From Near-Bankruptcy to Breakthrough: Raul Gonzalez's Restoration Comeback Story

Most restoration business owners only show you the highlight reel. Not this episode.

Raul Gonzalez of WonderBuilt Restoration and Construction gets real with Clinton James about the two times his business almost didn't make it — bad hires, a cash crunch, a lawsuit that blocked his SBA funding, and high-interest loans just to cover payroll. He shares exactly what it felt like, what he got wrong, and how he turned it around by finally asking for help instead of trying to do it all himself.

If you've ever laid awake worrying about making payroll, this episode is for you. Raul's story is proof that the struggle isn't a sign you're failing — it might just be the price of building something real.

Sales SOPs. KPI tracking. Job profitability. Getting financing-ready. These are the exact things that almost sank Raul's business — and they're the exact sessions at the Restore Scale Dominate Summit, Aug 27–28 in San Diego. Apply now at RestoreScaleDominate.com

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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. Each episode, we're going to bring you insightful interviews and discussions with top restoration industry leaders. We're also going to delve into their business, the strategies that made them successful, and most importantly, the valuable lessons they 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, it 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. I'm also the chief marketing officer over at Water Restoration Marketing. I've had countless restorers on this show talk about all the things that they're doing that's exciting and helping them to grow their business. We talk about like little challenges, but if you're a restorer and you're listening to this, I'm going to guess that today's message is going to resonate with you harder than most of the stories that we've talked about. Because everybody likes to share the good times. But I think as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as restoration business owners, it's refreshing to hear one of your peers talk about the times that weren't great when they were on the brink of really shutting down. So it is my absolute pleasure to bring back to the podcast our guest today, Raul Gonzalez. Raul is the owner of Wonder Built Restoration and Construction out of Tucson, Arizona. Raul's been on the podcast before. So Raul, thanks for coming back. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. All right. So for those that didn't listen to your original episode, why don't you give the the audience a little rundown where you're located, what your service area looks like, and the services that you provide?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yes, sir. So we are in Tucson, Arizona. We we service the Tucson, Arizona, kind of Southern Arizona um region. And then we we're a full service restoration. So that includes mitigation, biohazard, uh asbestos, reconstruction. So we we really try to cater to uh a full service package.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Awesome. And how long have you been in business? Just uh in June was four years, sir. Four years. Four years. Now, at this point, let's take a look at the operation. Like how many uh service vehicles do you have? Uh how many employees do you have?

SPEAKER_01 2:34

So I have well uh seven, I think, service vehicles. Uh, I don't you always ask that question, and it's like, oh, does mine count as a service vehicle? Uh but yeah, we have uh eight eight service vehicles, and then we have a um 10 employees, 11 with me.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Okay, awesome. So I I think anybody listening to this podcast would think, man, this guy's been in business for a number of years. He's got to be successful with that many service vehicles, that many employees. He's doing something right. And I know from our previous conversations, you do a lot right in the business. But when you and I were communicating um about some passages in a book that I'm releasing later uh in August that you are going to be uh uh uh quoted in, um you and I were talking and you were very vulnerable with me and shared that, hey, it's not always peaches and cream, right? As a restorer, um, as a home service business owner, um, you've gone through some ups and downs and really been on the brink of bankruptcy and total failure on a number of occasions in the very short time that your business has uh has been operating there. So um for for the audience, why don't you take us back to when you first acquired the carpet cleaning business and kind of what that looked like financially for you and your family?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, it um I think the so I'll I'll take you back even further. So I I went to school, right? I got I got an MBA, I went through um enterprise car rental, kind of like corporate realm. I ended up in insurance and I just I didn't see a way out. So um we ended up leaving insurance and it got to a point where I let my wife know it's like hey, I don't really want to do this, I want to jump into the restoration space, I know the margins, and I think I can do it well. I think I can do it well, and so um with her backing and her blessing, we got we we sold our house and we bought a farmer cleaning business. Wow. Um we we two feet in, Clinton, two feet in. All in so all in, right? So um, and I just before I start, I appreciate my wife for for letting me do that. So uh shouts out to her. But um what um what we did was we we bought this carpet cleaning business and it was it was gonna be amazing, man. I was gonna I was gonna do you know my full-time gig and keep money through the door, and then I was gonna clean carpets at night and we were gonna build a business. And uh turns out we bought total trash. Um the business, a lot of the conversions didn't happen. So the people that were supposed to convert didn't convert.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

