Stop Doing Everything: The Leadership Shift That Scales Restoration Companies

In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, Clinton James sits down with Erik Peterson, General Manager of Arko Restoration, to unpack a game-changing leadership exercise that’s helping restoration companies break through growth ceilings.

If you’ve ever felt like your business can’t run without you… this episode is going to hit home.

Erik shares how a simple but powerful task audit categorizing everything you do into Core, Supportable, Delegatable, and Automatable completely changed how he views his role as a leader. The result? More clarity, fewer bottlenecks, and a path toward scalable growth.

They dive into:

• Why most restoration owners are stuck working in the business instead of on it
• The hidden time leaks killing your productivity
• How control (and ego) quietly limit your company’s growth
• Practical ways to delegate without losing quality or control
• The real reason your team keeps coming to you for answers

This isn’t theory!  It’s real-world insight from a multi 7-figure restoration company navigating growth, team structure, and operational chaos.

If you're trying to scale from $1M to $5M… or $5M to $10M+, this episode will give you a clear starting point.

Your challenge after listening: List every task you do this week—and ask yourself, should I even be doing this?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You know, I used to I used to joke with my wife, she would ask me how my day was gonna look that day in the morning, and I'd say, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Last minute decision to leave the cold of Minnesota and come down to Austin to sit in a room for a day with a bunch of other guys that uh that own restoration companies. What went into your thought process when I asked you?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Again, I think there's so many things that you don't realize that you do in a day until you have to go write them all down.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

You talked about using AI. AI is a great tool for you to leverage to automate a lot of the uh monotonous, like uh recurring tasks that we have in our businesses today. Welcome to the Restoration Pros Unplugged Podcast. In each episode, we're gonna bring you insightful interviews and discussions with top restoration industry leaders. We're also gonna delve into their business, the strategies that made them successful, and most importantly, the valuable lessons they've learned along the way. I'm your host, Clinton James. I'm also the Chief Marketing Officer at Water Restoration Market. We're a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping restoration companies nationwide secure more high-value water jobs. Now, this show aims to provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to excel in the restoration industry. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. And welcome everybody to the Restoration Pros Unplug Podcast. Uh, as always, I am your host, Clinton James, Chief Marketing Officer with Water Restoration Marketing. Um, today I've got a special guest, um, actually a new client to the agency. Uh we recently conducted a mastermind. And we do this usually about twice a year, where we invite really a small intimate group, usually less than a half dozen restoration companies. Um and uh and my guest today, newer client, I asked him, Hey, do you want to be in the building? And he jumped on a plane, came down to Austin, Texas, and we had a great time. Uh, I'm my guest today is Eric Peterson. Eric is the general manager of Arco Restoration located in Blaine, Minnesota. Eric, thank you for joining the Restoration Pros Unplugged podcast today. All right. Um, now, again, um, last-minute decision to leave the cold of Minnesota and come down to Austin to sit in a room for a day with a bunch of other guys that uh that own restoration companies. What went into your thought process when I asked you?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

You know, honestly, right away I said, let's do it. I mean, I've I we I collaborate with some local company. We have restoration contractors around here. Um kind of people I've known for many, many years. It's kind of nice to get out and see what other contractors do across the country. You know, they everybody has their own ways of doing things, the good, the bad, the ugly, what have you. And it's good to get in a room and just kind of hear what everyone else is doing, hear, hear their mistakes, tell everybody what my mistakes are, and have people tell me what I can do better and work with them on how they can be better too.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Uh I think we had a really powerful conversation um in that room about how we as business owners kind of spend our time. Um, but before we get into that and the exercise um that we uh that we did, um tell the audience a little bit about yourself um and your role there at Arco Restoration.

unknown 3:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Um I've been uh with Arco here since 2020. Um been in the restoration industry as a whole since 2003, started out as an estimator. Um back then it was truly going out to every single site, meeting with every single customer, meeting adjusters actually on site, um, the the the good old days, if you will. Um actually knew all the local adjusters and you could have conversations, but um different conversation for a different day there, maybe. But um kind of work that into you know get into management and kind of overseeing companies and and and helping the the company grow as a whole. So um yeah, it's it's been a it's been a journey. I didn't even know this industry existed in 2003 when I when I jumped into it. I remember my first phone interview where they were talking about mitigations and dehumidifiers and air movers, and I went, I I don't know what you're talking about, but uh I I worked for a modeling company at the time and I was like, I honestly didn't have that hardcore sell, sell, sell, sell, sell mentality. Um, the the restoration side of it of being able to go in and help people and you know, be able to help them put their house back together because they're in a time of need um was a much better fit to my personality, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

