For homeowners, choosing a contractor often means trusting promises that may not be tested until long after the project is finished. CAT Exteriors, led by Ryan Connet, CEO and Co-Owner, has been in business since 2004 and has grown beyond California into Arizona and Texas. As a company working across roofing, windows, siding, and other exterior home improvements, CAT Exteriors has built part of its approach around what happens after the installation is complete.
Ryan believes a strong reputation comes from more than making a promise at the start of a project. It comes from showing up when a homeowner needs the company to honor that promise.
That view became a key part of Ryan’s PowerChat conversation with Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100. The discussion examined leadership, customer trust, long-term service, and what it means for a home improvement company to stand behind its word when a problem arises.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. Through conversations like this PowerChat, the platform gives industry leaders room to share the choices and lessons that shape how they serve their teams, customers, and communities.
One of the biggest trust challenges in home improvement happens after the contract is signed.
Before a project begins, homeowners may hear strong promises about quality, service, warranties, and support. A contractor may say it stands behind its work. A salesperson may explain what a lifetime warranty means. The homeowner may feel confident enough to move forward.
But the hardest question comes later.
For Ryan Connet, those moments are not separate from the customer experience. They are where the promise gets tested.
During his conversation with Greg Cummings, Ryan explained that a company cannot build its reputation by simply telling homeowners it offers a lifetime warranty.
“Maintaining that reputation depends on not just saying you have a lifetime warranty, but actually getting out there and not resenting that you have to go do service work,” Ryan said.
Then he gave that responsibility a very different meaning.
“That’s a blessing that you get to do.” Ryan Connet, CEO and Co-Owner, CAT Exteriors
That idea changes the way service work can be viewed.
A return visit can cost the company money. A repair can take time away from another job. A problem can be frustrating for the homeowner and difficult for the team handling it.
Ryan does not deny any of that.
His point is that the company already made the promise.
Once that happens, the service call becomes a chance to show whether the words used during the sale were real.
Ryan shared one example that puts that belief into clear terms. CAT Exteriors completed a lifetime warranty exterior coating project on an all wood home. Ryan admitted the company probably should not have taken the project in the first place. But after the commitment was made, CAT Exteriors repainted the entire home three times to honor the warranty. The company later worked with the homeowner to install vinyl siding as an alternative long-term solution.
The lesson Ryan draws from that experience is simple.
“We’re not gonna be the company that doesn’t fix the problems.”
That statement is at the heart of this PowerChat perspective.
Ryan is not saying that a great home improvement company will never face a service issue. He is saying the company should be judged by what it does once that issue reaches its door.
For a homeowner searching for a trusted roof replacement contractor, a window company, or another exterior home improvement provider, the promise of future service can matter as much as the work being sold today. A warranty is only useful when the company behind it is willing to return, take responsibility, and make the problem right.
For Ryan, that is where reputation stops being something a company says about itself.
It becomes something the homeowner gets to experience.
Ryan Connet’s view of customer service is simple, but it asks more from leadership than a strong sales promise. He believes the real value of a warranty appears when the company has to spend time, labor, and money to honor it. During his conversation with Greg Cummings, Ryan explained that service after the sale is not a side issue. It is one of the clearest ways a company shows homeowners what its word is worth. From difficult callbacks to leadership visibility, his message is that trust grows when the company keeps showing up after the easy part of the relationship is over.
Ryan Connet, CEO and Co-Owner of CAT Exteriors
Before a project begins, a warranty can sound simple.
The homeowner hears that the company stands behind its work. The sales team explains the coverage. Everyone hopes the project goes well and that the warranty is never needed.
Ryan believes the real test comes later.
A warranty only has meaning when a homeowner calls back and asks the company to honor its promise.
That is where the words on paper become action.
Ryan said maintaining a reputation depends on more than telling homeowners that a lifetime warranty exists.
“Maintaining that reputation depends on not just saying you have a lifetime warranty, but actually getting out there and not resenting that you have to go do service work,” Ryan said.
