Industrial Metrics, Explosive Margins: How Larry Braun Scaled Pine Ridge Restoration Past $6M Using Dashboard Accountability

Running your restoration company on gut feeling and bank balances is a quiet way to stay stuck. Real growth comes from installing hard numbers and accountability into every job.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Larry Braun, VP and Co-owner of Pine Ridge Restoration in Cleveland, Ohio, and a featured speaker at the Restore Scale Dominate Summit in San Diego. Larry spent 30 years running an industrial steel plant before joining the restoration business just two and a half years ago. He brought a manufacturing mindset with him — and it worked. Pine Ridge had been stuck at $3M since 2005. Larry helped push them past a $6.3M forecast, chasing an $8M stretch goal.

You'll walk away with:

• How Pine Ridge ties technician bonuses directly to job-level profit margin
• A field accountability system that catches costly mistakes before they become callbacks
• How to get clean financial visibility between your emergency response and reconstruction teams
• Why niche-focused BDRs are outperforming generalists in insurance and senior living verticals
• Why ranking on Google isn't enough anymore, and what AEO means for your next lead

Want to see Larry break down these exact systems live? He's leading a hands-on session called “Behind the Dashboard” at the Restore Scale Dominate live event in San Diego, August 27–28. Early bird pricing expires tomorrow, July 18th, and saves you $150. Apply now at https://restorescaledominate.com

Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

Running a restoration company and want to get more jobs from your online marketing? Book a free discovery call with Water Restoration Marketing at https://waterrestorationmarketing.com/discovery-call/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Restoration Froze Unplugged Podcast. In each episode, we're going to review excite clutter views and discussions with top restoration industry leaders. We're also going to delve into their business, the strategies that make them successful, and most importantly, the valuable lessons they learned along the way. I'm your host collective dentist. I'm also the chief marketing officer of restoration markets. 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 Unplugged Podcast. As always, I am your host, Clinton James, also the chief marketing officer over at Water Restoration Marketing. I've been telling my audience about a live event that I'm co-hosting with the group over at Momentum Accounting and the group over at Floodlight. And we are really, really fortunate to have today's guest who's volunteered to do an awesome session for the attendees. Now, I had the pleasure of meeting him last year at a golfing event in Florida. I do not play golf, I participate in golf events. Larry actually plays golf. But Larry is going to bring a whole bunch of value, not only to the live event, but I invited him on the podcast to bring some value to our audience today. So Larry Brown, VP of Pine Ridge Restoration. Larry, thank you for joining the Restoration Pros Unplugged podcast today. Absolutely. Clinton, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So for our audience members that are not familiar with you, give them a little insight about your role over at Pine Ridge and how long you've been in the restoration industry.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yeah, sure. So my current role, uh Vice President, but also co-owner of Pine Ridge Restoration, I joined the team here about two and a half years ago. Uh, brand new to the industry, had no restoration experience other than Pine Ridge dried out a few of my basements over the years because I've uh been longtime friends of my business partner, Rick McWiggan, uh, who's owned the company since 2005. Uh, so we've we're longtime friends, and that's kind of how I ended up here.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Awesome. Give the audience some insight. Where are you guys located? What's your service area look like, and what primary services does Pine Ridge offer?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, sure. So we're on the east side of Cleveland in East Lake, Ohio. We service pretty much Ashabula to Avon to Akron, which is kind of roughly an hour or so from our office. Uh, and we are full service. So we do water, fire, smoke, mold, asbestos, uh, mitigation, remediation. We do the reconstruction, we do retail work.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Um, so yeah, we do it all.

unknown 2:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

You hinted earlier that you have been there for two years and you did not come to the table with a restoration background. So give the audience a little background on you and the industry that you came from prior to joining Pine Ridge.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Yeah, absolutely. So I graduated high school on a Friday and I started working in a steel mill on Saturday, and that was over 30 plus years ago. Uh, my mother happened to be the controller for the company, so I got my foot in the door and I worked my way up from banding steel coils on midnight shift at 18 years old to ultimately a GM role uh running the company. Um so I've got an operations background. But so yeah, I spent 30 years, uh, went to work to the same company for 30 straight years and um was presented with an opportunity I could not pass up here at Pine Ridge. Um, and uh I was able to bring a lot of my operational experience. So again, I was GM and running a steel processing plant. Um, so I had to build a lot of the operational systems that frankly I think was attractive to Rick uh in bringing me on as a partner with his business because he wanted to scale and he kind of had hit a plateau running the company by himself where he just couldn't quite get to that next level. Company always hovered right around a three million dollar mark. Um, and then in roughly my first year, we took it from three to four point eight. Uh, and then this year, you know, we forecast it for 6.3. I think we're gonna blow that out of the water because we're already considerably towards uh meeting that goal. Um, and I know what you'll ask me some more questions, we'll talk about some more things, but we've got yeah, opening up new divisions and adding staff and growing like growing like crazy.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