So I love that. Um let the audience know, give us a breakdown of the restoration services that you guys provide at Arco.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Sure. We do uh we're full service. Um we do the emergency mitigation services 24-7. Um, answer the call, get out there, start the mitigation process, all the way up there putting the whole house back together. Um, it's it's we we we don't do any personal property contents um aspect of stuff, but anything that has to do with the actual structure itself, that's we can take care of it and put it back together for you.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

All right. So uh a lot of the folks in the audience, um, their restoration companies offer different services, right? We've got restoration companies that just do water mitigation, right? Great margins. Uh, you don't have to hire the um uh high-end labor there because you're not putting the homes back together there. Um, give the audience a breakdown of what your team looks like right now, right? How many service vehicles do you guys have approximately? How many techs or project managers? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Um, so right now we we have about 12 water mitigation technicians um to kind of handle the the emergency side of stuff. We have about full, four in-house, we call them just carpenters. You know, it's kind of a generic term for the crew that can do just the the drywall patches, the little paints, a little bit of trim, hang a door, that kind of stuff. Anything larger as far as the repairs. So we use uh vendors that are just um faster, honestly, can get on jobs sooner than our in-house guys. So our in-house guys are more intended for that kind of stuff. We have three estimators that handle estimated the mitigation side of stuff and the repair side of stuff. We have four project managers that oversee the construction of the on the repair side. Uh we have a mitigation manager who kind of oversees that department. Um, two internal coordinators. We just added a new one here a few months ago. So it's it's it's that's been a humongous help that I'm sure we'll get into later here as we talk about you know, overseeing the business and delegating some of my tasks and whatnot has been a humongous help on that side of stuff. So I'm just kind of oh, we're set up.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

So the reason I asked that questionnaire, because I I want the audience to know the kind of the scale of the size of Arco, right? You guys are a multi-seven-figure restoration company. You guys have been doing this for decades. You've got a large team, a leadership team, the infrastructure necessary to scale a restoration business. Now, what was your biggest takeaway from being in a room in Austin, sitting with four or five other restoration company owners, talking about what's working and what's not working in your business?

SPEAKER_00 6:52

For that being especially how open everybody was. They mean they were more than willing to talk about their flaws. Um, and and everybody has flaws, everybody has things that they wish they could be better at. And to be in a room with a bunch of you know, like-minded, um, whether it's business owners or managers or whatever, you know, their their their position is, for everybody to talk about their flaws and everybody's willingness to help each other out, to sit there and say, hey, I do this, maybe you want to try this, hey, I do this, maybe you want to try this. Um, and and just the general honesty that everybody came to the table with was the was the best part.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Now, you and I, uh actually everybody in the group, we had one really specific conversation about how business leaders are really spending their time. Now, before that conversation, how would you typically describe your daily workload?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

You know, I used to I used to joke with my wife, she would ask you how my day was going to look that day in the morning, and I'd say, I have no idea. You know, it's the it's the emergency mitigation world of, you know, I I think I have a plan when I walk in the front door, and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and you just don't know what's going on. And next thing you know, you're you're driving home going, I didn't get anything done that day. Um, and it became a common occurrence just as as our as we grew and as things got more and more un I don't even know the best term for it. We just we didn't have the role set in place. It was just uh it was you know it was chaos, it's essential. It was controlled chaos. I mean, everybody you know it was kind of the joke in the industry is that's what we do every day is try to control chaos. And um that works when you do are a little bit smaller, um, but as you get bigger and bigger, bigger, the the risk is much higher. Um, but everything has to kind of go through me, it kind of creates uh a bottleneck and hole process too that that can create all kinds of problems. So it was um yeah, it was just mostly every day of just kind of making sure fires are being put out.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yeah, it it seemed like everyone in that room to a man had really that same issue, right? So, really in the course of the conversation, I had shared with you guys that um with my agency, with my leadership team, one of the things that I was working on was an exercise where I would go through and list out every activity, every task that I did on a day-to-day basis in a Google Sheet, right? Um, once all those tasks were listed, what I did is I went back, I reviewed them, and I basically put them into four different buckets, right? Um, the first bucket being core. These are the things, the tasks that I do on a day-to-day basis that are absolutely critical, high-level activities that are going to move the business forward. These are things that I, because of my role, uh, my experience, my skill set, I am uniquely qualified to fill that or to handle that task, right? So those are the core roles. I'm sure you have some of those on your plate as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

