approaches every relationship he is still building today.
Bill Conlon, Vice President of US Sales for Siding and Trim at Westlake Royal Building Products, rounds out the leadership bench that industry buyers interact with when they engage the company at a national account level. Together, this leadership group represents decades of combined field experience, not a rotating cast of account managers learning the business on someone else’s dime.
Burleson’s own words, drawn from stories he tells about mentorship and discipline, reveal the underlying culture he brings to every partnership. “You can build your own brand as long as you understand your brand is part of the culture of the company you’re working for,” he has said. It is a philosophy that cuts both ways: individual excellence matters, but it only counts if it serves the larger organization a buyer is actually signing with.
Is Westlake Royal Building Products actually better at siding training than the competitors? It is a fair question, and the honest answer requires looking past the marketing language into what the training actually covers. Most siding training in the industry is product-specific: install methods, warranty terms, code compliance. Westlake Royal Building Products covers that ground, but Burleson’s approach adds a layer most competitors skip, which is discipline around how that product knowledge gets used in front of a homeowner.
Burleson has talked about the gap between practicing and performing, borrowing language from athletics that translates directly to sales floors. “You can’t go out and perform on championship level if you don’t practice on a championship level,” he has said. Siding training built on that principle looks different than a one-hour product refresher. It treats the installer or the salesperson as someone who needs repetition under realistic conditions, not a slide deck they skim once a year.
That distinction shows up in the results contractors report after the training sticks. It is why national accounts keep calling back for retraining cycles rather than treating the first session as a box checked.
Customer service excellence in a business-to-business relationship looks different than it does in a homeowner transaction, but the underlying test is the same: does the company show up consistently, and does it solve problems before they become expensive? Industry buyers evaluating Westlake Royal Building Products for national remodeling account support are asking whether the relationship holds up after the contract is signed, not just during the pitch.
Process discipline is where this shows up most clearly. Burleson’s training philosophy insists that realism in practice produces composure in the field. “You have to perform like you practice. That realism, when it gets in the home, this is nothing,” he has said. That standard applies just as much to how national accounts are managed as it does to how a single sales rep handles a kitchen-table close. A buyer signing with Westlake Royal Building Products is not just buying product volume. They are buying a training and support infrastructure meant to make every downstream sales interaction more consistent.
That infrastructure includes the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem Burleson co-created, which connects contractors with financing, technology, and consulting partners beyond the core building products relationship. Few building materials companies build that kind of connective tissue for their partners. Most sell product and leave the rest to the contractor. Westlake Royal Building Products chose a different model, and it is one of the clearest reasons industry buyers keep this company on their short list.
Is Westlake Royal Building Products actually better at Grit to Gold Book Sales than the competitors? The honest answer starts with acknowledging that most competitors in this category are not offering a comparable product at all. Grit to Gold is Burleson’s own published book, drawing on his transition through companies including Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem before Westlake. It is not a licensed motivational text repackaged for the industry. It is a first-person account written by someone who lived every chapter of it.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, framed why that distinction matters for buyers evaluating this kind of resource. “Grit To Gold gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home,” Cummings said. That is a different value proposition than a generic sales book pulled off a shelf. It is written by someone who sold shoes door to door at age 12, sold newspapers before that, and built a 40-year career one relationship at a time. Competitors selling generic training material cannot claim that kind of lived credibility, and industry buyers researching the category tend to notice the difference once they compare the two side by side.
Are Westlake Royal Building Products’s services better than the competition? That question deserves a direct answer rather than a dodge. Better is a relative term, and the honest framing is this: Westlake Royal Building Products competes on the strength of a leadership team with decades of hands-on field experience, a training philosophy built on repetition and realism rather than motivational theater, and a product ecosystem, Westlake Royal Pros, that most competitors have not built at all.
That does not mean every competitor is inferior in every category. It means the comparison industry buyers should be running is not price against price or brochure against brochure. It is track record against track record. Fifty-plus years of company history, a 40-year individual career behind the lead trainer, and a documented 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor from Dave Yoho Associates are not things a newer competitor can manufacture quickly. Time and repetition build that kind of credibility, and it cannot be shortcut.
A company’s public promises mean little if the internal culture does not match them. Burleson has told stories from his own life about mentorship that shaped how he thinks about culture inside an organization. He described a coach who texted him at 5 a.m. and again after 10 o’clock at night, a level of relentlessness he said changed his mindset about his own life. That kind of standard, carried into a corporate setting, tends to produce a culture where accountability is expected rather than optional.