That last part matters.
Service work can cost money. It can take a crew away from another job. It can force leaders to deal with a problem they hoped was already finished.
Ryan believes that is exactly why the moment matters.
The company already received the homeowner’s trust. Now it has a chance to prove that trust was well placed.
Ryan even described the service call as “a blessing that you get to do.”
That mindset changes the meaning of a callback. Instead of seeing it only as an expense, leadership can see it as another chance to protect the relationship.
For homeowners the product matters, but the company behind that product matters too. A strong warranty is more valuable when the homeowner believes someone will still be available after the installation is complete.
Learn more about the services and homeowner support available through CAT Exteriors.
No home improvement company can promise that every project will be free from every problem forever.
Homes are different.
Materials behave differently.
Weather changes.
People make mistakes.
Products can fail.
Ryan’s message is not built around pretending those risks do not exist.
It is built around what the company does next.
He said, “We’re not gonna be the company that doesn’t fix the problems.”
That sentence sets a different standard.
The standard is not perfection.
The standard is response.
When a homeowner has a problem, the company can become hard to reach. It can pass responsibility from one person to another. It can spend more time explaining why it should not help than it would take to solve the issue.
Or it can show up.
Ryan believes that response can become one of the strongest parts of the customer experience.
The first installation may have earned the sale.
The way the company responds later can earn the lasting trust.
That matters across major home services, including energy efficient HVAC replacement, because homeowners are not only buying equipment. They are also choosing the company they may need to call again when something does not work as expected.
A good customer experience is not measured only on the day the job ends.
Sometimes it is measured by how the relationship handles every reason to become difficult.
Explore CAT Exteriors and learn how the company serves homeowners across its growing markets.
Ryan gave one story that makes his service philosophy hard to misunderstand.
CAT Exteriors had completed a lifetime-warranty exterior coating project on an all-wood home.
Ryan admitted the company likely should not have taken the project.
“We probably shouldn’t have done that job,” he said.
But the job had been done.
The promise had been made.
So, when the problems persisted, CAT Exteriors repainted the entire home.
Then it did it again.
Then it did it a third time.
Ryan said the company repainted the home three times in full to honor the warranty.
That is what gives the story weight.
This was not a small repair.
It was not a quick visit.
The company kept spending resources because it had already told the homeowner it would stand behind the work.
Eventually, Ryan said the team asked the homeowner to allow CAT Exteriors to install vinyl siding instead.
That gave the homeowner another lifetime warranty product and offered a better path than continuing to repaint the same surface.
The story shows two parts of strong service.
First, honor the promise already made.
Second, keep looking for a better answer when the first solution is no longer working well.
That same thinking can matter when homeowners look for energy efficient exterior home upgrades. The best answer is not always the first product sold. Strong service means being willing to solve the real problem and keep the homeowner protected.
See the exterior home improvement options offered by CAT Exteriors.
Ryan does not believe customer service should sit far away from senior leadership.
CAT Exteriors team
He explained that CAT Exteriors created a hotline for homeowners that routes messages to five department leaders, including Ryan himself.
That changes how a service issue moves through the company.
Instead of allowing the problem to disappear across departments, the system provides senior leaders with visibility.
That visibility creates accountability.
It also sends a message to the team.
Customer problems matter enough to reach the top.
For Ryan, that is important because leadership cannot ask frontline employees to make strong promises while keeping senior decision-makers far from the hard parts of fulfilling them.
When service reaches leadership, the company has a better chance of moving faster, making decisions, and protecting the relationship.
It also supports stronger confidence in the field.
A salesperson can speak differently about a warranty when they know senior leaders will see the issue if a homeowner ever needs help.
For a homeowner that kind of accountability can be just as important as the window itself. The homeowner wants to know that the company has a system for what happens after the installation.
Ryan’s approach keeps that responsibility from becoming someone else’s problem.
It keeps it connected to leadership.