No, yeah, of course. And and you know, I did the same thing, kind of I created my own spreadsheet, you know, using chat GPT who just said create the spreadsheet for me and love it wonderful like that. So I'd, you know, and went went through everything. And it was a a daunting task, I'll decide.

unknown 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Now, in addition to core activities, um, we also have uh supportable, which means things that I probably should use my experience and expertise to help other team members to uh to accomplish. Delegatable, which is something I don't even know if that's a word, Eric, but uh delegatable, right? Uh a task that I want to train, create an SOP, train a team member, and ultimately have that team member then own that task moving forward. And then automatable. Um, now again, I don't know if that's a real word, uh, but we're gonna go with it anyway. Um, you talked about using AI. AI is a great tool for you to leverage to automate a lot of the uh monotonous, like uh recurring tasks that we have in our businesses today. So you sat down, completed this exercise. Um, is it okay to ask how many line items, how many tasks did you ultimately end up with? Uh, do you have an estimate or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Kind of an ongoing task list, if that makes sense. Okay. I mean, it it's uh again, I think there's so many things that you don't realize that you do in a day until you have to go write them all down. Um, and so I I find myself constantly like it's literally just up on my second screen, just as a constantly going to add more things to it as as the day goes through or kind of honed it in a little bit. Um honestly right now I got 14 tasks on there. Um, I probably spread that out to be 25 if I want to be more detailed on exactly what they were. Some of them are fairly generic.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Okay. So all right. So what was your um initial reaction when you started the exercise listing out the tasks that you do on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

You brought it up at the masterminds to one of the other owners that was there, and and I remember thinking, holy cow, I can't even imagine writing this list. I mean, this, you know, I think one of the questions was how long would it take you to make the list? And I'm going, it would take me a month to make the list because it's constantly there's so many things you just don't realize that you're doing. All right.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

So you get back from Austin, um, you're creating your list. Um, what was your first reaction to that exercise?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

I was honestly overwhelmed with it. I mean, I was not not sure exactly what to even where to start. You know what I mean? So I I literally went and said, okay, what do I what do I do on on Mondays? What do I do on Tuesdays? What do I do on Wednesdays? And just tried to kind of play through what I at least have planned for each day to to to write it all down. Um, and just just kind of made made the list, kind of went through all the stuff. And um yeah, I mean it was just uh, you know, and then kind of kept it up on my second screen and kept adding to it as I would do something else. I go, oh shoot, I gotta add that to the list. Oh, yeah, I gotta add it to the list. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

It's still a work in progress for you, right? This is a living document that you're just gonna continue to add additional tasks and and then responsibilities to. Yeah, 100%. Okay. Um when you were putting together the list, were there any tasks like any moment where you were creating some tasks and you're like, I probably shouldn't be the one doing this?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

100%. That was that was almost the hard part of making the list. As I was putting stuff on the list, I'm kind of like, I would never want to tell people that this is on my task list because I shouldn't be doing it. But I I just kind of I just do it because I feel like I have to have that control. I have to have that that involvement in my fingers in every single aspect of every single thing. Um and then I sort of just wait, but no, that's the whole point of this exercise is to put those items on the list so you can see how much time you're truly spending on tasks that you don't need to do.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

I I love that you mentioned time. Um, after the exercise, how much time do you think you spent working literally in the business as opposed to working on the business?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

You know, I would say probably about 60% in it and 40% on it was the the the kind of the the rough math I was thinking of the whole thing. So I mean that again the the Chat GPT spreadsheet did actually separate all that out as to what percentage was true core tasks and what percentage wasn't. So it was enlightening to see.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

All right, good. Uh give the audience some examples of some of the core tasks, the things that you really think should stay on your plate.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

