Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Milton, Crabapple, and Hickory Flat
Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
EP #116: Hampton Restoration Group with Mike Hampton
Do you ever wonder about the resilience and determination it takes to build a flourishing business from scratch? Our special guest, Michael Hampton, founder of Hampton Restoration Group, will leave you inspired with his entrepreneurial journey. Starting as a high school student with an accidental entry into the property restoration industry, Michael has built his business into a multi-service restoration company that specializes in fire restoration, large mold remediation, packing and moving services, and construction.
Michael spills the beans on how he navigates the complex world of insurance claims, making up 90% of their work, and the strategic implementation of a strict on-call schedule to effectively respond to emergencies. But life isn't all work for Michael; he also opens up about his life beyond business - his love for family, motocross, football, camping, and hunting. Learn from his experiences in overcoming the challenges of building a business from scratch and dealing with obstacles along the way. Join us for an engaging conversation with a local entrepreneur making an impact in our community. Tune in!
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Polar.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, I am here talking with Michael Hampton from the Hampton Restoration Group. Welcome, Mike.
Speaker 3:Welcome, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're excited to chat, so why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your business?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're a property restoration company in Cherokee County. We specialize in water, fire, mold remediation and we have a rebuild team that assists with construction on the back end.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and how did you get into this?
Speaker 3:I got into this industry by accident. I had a family friend growing up that did some sort of something. I didn't know when I was young, but he was nice enough to offer me a job and it was doing water damage, restoration and fire. And so I started working as a technician at 16 in high school on the weekends during the summers and kind of stuck with it. The owners seemed like they did well and had a pretty good lifestyle, so kind of kept that as an idea for where I could be someday and that's how I got in.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So tell us, Mike, when did you start the company?
Speaker 3:So I started this company December 6th of 2018 legally, so we have our five year anniversary next week, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Wow, that is super cool. Has the business often changed over time? Are you still basically doing the same things that you were when you started?
Speaker 3:We've got into more things than what we had done. When we started we stayed a little bit away from fire, just because it required different teams and resources, but now we have those in place. We stayed away from large mold remediation projects because they've required resources we didn't really have, and now we've broken into those markets. We've also got into packing. So if somebody has, let's say, a fire loss or a water loss and we've got to move their furniture, we have a division that comes in and packs up and moves to an offsite facility. Or we have storage containers and trailers. So we have that division and then we have a full on construction team, whereas when we first started we didn't have a construction team. We just did the drying and the removal and the cleaning and then kind of recommended somebody else, and now we have a full construction team that helps put everything back together after we have to tear it out.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome and I'm guessing a lot of what you do is kind of working with the insurance companies and the homeowner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, I would say, about 90% of our work is insurance claims.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and I'm guessing that kind of one of these industries where you guys are working all the time really isn't isn't an off in off hour for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have a very strict emergency on call schedule that our entire team shares, and so we're always available. It's very stressful to operate a business like this, but I've been doing it so long and I've been in each position where I know what it's like to be on call. I know what it's like to go out at three in the morning and be back into work at eight in the morning, so we really put together a good system to make sure our customers are taken care of but also our people have some work life balance. That's that's the goal.
Speaker 2:Awesome. What do you do for fun when you're not working?
Speaker 3:So I have a two year old and another baby on the way, so I spend a lot of time with family. I love the sport of motocross and supercross. Our company sponsors a couple of riders that are in the professional industry, so we'll travel from state to state, city to city, and go and support our riders. I love to camp, I love to hunt, I love football. I like the outdoors. We have a small farm so I love to get out and get on the tractor and get in you know the skid steers and the excavators and dig holes and have fun and hang out with friends. I mean, that's really, really what I do during my off time and travel.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome I'm guessing you know building a new business. There's been some challenges and obstacles along the way. Can you talk about maybe some of the issues you faced and how you guys have gotten through them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, certainly, building any business is very tough, and especially building a restoration business. I've been doing it for so long and I've been a part of two other companies at a high level prior to owning my own. The biggest thing is is you have to have good leadership, and when you get to a certain level you can't be the only leader. You've got to bring in other leaders that have talents and have visions and they can kind of be an extension of what your goals are. So I'd say the biggest thing is making sure you have the right people in the right positions, and we do. We have an unbelievable team. I've been very lucky to be able to have great people Makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 3:But you know, the challenges are always. If you don't make the right decision, it haunts you. If you make the right decision but it wasn't at the right time, you're doubt it. I've been able to make a lot of right decisions not gone wood, but it's a lot of pressure. You have a lot of people relying on you. You have a lot of people that expect you to just know what to do, when to do it, how to do it. So the pressure I like, because it keeps me on my toes and it keeps me doing really well, but I also have to make sure that every move I make is calculated. So that's the biggest challenge for me is making sure that I don't slack off for too long so that I can continue the train on the right tracks.
Speaker 2:Good stuff, anything else that you wanna share, that you haven't had a chance to say about the business.
Speaker 3:Well, the biggest thing is we're huge on customer service. We're huge on community impact. We absolutely love customers. We love helping people. That's the whole reason why we're in the industry that we're in.
Speaker 3:So a lot of people don't understand that what we do doesn't have to be a disaster. It can be something as small as a toilet overflowed after Thanksgiving. It can be something as small as a refrigerator's leaking. It can be your water heater has leaked into your carpet. My suggestion to people that have things like that happen is typically there's more damage than what you can see and getting a good quality company that cares about the customer, they're gonna give you an honest opinion and that's what we try to do. I mean, if we come out and the customer says, well, it's just a little bit of wet carpet or it's just a little bit of wet flooring, we're not trying to make it a bigger deal than it is. We're trying to prevent it from becoming a big deal.
Speaker 3:So I would say that our industry is becoming more known, especially from the winter freeze. I mean there were 60,000 homes impacted in seven days and we got 6,000 of those calls in 48 hours. So we helped as many people as we could, and so people are getting more aware about water damage and fire and mold. But the problem is, if it's not handled quickly, if it's not looked at by a professional quickly, then there's only so much that can be saved. There's only so much that we can limit. So I try to encourage people, especially in our community give us a call, let us come out, let us look. Don't wait until it's too late, because insurance may not cover it at that point and it may cost a lot more and you may have some health concerns involved with that as well, and that's what we try to avoid.
Speaker 2:Great points.
Speaker 3:Can you?
Speaker 2:share with us how folks can find you, your website and social media, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. Folks can find us on Facebook, hampton Restoration Group. We have two pages. We actually have two locations. We have a location in Panama City Beach, right off of 30A, and I know a lot of people in our community travel down there, including myself, which is why we have that location. You can find us on Instagram at Hampton Restoration Group. Our website is wwwhamptonrestorationgroupcom. All of our contact information is there. We've got a team page where you can see faces of everyone and what their positions are. We have a little story section, a contact section, and then you can certainly call our office at any time. Our office is 24-7. Somebody's always there to answer the phone, and our phone number is just 6788808242.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Mike.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast Milton and more. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpmiltoncom. That's gnpmiltoncom, or call 470-664-4930.