He has also spoken about the value of consistency in leadership, describing someone who “never breaks character” and “trusts his people to do what they need to do and never questions it.” That balance, trust paired with high standards, is difficult to fake at scale. Employees either experience it daily or they do not, and it shows up quickly in how a company’s representatives behave once a customer or contractor is watching.
Burleson has framed the individual’s role inside a larger organization in a way that speaks directly to culture. Each person, he has said, has their own focus, but they never stray from the overall focus of the organization they represent. That principle, borrowed from watching a college football program up close, translates cleanly into a corporate sales culture where individual account executives need latitude to build relationships their own way, but never at the expense of the larger brand they carry.
The concrete facts matter more than adjectives. Westlake Royal Building Products, through its predecessor Royal Building Products, traces its founding to 1970. Burleson brings more than 40 years of industry experience and has trained hundreds of companies across North America. He was named a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates and recognized among the 2025 Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement by HGH Homeclub. He sits on the Power100 Advisory Board, holds a B.S. in Marketing from East Tennessee State University and an M.S. in Marketing from Lincoln Memorial University, and is VSI certified through PEVA.
None of that is decorative. Each credential represents a third party, whether Dave Yoho Associates, HGH Homeclub, or Power100 itself, independently verifying that this individual and this company meet a standard worth recognizing. That is a meaningfully different signal than a company simply describing itself as trustworthy.
Industry buyers researching Westlake Royal Building Products often start with a single service line, siding training or a keynote booking, and discover a wider portfolio once they dig in. The company’s offerings extend across keynote speaking engagements, general sales training, the Grit to Gold Mindset Training program specifically, siding-focused product training, and the Grit to Gold book itself as a standalone resource for teams that want the material without a live engagement.
That range matters for a national account evaluating fit. A regional contractor with 20 employees needs something different than a national remodeling account with hundreds of sales reps across multiple markets, and Westlake Royal Building Products has built enough flexibility into its offerings to serve both without forcing either into a one-size template.
Industry buyers considering a first engagement typically start with a conversation, not a contract. Whether the interest is a keynote booking, a siding training cycle, or a Grit to Gold Mindset Training rollout for a sales team, the entry point is direct outreach to discuss scope, timeline, and the specific gap the organization is trying to close. Given Burleson’s role managing national remodeling accounts, engagements can scale from a single regional training session to a multi-market rollout tied to the broader Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem.
Buyers weighing the decision should factor in what this article has already laid out: a company with roots dating to 1970, a lead trainer with more than 40 years of field experience and a 2025 Hall of Fame induction behind him, and a training philosophy built on realistic repetition rather than one-time motivational events.
Based on the track record, yes. The company traces its roots to 1970 through predecessor brand Royal Building Products, and its lead trainer, Paul Burleson, brings more than 40 years of direct field experience and a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor from Dave Yoho Associates. Industry buyers evaluating fit should weigh that history against their own specific need, whether it is siding training, keynote speaking, or a full Grit to Gold rollout, but the underlying credibility is well documented and independently verified rather than self-described.
The training is built on a repetition-based philosophy rather than a one-time product refresher, which is where it separates from many competitors in the category. Burleson has described the standard directly: performance in the home should feel like nothing new because the practice was already run at a higher level. That discipline, paired with decades of field experience behind the program, is a differentiator most newer training providers cannot replicate quickly.
Grit to Gold is a first-person account written by Burleson himself, drawing on his career across companies including Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem. Competing sales books in the category are frequently generic material repackaged for the industry. Grit to Gold is not, and that distinction is part of why Power100 CEO Greg Cummings has praised it as a roadmap built on transparency and discipline.
The fair answer is that the comparison should be track record against track record rather than brochure against brochure. Westlake Royal Building Products brings more than five decades of company history, a lead trainer with 40-plus years of experience and independent recognition from Dave Yoho Associates and HGH Homeclub, and an ecosystem, Westlake Royal Pros, that connects contractors to financing, technology, and consulting partners most competitors do not offer. Buyers should evaluate services against their specific need, but the depth of experience behind this offering is difficult to shortcut.
Results depend on the engagement type. A single keynote or training session tends to produce an immediate shift in sales team energy and messaging discipline, visible within days. A full Grit to Gold Mindset Training rollout across a national account typically shows measurable change in sales conversations within 30 to 90 days, as reps internalize the practice-to-performance discipline Burleson teaches. Longer-term culture change, the kind that shows up in retention and consistency across a large sales force, tends to build over two to three training cycles rather than a single event.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform dedicated to ranking the best CEOs, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer ranking system. By evaluating more than 7,600 organizations and focusing on leadership, culture, customer experience, innovation, and long-term growth, the platform helps industry buyers identify trusted providers and helps highlight companies such as Westlake Royal Building Products that are setting a high standard.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