A lot of us just kind of overseeing um, you know, the where the business is going, you know, where you know, kind of having a where do we where are we gonna be in three months, six months, one year, five years, you know, whatever type of deal, whatever, however far we want to really go and kind of figure out okay, how are we gonna get there? You know, we all have goals, we all have places we want our businesses to to be, and kind of setting up where those things are how how the company gets there is kind of the the the biggest thing I think that should be spent, you know, for my time. Um, and then the other part is too is just verifying that some of these delegated tasks are are being done as well. You can't just let it go free and just let everybody do whatever they're supposed to do and hope they're doing it the right way. You gotta do some some checking on some stuff. Um just staying on top of the numbers, you know, the the general accounting of stuff, making sure that all the the the financials are are in a good place, you know, but again, not going after not counting every single penny per se. You know, that's that's we have other people, you know, so just more general oversight. Um I honestly spend a lot of my time just going around to my team and making sure everybody's okay. You know, as as we know in this business, it it gets hectic, it gets crazy. I mean, uh six weeks ago in Minnesota, it was 20 below for a week straight. That gets a major influx of of projects that come in. And there's certain divisions that get really, really busy really, really fast, and then it goes to the other division and they get really, really busy really, really fast. So it's checking in with them just to see how they're doing. You know, anything I can do to help them, what can we do to change some of our policies and procedures to make everything go smoother? You know, like I said earlier, we brought on a new coordinator a few months ago and trying to figure out how she fits into this whole mix. And now that we have two coordinators, they can take on even more. So, what more can they do? You know, they're they're they're very, very good at what they do, they want to take on more work. Um, and working with them to say, you know, almost see what they can see that can be done better too.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

I love that. Um, one of the things you mentioned is with a team at scale at your size, part of your time is spent, you know, strategic vision for the company. Spar part of it is spent, you know, making sure that the financially the business is healthy so that you can create that kind of growth. Um, but a another big core function is just team management, right? So, how many direct reports do you have in the organization that report directly to you right now, Eric?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Right now there are 10, and that needs to be cut way down.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah, uh I would agree. I I'm I'm rereading Alex Duda's book, uh Restoration Millionaire, and I think his sweet spot is like seven or eight. Nobody should have more than seven or eight direct reports there. So you're you're close. Um, all right. So those being the core functions, can you give the audience some insight as to some functions that you wanted to delegate, some tasks, I'm sorry, that you wanted to delegate to other team members?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, the biggest ones, but so we use Dash as our CRM, um, which has you know some internal functions and procedures and compliance tasks and all that kind of stuff for for each role throughout the project. Um, and I found myself going through and actually completing some of the tasks for other people. And it may just have been as simple as just clicking the task as complete because it got completed, they just got busy, they didn't click the button. And doing simple things like that, like marking jobs as paid. Well, they're paid. I don't need to click the pay button. That's what you know, where there's the the coordinators can take care of that, that's what they should be doing. It's better for them to actually know that than for me to know that, to be honest. So it's the the those little minute tasks that are done through the project to um allow other people to take on those responsibilities to help the actual flow of the project. I was probably slowing things down, to be honest, by doing some of the stuff myself.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

You know, one of the things that that I'm trying to do right now is as I go through my tasks, a lot of the the way those tasks are executed or st is stored up here in my head, right? I need to create SOPs and I need to create playbooks for really everything that I do on a day-to-day basis. It makes it a lot easier when I decide, hey, I want to delegate this to a team member. They've got an SOP to follow, they've got a Loom video that shows them what I'm talking about there. Um when I went through that exercise, though, in terms of identifying the tasks that I wanted to delegate, um, I realized that through technology, through automation, through AI, there were some of those tasks that I could automate as opposed to delegate to team members there, right? Did you have any any uh any tasks like that in your list?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

You know, automation I would say is one of the biggest things we need to work on as as a company as a whole. We mean we use chat just for general searches and questions and this and the next thing, but as far as general automations, um it it kind of scares the crap out of me to sit there and and sit there and trust uh uh AI to do what we do because so much of what we do is dealing with the customer. Sure. And the to trust AI to deal with the customer in certain ways just scares the beaches out of it. I just I can't imagine it. You know, are there other things we could utilize? Yeah, I mean, since we came back from that that Austin Masterminds, I've been, you know, trying to dip my toe into some of the other just process management softwares out there, the the you know, there's endless amounts out there trying to figure out what truly is the best one. Um, that you know, most of them you have to pay for, and that's fine. That's it's well worth it if it actually does what they say it's supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Vet your vendors when you're investing in that kind of technology, right? Exactly. All right. So um, big picture, you made the list, uh, you took each task, you labeled it as either core, um, delegatable, um, supportable, um, or automatable, right? Um, you're consistently adding additional tasks to that list. Um, now that that exercise is is not done, because it'll never ever be fully done, but as you take a step back, did anything surprise you about the results that you saw?