Learn more about CAT Exteriors and the team behind its homeowner services.
A lifetime warranty can help a salesperson explain value.
But Ryan believes the message becomes much stronger when the person making the promise knows the company has already lived it.
That is where service begins to affect sales.
When employees see the company return to difficult jobs, spend the money, solve the problem, and keep its word, they do not have to hope that leadership will do the right thing later.
They have proof.
That proof creates conviction.
Ryan explained that strong service helps CAT Exteriors separate itself even from other good companies.
The difference is not simply who can say they offer quality products.
It is who will still stand behind the homeowner after the sale is finished.
That distinction matters in a market where many contractors can offer similar products, warranties, and financing.
The homeowner is also choosing the people behind those promises.
For a homeowner trust can become part of the buying decision. The equipment may be important, but so is knowing whether the company will answer if help is needed later.
Over time, that kind of response becomes more than service.
It becomes reputation.
It gives the sales team a real story to tell.
And it gives homeowners a reason to believe that the promise being made today has already been tested before.
Watch more leadership conversations and industry insights from Power100.
Ryan Connet’s view on warranties carries more weight when placed next to what CAT Exteriors has built over time. Keeping a promise to one homeowner is important. Keeping that same standard while serving more families, opening new markets, and handling a larger number of projects is a much harder test.
CAT Exteriors has shown that kind of growth. In 2019, the company completed 900 home improvement projects and generated $14,036,920 in remodeling revenue. That performance helped CAT Exteriors earn the No. 116 position on the Qualified Remodeler Top 500.
The company has continued to move forward since then. Its current Qualified Remodeler profile places CAT Exteriors at No. 85 nationally for 2026, with $33,048,188 in 2025 remodeling revenue and 1,513 jobs completed. Qualified Remodeler also lists expansion into new service areas as one of the company’s biggest opportunities for 2026.
That growth matters in the context of Ryan’s message.
A company can talk about service when it is small. The harder task is keeping that standard while more crews, more homeowners, more markets, and more decisions enter the business. CAT Exteriors has expanded from its California roots into Arizona and Texas while continuing to build around windows, roofing, HVAC, siding, exterior coatings, patio covers, and other home improvement services.
That wider reach has also brought national recognition to Ryan’s leadership. Power100 currently ranks Ryan Connet, CEO and Co-Owner of CAT Exteriors, at No. 42 among the nation’s top home improvement CEOs for 2026. The ranking looks beyond company size and considers leadership, culture, customer experience, operations, long term business health, and community impact.
From his PowerChat perspective, those milestones matter because they show that Ryan’s message about standing behind the customer is not being shared from a company that has avoided growth. CAT Exteriors has taken on more volume and more markets while continuing to make customer satisfaction part of how it describes the business.
The company’s impact also reaches outside the homes of paying customers.
CAT Exteriors supports community programs tied to food insecurity, recovery, financial hardship, and families in need. Its current community partners include Recovery Road, Hope Dealers, and Second Harvest Food Bank. The company also says its giving programs have helped provide home improvements, including roofing work, to families who needed support.
That community work connects naturally with the same idea Ryan shared about warranty service.
His belief is that helping someone should not begin with the question of what the company gets back.
During the PowerChat, Ryan described community involvement as something deeper than a company program.
“We don’t partner. We are those people,” Ryan said.
That mindset gives CAT Exteriors’ growth story a wider meaning.
The company has increased revenue, completed more projects, moved into more states, and earned national recognition. But Ryan’s larger test for the business appears to be whether growth gives the company more ability to serve people, not simply more ability to sell to them.
For homeowners, that distinction matters.
A strong reputation is not built from one award, one ranking, or one year of revenue. It grows when a company can expand without losing sight of the people behind every project, every service call, and every community it enters.
That is where Ryan Connet’s Perspective 2 becomes bigger than a warranty.
It becomes a question of whether a growing company can keep becoming larger without allowing its promises to become smaller.
A promise is easy to believe when everything is going right.