I I love that, but that's that's quite the transition from steel to restoration. So take your business partner out of the equation because you guys had a relationship prior to that. What about the restoration industry was compelling for you, uh compelling enough for you to make a move from one industry to another?

SPEAKER_01 4:33

You know, I think the fact that it's practically recession proof. Um, so again, my experience in steel when we had tariffs and all the other issues that have happened in over the years in steel, uh, it was always a very dynamic market. We were always all over the place, you know, uh going through recessions and then we would go through growth mode. And there was always a hint of uncertainty. Uh, the company was very profitable, did well. Um, I really enjoyed the work. Um, but uh having the opportunity, honestly, to switch from just running a company to being an owner of the company was really the one of the largest deciding factors was you know the fact that I'm you know a principal within the company.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

So that's why I decided to make the change. Now you worked in steel since you literally you graduated from high school, but did you know you had that entrepreneurial bug even back then?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

So yeah, because I I stepped into that GM role and I I actually always kind of felt like it was my company, even though my name wasn't on the on the sign. And actually, what was really funny is that a president over many, many years ago, one of the presidents says, you know, this isn't a Larry Braun Steel company, but I treated it as though it was because I kind of invested all my time and my effort to to grow that company and and and build it, that I kind of felt like it was my own. So this now is partly my own, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:47

So that was that was the biggest driver, I think, in switching to but isn't that the mindset that you want from your employees, right? You want them to feel a stake of ownership in the business. You want them to, despite Pione Ridge restoration being on the wall, you want them to look at it as hey, this is my restoration company, and I should make decisions for my team, for my company, and for the homeowners and business owners that we service with a mindset of an owner. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Our technicians are incentivized as such to think as an owner. So I built an incentive program for my technicians that the more margin that the company makes at the job level, the more bonus they make. And not just because maybe the revenue went up, but the actual percentage of gross margin. So, you know, at a threshold of let's say 65% gross margin, they have a pool that is X amount of dollars. And as they grow up that ladder to 70, 75, 80, 85, the pool gets bigger. So they share a bigger piece of it. And we re we review these files with them on every single file because we do it per job. So, you know, we're gonna do 300 mitigation jobs this year, and we're gonna review each one of those 300 jobs as to how we performed, how efficient we were on the job, what our labor as a percent of revenue is. Uh, you know, we we built a pretty robust program to have our technicians always thinking about them owning, quote unquote owning the company because uh it has helped us, you know, uh to grow for sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

I like that. I like that now. Um, being new to restoration, um, what were the biggest surprises when you got into this industry?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Uh so actually I'm gonna I'm gonna lean on uh Rick a little bit. Something he says all the time, it's really surprising that you literally can have a shop vac and a box fan and you can call yourself a restoration company. Uh there are there are no certifications required at all. Um, we spend an awful lot amount of our time educating our technicians and coming to the market with the professional experience, but we're we're competing with the the cheaper guys, right? That again, who just have a shop back and a box fan, and then you know they're they're able to do it considerably cheaper because they're not investing in their education. And we we really push hard on uh on education and certified technicians, and you know, so that was one of the biggest surprises, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

All right. Now you um um obviously Pine Ridge was around before you joined, they were doing well, but you guys have hit multiple, well, this will be multiple years now of seven seven-figure growth, right? So let's talk a little bit about what's working really, really well for Pine Ridge right now. What would you say is the single biggest factor at to attribute to that growth?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