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Um as a whole, uh there's not a lot of detailed tasks that I do, which is you know coming from the you know, the the being an estimator every day and actually completing things every single day and and running projects every single day. It's like you you you had specific tasks that you completed. And as as a uh a manager of the company to just spend most of your time with oversight, there's not a lot of definitive tasks that are put on that list, which was kind of hard to take on at times, you know, but it that is kind of what the role is. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

You're you're a manager of you're a steward of the health of the business, right? Um whether that's strategy, finance, or the people that actually make things happen for the business and and for the homeowners and business owners that you guys serve. Um one last thing, one talking point on that. Um, did you discover any like huge time leaks, any distractions in that list that are really eating up too much of your day?

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Just general interruptions still. I mean, certain certain questions that people have that they they come to me for answers. And I think most of the time they just need reassurance that what they're doing is the right thing to do. Sure. And the they they they come to me and say, I'm thinking about doing this, is that okay? And majority of the time is yeah, that sounds great. There you go. And you know, the the the team we have here just has an abundance of experience. They We've all been doing this for a very, very, very long time. They they know what they're doing. And you know, they almost sometimes need to trust themselves more than they really do. So it's it's to to take that part out of my day would would save a lot of time too.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

I I love to hear that. I love to hear that you're empowering those team members, but you you actually took it a step further, right? So when you started this exercise, you were like, We're in a group chat with a bunch of the other people that attended the Austin Mastermind there. Um, you mentioned that, hey, not only did I do this, but I wanted to share this with my team as well. So, how did you present this exercise to your team members? And and which team members specifically did you think that this would be a good exercise for?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah, the the main person for us was our our mitigation manager. Um uh his name's Rick. He's he started out as a water tech, I don't know, 16, 17 years ago, um, kind of worked his way up through the industry. And to be honest, he's he's the ultimate control freak. He wants to have he, I mean, his ability to know what's going on in every project is amazing. And when I first started, I was amazed at how well he knew what was going on in every single job that we had going on, and now we've just grown so much that he he can't, and he struggles with giving up that control and giving that power to his team as it's grown as well. So I I actually gave it to him and kind of his um lead field guy too to kind of go through all their tasks.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

And what was the initial reaction when you had that conversation with him?

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Um he was a little taken aback, but I think he understands, like he's he's well aware that that's something he needs to work on. We've talked about it for for years. Um, and now it's been, you know, so we we've honestly been meeting once a week for the last couple weeks just to kind of go over everything and figure out how we're gonna delegate these things and truly helping them get there, which um he's he's taken on. He and he's always done that, he's always been more than willing to uh accept the changes and just the process to get there is always not the easiest. And I think this this these steps we're taking through the through the the what can be delegated, what can be automated, what what actually he has to do, is make him truly understand that wait, wait a minute, I don't need to do everything that I'm currently doing. You know, he was trying to get onto every single job site, he was trying to make sure that everybody was doing what they're supposed to do on every single job, and we're just too busy for him to even contemplate that.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

That makes a lot of sense. Now, when you put your list up and you put his list up, did you guys identify any like overlaps or any like really big bottlenecks that are preventing you guys from uh from scaling the business?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Not between he and I. Um, I I'm at as a whole, he's I I've always fully trusted his ability to run that division. And and so I I purposely try to stay out of it because when it's that chaotic as far as who's going to where, what, when and how, um to have two people try to run that just doesn't work. So it's it's I'd always kind of left that to him. Our conversations are more, you know, talking about what happened last month and what we could have done better, as opposed to, you know, hey, we just got a bunch of work in, do this, do this, do this, and he's going, no, I'm doing this and this and this. So there's not a ton of overlap on that kind of stuff. It's it's more trying to elevate him to a higher level now, too, because as we grow, his his responsibilities change as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Sure. Sure. They they say what is it, delegate and elevate, right? As you hand off tasks to other team members, it allows you to um elevate and take on more higher level, um, higher impact uh functions in the business there. So as you sit there with a list, you've got your your core items, the things that you want to focus on. Uh, you've got items that you still need to be involved in from a support standpoint with your team members. Um, you've delegated items to specific team members to kind of get off of your plate. Um, and you're in the process of learning technologies and implementing systems that'll allow you guys to automate it so that people don't have to do functions that technology can take over. Um, how do you think, uh, how do you think this is ultimately this exercise is going to improve efficiency or accountability?