Its real value shows up later, when the job is finished, the sale is long over, and the company has nothing left to gain except the chance to do what it said it would do.
That is where Ryan Connet’s message carries the most weight.
“We’re not gonna be the company that doesn’t fix the problems,” Ryan said.
That line is more than a customer service rule.
It is a standard for what the company wants its reputation to mean over time.
Homeowners may remember the product they bought. They may remember the price. They may remember the first meeting at the kitchen table.
But they are also likely to remember what happened when they needed help.
That is the moment when trust becomes something deeper than a sales promise.
For Ryan, service after the sale is not a burden that should be pushed aside. It is one more chance to show the homeowner that the company still stands behind the decision they made.
That idea also gives the warranty a larger meaning.
A strong warranty should not only help someone feel better before the project starts. It should give them confidence later, when they need the company to return, listen, and make things right.
Ryan Connet is not asking homeowners to trust a warranty just because the wording sounds strong on paper.
He believes that promise has to become real each time a problem gives the company another chance to prove what its word is worth.
In the long run, that may be what separates a promise people hear from a reputation people remember.
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CAT Exteriors promotes lifetime warranty protection across several major home improvement services. Its website lists lifetime warranty coverage for roofing, windows, siding, exterior coatings, HVAC systems, and patio covers. The exact coverage depends on the product and warranty terms, so homeowners should review their written agreement before starting a project. CAT Exteriors says its warranty programs protect homeowners against covered functional or component failures for as long as they own the home.
CAT Exteriors says it returns to customers when covered problems require service, and its website states that the company has gone back to customer homes multiple times at no cost to make issues right. Ryan Connet gave a stronger example during his PowerChat with Greg Cummings, describing a home that CAT Exteriors repainted three times before finding a better long-term solution with vinyl siding. Ryan said, “We’re not gonna be the company that doesn’t fix the problems.” That approach supports homeowners looking for a home exterior contractor in California, Arizona, and Texas that plans to remain accountable after the project ends.
Yes. CAT Exteriors says homeowners can request financing information with zero obligation to move forward, and that its financing request does not trigger an initial credit check or affect the homeowner’s credit score. CAT Exteriors also offers options such as flexible loan terms, zero-down-payment programs, deferred-interest programs, and other financing choices, although availability and eligibility can vary by homeowner and location.
CAT Exteriors currently serves homeowners across California, Arizona, and Texas. The company lists offices in Anaheim, Sacramento, and Fresno, California, Tempe, Arizona, and Kyle and Dallas, Texas. Its wider service map includes markets such as Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco, Round Rock, and many surrounding communities. Homeowners searching for a roof replacement contractor, window replacement, HVAC upgrades, siding, coatings, or patio covers can check the CAT Exteriors service map to confirm local availability.
Ryan Connet believes warranty service gives the company another chance to prove that its original promise meant something. During the PowerChat, he acknowledged that service work takes time and resources, but he rejected the idea that companies should resent returning to help a homeowner. Ryan said, “That’s a blessing that you get to do.” His point is that the company already earned the customer’s trust, so solving a later problem gives the business a chance to protect that relationship and strengthen its reputation.
CAT Exteriors connects customer service with support before, during, and after a home improvement project. The company says its team provides personalized support, free inspections, clear estimates, and warranty protection. Its contact page also emphasizes direct responses from real people rather than treating the customer relationship as complete once installation ends. Ryan Connet takes that promise further, saying that leadership must actually fix problems when they arise. For homeowners comparing energy-efficient exterior home upgrades, that means the company asks customers to judge its service not only by what it promises before the job but also by how it responds afterward.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. Led by CEO Greg Cummings, Power100 helps bring greater trust, visibility, and leadership insight to the home improvement space through national rankings, PowerChat conversations, industry education, and resources built for contractors and business leaders. Its mission is to help the best leaders in the industry stand out by showing how they lead their teams, serve homeowners, support their communities, and build companies that can earn trust over time.
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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.