So I would say a couple of things um is just building the systems to be able to uh handle the influx or volume of work. So I think in the past, also there was like a high likelihood of um the inability to manage the level of workload without having systems in place. Um, you know, I I brought a CRM to the table, which I think we'll talk about eventually, but we we've onboarded with Albi and we've been with them for a year, um, but we've built a really robust system to manage the influx of that business. Um but uh a lot of our growth has honestly come from accountability uh in terms of like even our digital marketing partner, you know, um holding them accountable. We've given them a business plan for the entire year and we say we expect to have this many leads coming in the door every single month, and we meet with them weekly to see how that we're beating towards that goal. And I think in the past it was kind of just wild wild west a little bit. We were just hoping the phone would ring. Um and and and now we actually have metrics that we're tracking and holding, you know, holding them accountable, but then also with our team, you know, again, we built KPIs to measure our team what our conversion ratio is so we know exactly how many jobs we're converting because we built a business plan that said we needed to, you know, convert X amount of jobs. So if my digital marketing partner brings me the jobs, but I can't convert them, then that's gonna be a big problem. But so like I said, accountability be in in many different areas, like accountability for my team to convert the job, accountability for my digital marketing partner partner to bring me the jobs. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

So hopefully that answers your question. No, it it it it's man, you seem out of all of the restoration owners that I've talked to, um, this conversation has already jump jumped into numbers and KPIs and metrics more than any conversation that I've had. Do you get that that desire to manage towards the numbers from your experience working in steel?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Yeah, and honestly, just as an employee, frankly, uh, you know, I was I was compensated based on my performance and my KPIs, you know, because and previously it was, you know, whatever revenue I brought to the table. But um, yeah, we we really we really push and try to get the technicians to understand all of those aspects and KPIs because it drives their income. So there's we actually we actually penalize our team on the bonus if there's certain things that aren't done in the process because they need to understand the impact of them failing to do certain things. Um, so you know, an example of that would be uh an ITEL sample, you know, for somebody's flooring and somebody that uh our my team forgot to do. So we had to get in the car, drive 30 minutes back out to the client to take that sample and drive 30 minutes back. So they get dinged on that. So there's a there's a little KPI check mark in my bonus calculator that says if they forget to do an ITEL sample, this is what happens. If they forget to take sufficient photos, so my reconstruction estimator can have proper documentation, they get dinged. So it's like you know, the pool starts big and they it just continues to dwindle down as we prove to them that they're not performing or meeting those KPIs. So that's why I think that the KPIs are really, really important. Uh, somebody in the past that was probably an Alex Duda or one of those one of those guys that said everybody should have a number, you know. So everybody's working towards a number. Um, you know, and they're working towards a gross margin number, they're working towards you know, all the different KPIs that we have built in there. Um, you know, same for our BDR, which there's KPIs established for every person's position in our company.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

All right. So you coming into the business, I'm guessing your business partner didn't manage to the KPIs quite at the level that you do now, right? Um, but you inherited a team, right? So, what is the from a culture standpoint, what has that been like installing um this kind of uh metric-based management system to team members that might not have been used to that in the past? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

It it took a little bit of time, but frankly, um, they were they were fully on board once you know you can lay it out on the screen and just show them how it's being calculated because ultimately it means more money for for every technician because they're incentivized as such. So I was able to show them on paper, hey, you know, your your bonus in the past was just calculated this way. It was like a let's say a flat percentage, and there was no there was nothing there. But again, there's a give and take. We're willing to give away more margin to get more efficient, but then we're also willing to take it away if we don't hit the KPI if if we don't hit those KPIs exactly. So um the be the buy-in's been great from the team because everybody's rowing in the same direction, you know. Again, that probably a terrible analogy, but uh it's just our team is all focused uh you know at the same on the same goal.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

I like that. Um, you mentioned 6.3 is the uh the forecast for this year, and you guys are probably gonna outkick that um significantly. Um, is that due to uh like you I think your guys have launched a new contents division in the business?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah, so we actually just started uh boy just a couple weeks ago, and that was not even in our business plan. So so Rick and I are uh we are we're a little risk takers, I would say, because we're just willing to roll the dice on ourselves and just and and push ourselves to try to grow this company uh and scale. So we we we made the decision, I don't know, eight weeks ago and we said we're opening a contents division, and we did it.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