SPEAKER_00 26:14

I think it'll actually help define roles. I mean, I think that's the hardest part, as at least what I've seen as the as the company grows, is taking roles that used to just kind of be, okay, you're gonna, you know, like going back to to Rick, our mitigation manager, saying, okay, you just run the mitigation department. Well, now he knows exactly what his tasks are in that mitigation department. Talking to the coordinators now that says they're gonna help out our, you know, our staff administratively, what exactly are there defined roles on everything? It makes things go so much smoother. There's the the goal is to get away from any sort of bottleneck in the process that's gonna slow things down and to have those SOPs in place and say this is this is how we operate from start to finish to hopefully make everything just go smoother in the mass chaos. You know, like I said, the the idea of trying to control chaos. That's how you control chaos, is with some sort of system and making that system work for your team is the key.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

I I'm sure there's a restoration company owner right now that's sitting at their desk, they've got this open on YouTube, they're also doing two or three tasks, they're responding to a text message from an insurance adjuster or something like that. Um, what would you say uh to that restoration company? What's the easiest way for him to get started uh with this exercise? Because it might sound a little complex, it might sound a little overwhelming at first.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Uh honestly, it's it's allowing your team to prove themselves. You know, don't don't just dump the whole task list on to that delegated person. You know, take little baby steps. They'll let them let them prove who they are. And once you trust them with a little bit, you can start giving them more and more and more. And eventually you're gonna look back and go, wow, I can't believe I used to do all this stuff. You know, the I mean there's things I did five years ago that I don't even think about on a daily basis now because other people take care of it, and it scared the crap out of me back then too. You know, but it's it's you know, the the idea of you know you have certain customers that are that only want to work with me, you know, and and I tried to still oversee those customers and be involved with those customers with property management type stuff. And I my involvement now with them is you know, whenever we get together for for group events, I step by and say hi.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

That's scary though, isn't it? Right, because you always so hard to cultivate that business, and it's so important to the revenue that you guys bring in on an annual basis. Like uh I mean talk a little bit about that, like because that's that's I I struggle with that as well, right? Like, what is it?

SPEAKER_00 28:42

It was it literally, I I remember when I came on board here there, I I told the the founder, I said, There's no way that anybody is ever going to touch this client except for me. Never it's mine, it's I've worked with them for many, many, many, many years. And now we have a business development rep that you know that's that's his main client. So he goes around to say hi to all the buildings. We have an estimator internally that he he handles all their their properties, and we have a project project manager that he does every single one of their building repairs. So they all know exactly who they're dealing with. They know that it's a it's a high hand holding type of client that that needs some extra attention. And I didn't think that anybody else could do it.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

You know, do you do you think it's an ego thing that we have that we're the only person that can possibly identify, help, support, nurture the relationship with this uh with this client.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

I think that's one of the biggest flaws with any sort of business owner as a whole, is just they're they're we're we we all have big egos. You know, we we we want to run everything because we think we're the best at everything. And that's also the biggest flaw is that we think that we can run everything and do everything ourselves and nobody can do it better than trying to get out of that mindset and and it's just trust too. I mean, you understand that that person's gonna make mistakes. Yeah, they're not gonna do it the right way all the time. You know, I think one of the comments we made down in Austin was you know, if the person you assign it to can do it at 80% of what you could do it, but now it frees up all that time for you. Is that truly better for the business?

SPEAKER_01 30:19

If someone can do it 80% as well as you, it's a hundred percent awesome, right? Because that is one of those things that you can remove. Now we're a couple weeks away from being uh the end of the quarter. Um, are there any tasks you personally plan to stop doing based on this exercise in the next couple weeks?

SPEAKER_00 30:38

My eventual goal is to truly only look at our CRM dash maybe once a week. Just just trust that people are doing what they're supposed to do, you know, maybe glance at it here and there, but my ultimate goal is to get to the point where it's maybe just once a week for a very short period of time, you know, get away from running the the weekly meetings, the the work in progress type meetings, all that kind of stuff. Um as hard as it is to say to not know the specifics of every single job that's in production. And that just it it's it almost sounds like I'm not even doing my job by saying that, but it's like that's kind of where it has to go. We're we're we're too busy for me to slow down the process.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah, you and that's what you become, right? You become the bottleneck, you become the problem. It's the reason that your company can't go from two to five, from five to ten, from ten to twenty million dollars a year, right? So I I hope that the the audience listening to this, they understand two things. One, this exercise, it can be really impactful, right? Take an hour, just start, create a Google Sheet, um, list all your tasks out there. Again, make a little drop-down with those options there, you know, core, supportable, uh, delegatable, automatable, and then just it daily, just adding additional tasks, things that you do on a day-to-day basis there. Um, all right, uh, let's talk a little bit about Arco before we leave. What's what do you say as the biggest challenge? Because you guys are in Minnesota, um, definitely one of the more competitive markets in the country. What do you see as one of the biggest challenges for Arco over the next few years in trying to uh to scale the business?

