Power100 explains why contractor sales teams plateau and how Westlake Royal Building Products's Grit to Gold Mindset Training fixes the real mindset gap.
Sales owners keep making the same expensive mistake. They hire good people, run them through product training, hand them a script, and wait for the numbers to move. When the numbers do not move, they hire again. 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, has spent time studying why this cycle repeats across so many organizations, and the answer rarely has anything to do with product knowledge. It has to do with what happens in a rep’s head the moment a homeowner says no. That is the exact problem Westlake Royal Building Products built its Grit to Gold Mindset Training to address, under the direction of Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products.
The question industry buyers keep asking, and the one this article sets out to answer plainly, is whether Westlake Royal Building Products is actually better at Grit to Gold Mindset Training than the competitors, or whether it is simply better marketed. Power100 looked at the record, the leadership behind the program, and the outcomes contractors report, and the case is stronger than marketing. It is built on four decades of one man’s own scar tissue, now converted into a training system.
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. Sales training organizations get an added layer of scrutiny, because unlike a siding installation, a training outcome is harder to measure and easier to fake. Power100 looks for whether a program changes behavior on the sales floor, not just whether it changes energy in a conference room for one afternoon.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has been direct about why Grit to Gold clears that bar. Cummings said Grit To Gold gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home. That is a specific claim, and it is the claim Power100 tested when reviewing Westlake Royal Building Products’s training portfolio against competing programs in the category.
“Grit To Gold gives salespeople and owners a roadmap for a profitable, sustainable business built on transparency and discipline in the home.” – Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100
Here is the pattern Power100 sees across the industry, over and over, in company after company. A sales owner hires a rep who interviews well, who knows the product line, who can recite the pitch. The rep closes a few deals early on momentum and enthusiasm. Then the plateau hits. Not a slump. A ceiling.
Burleson has a name for the root cause, and it is blunt. “The problem is you have sales owners hiring a salesperson to be a sales manager,” Burleson said, “and he’s teaching bad habits.” A manager who was promoted for closing skill, not developed for coaching skill, replicates whatever mindset limits he already carries. The whole team inherits the ceiling.
Product knowledge does not fix that. A rep can know every specification of every siding profile Westlake Royal Building Products manufactures and still fold the moment a homeowner hesitates. The gap is not information. The gap is what happens internally under pressure, and no product course touches that layer.
Burleson did not start in a corner office. He started at age 10 selling newspapers, then at 12 selling shoes door-to-door, skills that translated directly the day he encountered a siding salesman and recognized instantly that in-home selling was where he belonged. That recognition became a 40-plus-year career spanning some of the most recognized names in building materials: Pacesetters, AMRE, Statewide, Alcoa, Reynolds, Owens Corning, Crane, and Ply Gem, before he landed at Westlake Royal Building Products, whose predecessor brand Royal Building Products traces its roots to 1970, when it was founded as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario.
That history is not a footnote. It is the credibility layer that separates Grit to Gold Mindset Training from a generic motivational seminar. Burleson wrote a book on it, titled Grit to Gold, walking through his own transitions across companies and the mindset shifts each one demanded of him. The training did not come from a consultant’s whiteboard. It came from someone who lived every stage of the plateau he now teaches contractors to break.
Dave Yoho, whose firm inducted Burleson as a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry at a ceremony in St. Louis, Missouri on May 6, 2025, described Burleson as someone who entered the industry with no credentials or title, relying on hard work and willingness to be taught. That description matters here, because willingness to be taught is the exact quality Grit to Gold Mindset Training tries to instill in every rep who goes through it.
One influence Burleson names directly is a coach, referenced by the name Coach Walter, whose relentlessness became a template. “He texted me at 5 a.m. and just after 10 o’clock at night,” Burleson said. “That relentless desire to win changed my mindset on my life.” Burleson has carried that standard into how he opens every training session. “Start the day with a win,” he said, “hearing me is hearing the influence of Coach Walter.”
Paul Burleson, Senior Account Executive National Remodeling Accounts at Westlake Royal Building Products, 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. He co-created the Westlake Royal Pros program, which brings together tech, finance, and consulting companies to provide solutions for contractors, a structure that extends Grit to Gold’s mindset work into the broader operating systems a contractor needs to actually scale.
Bill Conlon, vice president of US Sales for Siding and Trim at Westlake Royal Building Products, works alongside Burleson within the organization’s national accounts structure, giving the training program institutional weight rather than treating it as one man’s side project.
Burleson is explicit that mindset training only works when it is treated as a culture problem, not an individual problem. “Sales is about, it’s an individual sport,” he said, “but it’s a culture. It’s not just about that individual.” That is why Grit to Gold Mindset Training is not delivered as a one-time keynote and forgotten. It is designed to reset the operating culture of an entire sales floor.