We bought a truck, we go contents is a whole other beast. You don't just randomly on a weekend playing golf with your business partner decide, you know what, we should start a contents division. We've got plenty of warehouse space. Like what what what really went into the decision to add contents as a portion of your service offering?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Uh honestly, we had always previously worked with other local firms in our area and kind of outsourced that contents piece. Um, but but frankly, uh we own both of the buildings that we're in as well. So it's kind of a natural progression because we have space. So, you know, as as tenants exit the building that we're in and we can take off take over additional space, that checks the check mark of being you know, having it on site. So we don't have to again build another building, find another building. So naturally, we um again we just took over space here. And that there was experience with again managing through the contents process, it just had always just historically been managed by someone else, which again we realized too is we're giving away margin to do that. Right. I mean, we're so um we wanted to bring that in-house and use our expertise to uh again find good people, and uh so yeah, we've already yeah, we hired a manager, bought a truck, bought vaults, uh started out already doing contents jobs, uh yeah, in the span of, like I said, eight weeks or so. But um yeah, that's uh all right.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Um so so two more questions while we're talking about like what's really working for the business. Um, if if one of our audience is listening to this and they own a restoration company and they, you know, they look at their PL on a regular basis, right? They look at you know receivables, they look at how many jobs they're actually winning, um, but they really don't know like job um and department profitability. Um, if you were consulting with that restoration company, where's the best place for him to start? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

So uh for the departmental, we just made it, we made a recent change actually, actually. We just revamped our entire QuickBooks. So we're using we're using classes within QuickBooks. Some some people may use some different processes for us, it works really well. So classes along the top, basically, we have a class for ERS, which is emergency response services. So any mitigation, remediation jobs, or temps jobs would fall under my ERS team. And then I have a recon department that would be retail and then the reconstruction, and then separately we would have contents. So now when you're allocating those expenses, you're allocating your revenue, your uh payroll, you know, uh maybe your small equipment, your supplies, you're you're allocating those departmentally uh within your class.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

So well, how do you how do you handle on a job when there are technicians or people that are actually serving dual function on a job site, right? Could you have someone that is kind of in both ledgers from a cost standpoint?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

So we actually we kind of run it a little separately. So we actually have our ERS department technicians handle the ERS job, and then it's and then it's actually a separate job within Albi if it's a reconstruction job. So we have a mitigation job, a reconstruction job, and a third contents job. So all three, three different sets of employees, three different job types. So that's the other piece, too, is we separate all of our jobs out divisionally too, so that way we can see that profitability uh by department.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Do you live in these numbers? I mean, what is the what is a day, what is a week look like for Larry in terms of managing Pine Ridge Restoration?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah, I uh I dig into the numbers quite often. Um so we incentivize our techs on a monthly basis. So every month is when I'm doing the real deep dive into each one of the jobs that was paid out for the month. So, an example, I just completed that today, and I think there were 30 jobs that were finished. So each of those 30 jobs, I did a deep dive on what our margin was, what our labor efficiency was. I did all that deep dive stuff. Uh, but the majority of my day is kind of the puppet master a little bit, is just making sure that everything is moving along the process uh through our statuses and making sure that each department is kind of handling their tasks independently, because you know, we have a mitigation manager who runs that department, a recon manager who runs that department, and a contents manager who runs that department. And like I said, I'm kind of the guy behind the scenes with my systems background, is just making sure that uh all those jobs are just sequenced and pushed through and really providing the visibility to my team to understand what's coming next. You know, specifically on our recon team. You know, we've got 85 jobs in the queue right now. So yeah, so they need to know, they need to know not only what's in front of them, but what's coming behind them.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Fair enough. Um it sounds like Pine Ridge is running on all cylinders right now, but that's not always true for restoration company, right? There's things that are working really, really well in the business, and every restoration business has challenges, right? So you've been there two years. Talk about some of the biggest challenges you're seeing right now for Pine Ridge as you guys are looking to scale.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah, honestly, I think it comes a little bit down to staffing a little bit. Um, we we have been through three cat modes here. So catastrophic events in Cleveland happened in February. We had a deep freeze, happened in April, we had all kinds of issues. And honestly, just last week. So we get influx, we we've had 60 phone calls in one day, right? So the the challenge has been to when is the right time to hire staff, but also trying to get staff in the door and get them trained in the event that something like that happens to be able to respond to those you know jobs that come in. Because um, like our conversion rate right now is actually terrible year to date, but it's because of so many phone calls that we couldn't even service that customer. Oh, wow. Um, so I think our biggest challenge, like I said, is being able to absorb and take on the business when it comes.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

That's probably the biggest challenge we're in right now. So when you put your thinking hat on, what do you envision is the solution to the staffing, the adjustable staffing problems that you're having right now?

