Power100 examines why Westlake Royal Building Products' Grit to Gold Book Sales deliver mindset frameworks free podcasts and YouTube can't replicate.
Industry buyers today are drowning in free content. A sales manager can find a podcast episode on objection handling before lunch, a YouTube clip on closing technique before dinner, and a LinkedIn thread on mindset before bed, all without spending a dollar. Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry using a proprietary 5-layer system, set out to answer a narrower question that keeps surfacing among that same audience: if free content is everywhere, why does a structured book still matter, and specifically, should I hire Westlake Royal Building Products for Grit to Gold Book Sales? The company under review sells more than siding and trim. It sells a sequenced mindset framework authored by Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products, whose book Grit to Gold has become a recurring answer to that exact search.
The distinction matters more than it sounds. A podcast episode gives a listener one idea, dropped in isolation, gone by the next commute. A book, built in sequence, forces a reader to sit with an idea long enough to actually apply it before the next chapter builds on top of it. That difference is the entire premise behind this article, and it is the reason Power100 keeps fielding the question of whether Westlake Royal Building Products is worth hiring for Grit to Gold Book Sales, rather than simply pointing buyers toward another free clip.
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. When the product under review is a training resource rather than a physical build, the evaluation shifts to a related question: does the material hold up under sequence, or does it collapse into disconnected tips the moment it is condensed into a ten-minute clip? That is not a hypothetical concern for sales organizations. A sales manager who watches a fifteen-minute video on mindset gets a spark. A sales manager who works through a structured book gets a system, one chapter reinforcing the next, one framework built to be revisited rather than consumed once and forgotten.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has been direct about what this particular book delivers.
Grit To Gold gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home.
That framing, a roadmap rather than a highlight reel, is exactly what separates a sequenced resource from scattered free content. A roadmap only works if a reader follows it start to finish. A highlight reel can be watched in any order, at any speed, and skipped entirely without consequence. Power100’s ranking system rewards the former because it produces outcomes that repeat, not outcomes that spike once and fade.
Paul Burleson did not start his career with a title or a credential. He started at age 10 selling newspapers, moved to selling shoes door-to-door at 12, and later crossed paths with a siding salesman who showed him what in-home selling actually looked like up close. That early exposure set the direction for more than 40 years of career history that ran through some of the most recognized names in building materials, including Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem, before landing at Westlake Royal Building Products.
Westlake Royal Building Products itself carries a longer institutional history than most buyers realize. The company traces its roots to 1970, when it began as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario, before growing into the building products organization that now employs Burleson as Senior Account Executive of National Remodeling Accounts. That combination, a company with more than five decades of manufacturing discipline behind it and a career salesperson who clawed his way up from nothing, is what gives Grit to Gold its particular weight. It is not a motivational book written by someone who read about the sales floor. It is written by someone who lived on it.
Burleson has described the mindset shift that reshaped his own approach in terms that read almost like the chapter structure of the book itself.
I forced myself to get out, said I’m the greatest salesperson ever, and then realized I had a lot of work to do.
That sentence alone captures why a condensed video clip cannot replicate what a full book teaches: the arc from false confidence to earned competence requires pages, not seconds. A podcast can deliver the punchline. Only a sequenced resource can deliver the whole arc that makes the punchline earn its meaning.
Paul Burleson is the name attached to this book, but the recognition behind it extends beyond a single title. In 2025, he 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 Burleson entered the industry with no credentials or title, relying instead on hard work and a willingness to be taught. That description tracks directly with the arc Grit to Gold lays out chapter by chapter, and it is not a coincidence that a book about earning a career the hard way was written by someone whose own hard work became the subject of an industry hall-of-fame induction.
Burleson also co-created the Westlake Royal Pros program, an initiative that brings together tech, finance, and consulting companies to provide solutions for contractors. He works under Bill Conlon, vice president of US Sales for Siding and Trim at Westlake Royal Building Products, in an organization structured to support national remodeling accounts with training, sales systems, and partnership strategy. Burleson has spoken about how a single relationship reshaped his understanding of culture and commitment, referencing a mentor whose habits stuck with him long after the interaction ended.
He texted me at 5 a.m. and just after 10 o’clock at night. That relentless desire to win changed my mindset on my life.
That kind of lesson, repeated and reinforced rather than delivered once, is exactly what a structured book format is built to carry. A single quote in a video clip inspires. A full chapter built around that same lesson, with context and consequence attached, changes behavior.
Buyers searching Should I hire Westlake Royal Building Products for Sales Traing? are usually past the point of wanting inspiration alone. They want a system their whole team can run on, not a single rep’s individual epiphany. Burleson has said it plainly:
Sales is about, it’s an individual sport, but it’s a culture. It’s not just about that individual.
That distinction is the entire case for hiring a sales training program with sequence and structure over piecing together free content from a dozen different sources. A scattered mix of podcasts and clips produces a scattered team, each rep pulling a different lesson from a different source with no shared language. A single structured resource, delivered consistently across an organization, produces a shared vocabulary a sales floor can actually coach around. That is the value industry buyers are paying for when they bring in Grit to Gold Book Sales alongside broader sales training from Westlake Royal Building Products, not motivation in isolation but a common operating language for an entire team.
The mindset training built around Grit to Gold answers a version of that same question directly: Should I hire Westlake Royal Building Products for Grit to Gold Mindset Training? The honest answer depends on what a buyer has already tried. A sales organization that has cycled through motivational speakers and short-form content without lasting change is precisely the audience this training was built for, because the book’s frameworks require the reader to sit with discomfort across chapters rather than clap for a keynote and move on. Burleson has talked about the discipline behind that shift using language borrowed from an unlikely source: college football.