SPEAKER_00 32:23

The the the biggest thing for for me and and and my team is we we want to get big enough where we can we can handle more sizable projects, but I don't know that we have the true desire to become the hundred million dollar company. You know, I mean I I like the fact that when I walk through our shop and there's a water tech that started last month, I know who he is, you know, and and it it's it's hard to say I ever want to get to the point where I don't know who everybody is, and it's I I don't know if that's ultimately necessary, but I also want to be to the size where you can take on some more interesting type projects, you know, and it's try finding that happy medium between not being this big corporate conglomerate where you know nobody knows who anybody is and everybody just kind of doesn't doesn't care about anything, they're just there to do a job, you know, and but also being able to handle the the sizable stuff. So it's it's struggling with that mentality.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

You know, I think about our audience, Eric, and I think about all of the restoration companies that I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with over the last seven, almost eight years now. Um, a lot of them came from corporate America, right? They worked for these huge corporations where you're just a name, a badge number, right? And getting into home services where you one, want to know everybody that you're working with, and two, you're so critical to the homeowners and the business owners that you're providing these emergency services to. Um, I love the fact that you're like, hey, we want to scale this business, but I don't want to get to the point where I don't know the guys that are in the warehouse. I don't know the guy that I'm bumping into when I'm trying to microwave up some soup in the afternoon because it's cold in Minnesota. So all right. Um, again, I I really want to thank you for jumping on here with me, Eric. I uh super impressed with you, super impressed with the team over at Arco Restoration. Um, looking forward to working with you guys for a long time. Um I really want two takeaways for the audience today. One is I want them to understand how impactful this exercise can be on their business, but I want to piggyback off what you said a moment ago um about trusting and delegating, like those clients, those relationships that you think you're the only one that can manage, man. You've got other people in your business, people that are smarter than you, people that may not do things the exact same way you do them, but they can have just as good of an impact with that client, that customer there. So um any parting words for the audience, any parting words of wisdom for that guy that's you know one, two million dollars a year, they're looking to scale up to the level of the company like Arco Restoration?

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Uh again, uh hire good people that you can trust and do your due diligence on on who you bring on board and make sure that you can trust who they are. I think um so many people just find they look at resumes that have a laundry list of experience on it, and they go, oh, that guy knows what he's doing, or that gal knows what he's doing, so I'm gonna hire them. And they don't do their diligence to make sure that they're actually good people, you know. And especially in this business, you have to have good people. You you can you can teach the the hard skills, you can't teach the soft skills. And and once you can trust that at least your people are gonna take care of that customer, if they miss something in a line at them in an estimate, if they miss something as far as running the project. At the end of the day, if that customer is taken care of, everything will be just fine.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

I I agree. Um, especially when we talk about an exercise like this where you're delegating tasks to other team members there um and entrusting them to handle those things, it's really important to have the right people in the right seat. So Eric, I want to thank you for being a guest on the Restoration Pros Unplugged Podcast. Guys, if you like the conversation that you heard today, make sure that you subscribe, uh, follow us on social media, get at us on YouTube. Um, we're also going to be launching a new website dedicated exclusively to the Restoration Pros Unplug podcast in the coming weeks. Um, but Eric, thank you again for your time. Um and we'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, we won't you guys stay busy because uh it's it's heating up a little bit in different parts of the country. Hopefully it's heating up a little bit there in Minnesota. But it was uh two below this morning. So we know what's coming next, though. Uh April showers will bring May Flowers there. So all right, thank you guys. Thank you, Eric. Uh thanks, Lebanon. Thank you for listening to the Restoration Pros Unplugged Podcast. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe, share, and also leave us a five-star review. We'll be back with more interviews and discussions with restoration industry leaders really soon. In the meantime, if you're a restoration company looking to add more high value water jobs, you can reach me and my team at War Restoration Marketing.net. Again, that's War Restoration Marketing.net. I look forward to hearing from you still.