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah, so we actually partnered with a local firm to do some temp competency stuff. So again, we can bring them on when we need them, uh, and then we can, you know, fleck flex staff, I guess, a little bit. Um, but honestly, we're we're still challenged with with finding really good employees. You know, we're just we're constantly pushing hard through. Uh, we use a service called Career Plug, which like sends all the feelers out to the indeeds and all the other things, and and that feeds those uh applicants to us. But um, yeah, we just we just want to keep pushing and trying to grow our team to respond to those events too.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Awesome. Um, you mentioned digital marketing. Um, I happen to be partners in a digital marketing firm. I'd love to know what like what's working for you in that respect. And are you experiencing any challenges from an online marketing standpoint? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

So I think we've seen a tremendous amount of improvement um since we built those KPIs I mentioned about earlier, where we're holding our current partner accountable for their, you know, what they need to bring to the table. It's definitely helped having our weekly meetings. They know exactly what the target is for the month. You know, I need 42 leads this month so that I can convert, let's say half of them, so I can do 21 mit jobs. But um holding them accountable has definitely helped. But the weekly dialogue of, hey, do we need to think about budget or what you know what are what are we going to put out there for um our um a second my brain isn't working here? Um our bid, you know what I mean? Like when you're going out and and putting out your bid for um what we're willing to spend for that lead, uh we actually have recently aggressively actually raised that when we didn't have a cat mode event and we needed to bring in some jobs. You know, we we went out and we made some tweaks to that. So we're constantly looking how to how to adjust our budget uh to make it work the best for us. Um, and then uh, but like I said, just holding the our current partner accountable. Um, I will say, and I think you're gonna be talking about this in San Diego. Um, I feel like we have a largely untapped piece of the AI market. Um, I actually had to bring that to my digital marketing partner and say, by the way, my plumbing company is showing up on AI ahead of my restoration company, as you can see behind me. Yes, you know, water restoration company near me, and one Tom Palmer came up on on Chat GPT ahead of Fine Ridge Restoration. So um, but we worked we worked heavily on that. So they're doing some work in the background, but I'm excited to hear what you had to say, frankly, in San Diego, so that we we can get a better understanding because I feel like we are really missing the boat with uh I am I'm in the process of putting together a book, and it's really um one of the topics there.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Is really separating SEO from AEO because there are some uh overlap, right? Some things that you can do that build trust signals with your search engines. Um, there are also some things that you really need to do independently if you want to be the best known restoration company when it comes to AI search. Um, outside of digital marketing, um, you guys obviously going after commercial business, um, hence the probably the reason that you guys got the one Tom Plumber franchise. Um, talk a little bit about what you guys are doing to go out and create relationships that generate the commercial business for Pine Ridge.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Yeah. So a few months ago we brought on uh a BDR and she is primarily focused on senior living. Okay, that's just her, that's just her background. So she's done really well. Uh she left on really good terms and she was a great employee for them. So we're actually currently servicing uh a few of her, you know, prior employers. Um so that's that's we've done really well there. I think the other piece, along with trying to keep her focused on uh on senior living and property managers, and that is to try to keep her focused so that way we're not trying to go after eight different verticals at the same time. We're really trying to say, you know, this is what we do well. You know, we can start to get our name out there, um, especially in senior living. We're seeing some really nice activity there. Um, but uh we're trying to keep her focused. Secondly, from that, we actually just hired an additional BDR who started August 1st um and primarily going to focus on insurance agents and you know, maybe even working with fire departments and and different other different verticals to try to keep it somewhat separate. So our current BDR will have one focus and our new BDR would have a different focus. So I think we can attack multiple verticals at the same time without blurring the lines. I personally think it probably blurs the line a little bit when you say, Hey, BDR, go out there and sell, you know, every single one of the 5,000 companies that are in, you know, right down the street. This really helps to try to bring those, you know, guardrails in place.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Well, it sounds like you hired a unicorn bringing in somebody that had that experience in senior living, right? Um, the second sales rep that you guys hired to go after the did they do they have a book of business? Did they come with some experience working specifically in that uh that that sandbox?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Uh yes and no. So they come from the auto uh auto sales background, long, long history. So um definitely has the relationship piece. So I think uh inherently because of some of his commercial clients in the past and selling vehicles to those clients, that's our door, that's our foot in the door for maybe some again property managers or commercial clients or insurance agents. I imagine he'd likely sold a vehicle to probably a hundred different insurance agents at the same area. So that would be that would be his first phone call, but uh but yeah, that's kind of how we look at it.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Very good. Um, what other things are you wrestling with? What like a year from now, when you look back at Larry sitting here July 15th, um, what are the one or two problems that you hope you've solved for by this time next year?