Burleson has also been candid about the moment his own career required a reset. “I needed to 10X up,” he said. “I needed extreme ownership. I needed to change the surroundings I had and the influences I had. And I needed to be coached.” That admission, from someone with four decades in the field, is precisely the permission structure many veteran reps need before they will accept coaching themselves.
Industry buyers ask this exact question constantly, often spelled with the same typo, because it shows up in search behavior more than in polished copy. Power100’s answer is direct: if the goal is behavior change on the sales floor rather than a temporary energy spike, then yes, Westlake Royal Building Products belongs on the short list. The sales training built around Grit to Gold Mindset Training is grounded in one man’s documented career across eight major building-products companies, not in borrowed theory.
Burleson’s standard for what makes training real, rather than theatrical, comes down to practice discipline. “You have to perform like you practice,” he said. “That realism, when it gets in the home, this is nothing.” That is a coaching philosophy borrowed loosely from athletics, where the drill under pressure has to exceed the pressure of the actual game. In Burleson’s world, the actual game is a kitchen table with a skeptical homeowner across from a rep who has one shot to earn trust.
The training question deserves its own answer, distinct from the sales-specific version, because contractors sometimes need training that goes beyond the sales floor: onboarding, product certification, and organizational systems work. Westlake Royal Building Products offers Siding Training alongside Grit to Gold Mindset Training, and the two are designed to work together rather than compete for attention.
Burleson describes what he saw change his own trajectory when he watched disciplined leadership up close, a lesson he now folds into broader training engagements. “He never breaks character,” Burleson said of a leader he studied closely. “He’s always focused on the game. He trusts his people to do what they need to do and never questions it.” Burleson also pointed to how specialized units within a larger team stay aligned. “They each have their own focus,” he said, “but they never stray from the overall focus of Tennessee Tech football, and that hit me like a ton of bricks.” That is the organizational model Grit to Gold training tries to install inside contractor sales teams: individual specialization that never drifts from a shared standard.
Contractors booking events for national conferences, dealer meetings, and regional sales kickoffs ask this question when they are choosing between a practitioner and a celebrity motivator. Burleson has been recognized as a 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry by Dave Yoho Associates and named to the 2025 Top 15 Most Influential Leaders in Home Improvement by HGH Homeclub, credentials that put him in a small group of speakers who have actually built the career they are teaching from.
His keynote content draws from the same well as his mindset training, which means audiences are not getting a rehearsed motivational script disconnected from the reality of the industry. They are getting the same Grit to Gold framework, the same coaching influences, and the same career history spanning Reynolds Aluminum, Owens Corning, Alcoa, Ply Gem, and now Westlake Royal Building Products.
A training program is only as credible as the culture that produced it. Westlake Royal Building Products has built Grit to Gold Mindset Training around a principle Burleson repeats often: individual performance only matters inside a shared culture of accountability. That principle shows up internally, too, in how the company recognizes its own people. Burleson’s 2025 Legend of the Home Improvement Industry recognition, and his seat on the Power100 Advisory Board, reflect a company willing to elevate individual leaders publicly rather than keep credit internal.
The Westlake Royal Pros program Burleson co-created extends that same culture outward, connecting contractors with tech, finance, and consulting partners rather than leaving them to solve growth problems alone. That is culture expressed as infrastructure, not just as a mission statement on a wall.
The facts here are checkable rather than self-declared. Burleson has trained hundreds of companies across North America over more than 40 years in the industry. Royal Building Products, the predecessor brand within Westlake Royal Building Products, was founded in 1970 as Royal Plastics in Toronto, Ontario, giving the organization more than five decades of operating history behind the training programs it runs today. Burleson holds a published book, Grit to Gold, documented career stops across eight named companies, and formal recognition from an independent industry authority in Dave Yoho Associates.
Power100 factors exactly this kind of verifiable record into its 5-layer ranking system, because self-reported claims without an external check carry little weight for industry buyers doing due diligence before signing a training contract.
Grit to Gold Mindset Training sits inside a broader menu of services Westlake Royal Building Products offers through Burleson’s role, including Keynote Speaker engagements, general Training, Sales Training, Siding Training, and Grit to Gold Book Sales for organizations that want the material distributed as a resource across a larger team rather than delivered as a live session. Buyers frequently combine two or three of these, pairing a live keynote with follow-on mindset training and product-specific siding education so the mindset shift and the technical competence build together rather than in isolation.
Contractors and national accounts interested in Grit to Gold Mindset Training typically start with a conversation about where the sales team’s ceiling actually sits, not a generic training pitch. Burleson’s approach draws on more than 40 years of in-home selling experience and a documented career across eight major building-products organizations, which means engagements can be shaped around a specific team’s plateau rather than delivered as a one-size seminar. Organizations exploring the Westlake Royal Pros ecosystem can also access the broader network of tech, finance, and consulting partners Burleson helped build alongside the training itself.
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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.