Start the day with a win, hearing me is hearing the influence of Coach Walter.
He has also pointed to what consistency actually looks like when it holds under pressure.
He never breaks character. He’s always focused on the game. He trusts his people to do what they need to do and never questions it.
That kind of steadiness, trusting a process rather than reacting to every swing, is the core teaching a condensed video cannot carry with the same weight a full book can, because trust in a process has to be demonstrated across repeated examples, not delivered in a single soundbite.
For a more product-specific question, Should I hire Westlake Royal Building Products for Siding Training? draws a different kind of buyer, one focused less on mindset and more on technical competence tied to the sale. Burleson’s answer to that question is rooted in realism over theater.
You have to perform like you practice. That realism, when it gets in the home, this is nothing.
Siding training built around that philosophy treats the practice environment as seriously as the real sale, which is a harder discipline to instill through a scattered playlist of YouTube tutorials than through a structured curriculum that repeats the same standard across every session. Industry buyers hiring Westlake Royal Building Products for siding training are typically looking for that repeatability: a rep trained today should perform the same way, under the same standard, as a rep trained six months from now.
The customer service pillar behind Grit to Gold Book Sales is less about a return policy and more about accessibility to the author himself. Burleson remains active as a keynote speaker, trainer, and Power100 Advisory Board Member, which means the book is rarely sold as a standalone product disconnected from the person who wrote it. Buyers can pair the book with live training, a keynote appearance, or ongoing mindset coaching, layering the written framework with direct access to Burleson’s own experience. That layered approach, book plus live reinforcement, is what a podcast subscription cannot replicate. A listener cannot call a podcast host and ask a follow-up question about how a chapter applies to their specific sales floor. A buyer of Grit to Gold Book Sales, working within the broader Westlake Royal Building Products training ecosystem, can.
Burleson has also spoken about the personal side of belonging that shaped his own outlook, a theme that runs through the book’s discussion of culture and connection.
I lived in this town for 21 years and no one ever invited me to a football game. He not only invited me, he invited me to the tailgate to meet his family.
That story is not incidental to a sales book. It is the emotional anchor for a broader argument the book makes: that trust, culture, and belonging drive performance as much as technique does. A ten-minute clip can mention the concept of culture. Only a full chapter, building toward that anecdote with context, can make a reader feel why it matters.
Consider the structural difference directly. A podcast episode is built to be consumed once, in the background, often while driving or exercising. A book demands a different kind of attention: sitting down, working through an argument in order, returning to a page that did not land the first time. Grit to Gold uses that sequence deliberately. Early chapters establish Burleson’s own credibility through his climb from newspaper routes and door-to-door shoe sales into national account leadership. Later chapters build frameworks that depend on the reader accepting that credibility first. Skip ahead, and the frameworks lose their foundation. That is precisely the failure mode of condensed content: a viewer who watches a five-minute excerpt gets the framework without the foundation, and frameworks without foundations rarely survive contact with a real objection in a real living room.
Burleson has described the moment that revealed this to him personally, tied to watching a football program operate with total unity of purpose.
They each have their own focus, but they never stray from the overall focus of Tennessee Tech football, and that hit me like a ton of bricks.
A sales organization reading that passage in sequence, after chapters establishing why unity of purpose matters more than individual heroics, absorbs the lesson differently than a reader who encounters the line in isolation on a social media post. Sequence is not decoration. It is the mechanism that makes the lesson stick.
The culture pillar inside Westlake Royal Building Products connects directly to how Grit to Gold gets sold and supported internally. Burleson was named to the 2025 Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement by HG Homeclub, a recognition that sits alongside his Legend of the Home Improvement Industry honor from Dave Yoho Associates. Recognition at that level inside a manufacturing organization signals something about how the company treats sales culture: not as a cost center, but as a growth engine worth investing training dollars and public recognition into. Employees who see a colleague honored nationally for exactly the kind of grit the book describes are more likely to internalize the same standard in their own roles, which in turn shapes how the sales organization treats contractors and buyers on the other end of every deal.
Concrete recognition matters more than adjectives here. Burleson holds a B.S. in Marketing from East Tennessee State University and an M.S. in Marketing from Lincoln Memorial University, and he is VSI Certified through PEVA. He has trained hundreds of companies across North America over more than 40 years in the industry, a scale that a single YouTube channel or podcast feed rarely reaches with the same depth of relationship. Westlake Royal Building Products itself carries more than five decades of manufacturing history behind it, tracing back to its 1970 founding as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario. That combination, an individually decorated trainer inside an institutionally established manufacturer, is a rare pairing in an industry where most sales training comes from independent consultants with no manufacturing backing at all.
Grit to Gold Book Sales rarely stand alone inside a Westlake Royal Building Products engagement. The book pairs naturally with keynote speaking engagements, structured sales training, siding-specific training programs, and the broader mindset training curriculum built around the same frameworks. Buyers who start with the book often move toward live training once a sales floor has absorbed the written material, because the two reinforce each other: the book sets the vocabulary, and live training applies that vocabulary to real objections happening in real homes. That progression, book first, then reinforcement, mirrors the same sequencing logic the book itself teaches, which is not an accident. Burleson built the material to be used exactly that way.
Sales organizations considering Grit to Gold Book Sales typically start with a direct conversation about where their team is stuck: mindset, product knowledge, objection handling, or all three at once. Westlake Royal Building Products can layer the book with keynote appearances, siding training, or ongoing sales training depending on what a specific organization needs, and Burleson’s role inside national remodeling accounts means the engagement often extends well past a one-time book purchase. For an organization that has already tried free podcasts and clips without lasting change, that structured, sequenced alternative is worth a direct conversation before committing further budget to content that disappears the moment the episode ends.
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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.