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Um I think just managing uh responsibly through our growth, you know, if we're growing like crazy, is is doing it responsibly and profitably, things hopefully, obviously, first and foremost, um, is to ensure that our systems that we're building now are still going to be able to handle again doubling of our business. Because again, we have a very aggressive goal. Um, I know I mentioned 6.3, we have a stretch goal of eight, but we want to be at 15 in you know in five years, 15 to 20 actually in five years. So, again, we're gonna more than double this business multiple times. So I think what keeps me up at night is making sure that we're doing the little things correctly still now as we grow. We can't we can't take our eye off the ball and not again making sure that our efficiencies are right, making sure guys don't forget ITEL samples and make sure that all the photos are taken correctly. It's just making sure we build those systems and accountability through the process so we could double or triple and and not feel a bunch of burden, you know. I mean, like we're we're trying to do it um responsibly, but I mean every system from onboarding like ADP for our payroll management. I mean, just so we're getting ready to be able to scale and take on additional work, making sure all those systems are in place to get us to the next level.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Larry, it sounds like you guys are absolutely crushing it. I want to wish you and and and your business partner and the whole team over at Pine Ridge um all the best wish, like all the best success moving forward here. Um, I want to take a minute. Um, this is kind of selfish. Um, the audience probably is aware if they follow me. We're we're hosting a live event uh in San Diego, uh, end of August. Um, I uh am working with the folks over at Momentum and the folks over at Floodlight, and they have been uh absolutely raving uh about a session that you did at a mastermind for restoration companies, and they wanted you to bring that same session to our live event. So I'm super excited that you're willing to do that. For those that have not sat in on that session before, can you give them kind of an a top-level idea of what you're gonna be talking about? I think it's called Behind the Dashboard. Is that uh give give the give the audience some insight as to what that session entails?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah, absolutely. So I presented in a webinar um primarily to Albi users, I would say, but uh we use Albi as our CRM and job management software system. But I worked with the team at Albi over the last year to build a bunch of dashboards that I wanted to see for my company. So the long and short of it is uh Albi behind the scenes has a bunch of analytical stuff, but it didn't have it in a format that I could actually do anything with. So I created uh with the team at Albi dashboards to uh track all of these metrics. So again, to see where where we're at with our year-to-date revenue, what our forecasted revenue is, what our gross margin is by department, what my job conversion rate is, um, how my BDR is performing. But um, basically it'll it's gonna be a behind-the-scenes look at each one of the dashboards that I've created, and they're ever evolving. But I think what I wanted the audience to learn is how quickly you can get to the finish line with very little uh ill investment. I mean, we were not even on Albi a year ago, and I hadn't even written my first report less than a year ago. So, in in less than a year, roughly six to nine months, we went from nothing to having all of these very custom built dashboards that um we we use on the daily and we show our team. So we meet with our team every Monday. We have 25 employees sitting in a room and we go over these dashboards so they can see exactly how the company's performing. But um, but we can go in, we'll dig deep into each one of the dashboard uh lines and kind of show you how the data is even created if it depends on how how deep we want to go. But the goal would be for people to walk away with you know some tools to basically take right back, implement in their business, and have exactly what I've built pretty quickly, as long as you have a a few things in place, which is you know, capturing of your job costs at your job level, you know. We but we can get into how we calculate job uh gross margin, how you set up Albi for doing that. Um we can even get into job process flow where we talk about automations. We've built in a ton of um date-driven automations and even automated emails that go to clients. Um, but uh it should be just an you know an open look at all of the dashboards that we've built over the last year. And uh, like I said, we can dig deep into them, how they were created, um, and then people can ask Albi to create them for them or use whatever CRM system they're using. So yeah, uh, I can certainly uh vouch for Albi if anybody wants to.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Yeah, I was gonna say we're we're huge fans of of Alex and and Albi. Um, but I I do want to make sure the audience knows even if you're not currently using Albi as your CRM, I think you're gonna be able to walk away with some metrics, some ideas on the best ways for to get and thank thankful, thankfully, we have AI now. So no matter what platform, hell, I don't even care if you've got the data that lives in Google Sheets, there are ways for you to construct very easy to use, very, you know, um they do a great job of presenting to you the data, the team the data. Um, and I think your session specifically, it's about like what you see, like what you see. You'll you'll give them some insight as to how to create, you know, aggregate that information from different data sources there, but you're gonna be able to show them hey, these are the KPIs, these are the metrics, and these are the dashboards that I use for each different component of the business there. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

And and why I feel that they're important, you know what I mean? So we started right out of the gate with job conversion rate because I wanted my team to have that first and foremost right in front of them. So you gotta you gotta understand the number of leads that are coming in, what your conversion rate is and how many jobs you're landing clearly, right? So again, it doesn't matter what system you're using, you can you can and should build all of these dashboards because gross margin for us is is key, and we're looking at it at the job level by the department level, and we're incentivizing our team based on that, you know, then merge it.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

All right. So um, we're gonna have restoration companies of various sizes. There are going to be restoration companies that are doing, you know, one, two million dollars. We have a restoration company in there that's probably doing 10 to 15 million. I'm sorry, one to two million, some folks that are doing maybe 10 million plus, right? What would you say? What's the stage of a restoration business where that owner really needs to start dialing in those KPIs?

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Personally, because I don't think there's that large of an investment up front, it's really just time to build them, but I think it's absolutely critical at any stage. Because even if you're only doing if you're only doing $50,000 a month in sales and you don't know what your conversion rate is and you don't know how many leads are coming in or how much you pay for the lead, I think it's it's critical at any size. Literally, if you're doing under a million dollars, put it in place because you want to understand what you're how you're performing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Larry, uh bit from your lips to God's ears, right? I talked to restoration, and I'm sure that some of my clients are in their trucks right now driving, and like they're like, oh, Clinton tells me this stuff all the time in terms of tracking their numbers there, right? It's just super important as you look to grow and scale your business to understand just the simplest uh numbers in your business there. Um, all right, Larry, it's been an absolute pleasure. We're really excited to have you at the live event in San Diego. Um, for those of you interested or that are listening today that are interested in attending that event in San Diego, we're gonna put a link for you to go and apply. Um, I think we've got some early bird pricing on the tickets that uh is gonna go until the the 18th. We might be able to extend that for a few days there. Um, but Larry, um, any last message for the audience of the Restoration Pros Unplug podcast? Like any like uh jewels or any last thoughts on like, hey, that guy that literally is probably in his first or second year as a restoration business owner, and he's just like, man, I know I'm spending money and I know I'm making money, and I know that like I'm I'm the I'm spending less than I'm making, so I'm I'm I'm able to pay my bills and grow, but like I they have no idea. Any any last piece of advice for that guy?

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Yeah, I mean, I would say absolutely come and attend the event uh first and foremost, but uh you're also gonna get some hands-on, like actually working time, at least that's my understanding, too. Is it's not just gonna be me up there saying, Yeah, here's my dashboards, go put them in and do you know, do it. We can actually have a hands-on, hey, hey, Larry, come over here and let's talk about actually what is it gonna take to implement these systems and start to capture it, because I think we'll have time in those sessions likewise for years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Bring your laptops, folks. This is a this is not a uh a convention or a summit where you're just gonna be sitting there watching hours and hours of presentations. We're gonna be getting in there, sit like bring your laptop, be prepared to work. This is going to be a workshop more than it is anything else. So, Larry, super excited to see you. Um, I'm not any better at golfing than I was the last time that I saw you, but maybe we can go swing a couple clubs in San Diego. All right.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

You got it. All right.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

All right, thank you again for uh for following uh or for listening to this week's episode of the Restoration Pros Unplugged uh podcast. If you are interested in attending our live event in San Diego, you can get more details at the website restorescaldominate.com. Again, restorescaledominate.com. We'll put a link in the show notes or in the YouTube description. Uh thanks again, Larry, and I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks. Thanks, Clinton. See you. 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 so.