And now when you say conversions, Raul, are you talking about employees or are you talking about contract service agreements that they had?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Like service agreements didn't didn't um didn't turn over. So they had this long list of clients that they had serviced, and they just didn't keep continuing with us. And so it was very scarce and really difficult. So we just we we kept doing the I kept my nine to five in the morning and then would carpet clean from like nine to midnight. And I did this for close to a year, and so it was to a point where it's like we can't keep doing this, we just it it can't keep doing it. So we started adding services, this is like restoration services, trying to acquire those clients and kind of build up that client. So we went from that that that first like six months of business, we did sixty thousand dollars, and then from that first full year of business, we did one point two million dollars.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Okay, so when you take when you when you take a business from sixty thousand dollars a year to 1.2 million the following year, there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be properly built. There's a lot of hires that you need to make. Um, and I know you went to school, so you've got a background in business, but what kind of struggles do you think in retrospect, like looking back at all the hires and and the systems that you put in place, um, what worked and what didn't work?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Nothing worked, Clinton. Like, like nothing worked, right? Like everything was in my head. I was underwater the entire time. Like I had cash, but like I didn't know what to do with myself. Like I was tired. We ran from like five in the morning to like midnight almost every day. And I I just wanted help. So like I started hiring people, like I hired people that I knew. I hired uh, you know, an opportunity came over from a like a service technician who came over, like my cousin came over, then we started hiring, like my wife started to help me. And like this, like I used my network, right? So like it, like anybody would start using their network and we start bringing people on board, and then you just start handing things off. It's like, hey, can you help me with this? And then can you help me with that? And can you help me with this? And there was there was no systems. We were we were small enough to control the outcome, like handing things off one another, but we, you know, like we kept growing and we we I wanted to keep growing, kind of set structures in place, but it what happened was um we projected like we we did 1.2 million, and then we were like, great, what given this trajectory, we're on pace to do 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, and um it it came to a halt at a certain point, like July of that second year, it just it stopped. Like it it stopped. It was um, and you don't know what to do when it just those those sources stop.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

All right, so let's let's talk about that for a real quick second there. So if you do 1.2 million and then you're projecting the following year to do two or three or even four million dollars, you start spending in terms of overhead and investment in infrastructure like you're going to do three or four million, right? So talk about some of the hires that you made, some of the payroll that you added that in retrospect, if you had to do it all again, you probably didn't need to hire those people.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah, we are and we hired like a like a mitigation supervisor slash manager. So he was in charge of like the mitigation team, getting those projects done. We had like a reconstruction project manager because we were carrying things through for mitigation through reconstruction. Um, there was like office stuff that we hired that we ended up paying. So there was there was this like meld of people that we were just bringing on board. We hired a marketer so that we could continue on with the success because you know that's what you do. You you start getting bigger and you got money and you hire a marketer, and and that's what we did. So um those were the the initial hires that we ended up bringing on.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Okay. So you you bring on that additional overhead, and then you just mentioned everything stops. So when you say stop, let's talk about where was the business coming from? Was it primarily referral-based?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

We so we we we got hit with two very strong storms in our area. So it in Arizona, we you're familiar with, we have something called monsoon season. It runs from June to right around September, very heavy period of rains and and wind storms. And typically those tend that tends to be our busy season. Well, we got two two back-to-back storms where we just we were riding this wave and we didn't know our numbers, we didn't know where this referrals were coming from. Uh, yes, we were getting referrals through our through our marketer, but um we ended up finding out that when the storm referral started to dry up and there was no more storms, the referrals that we were getting, we were not getting repeat of referrals. Um, our operational procedures weren't great, so they stopped referring us. Sure. And in and you can't blame them, right? They they want to keep their customers happy, but we just weren't executing to the level that we did, and that in further deeper analyzation, we just we made bad hires. We made bad hires, we and we didn't put um we didn't put guardrails on them and told them these are your operations and plans and these are your metrics, and we just we they didn't execute.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Okay. So you uh had mentioned to me that there was a book that you read. It's a book that we've both read um called Traction. Talk a little bit about your experience with traction and EOS and and kind of implementing that in your business.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

So yes, this was in the just right right after my son was born. Uh, I had a lot of time on my hands because I was at home probably at four in the morning just taking care of the baby. So while he fed, I was kind of reading. Um, went through the exercises. Um, went through the exercises of first um, are do we have the right hires and the right bus? Do we have the right organizational structure? Do we have the right goals in place? And through this, this these exercises, there was a lot of questions that that just weren't answered. Like, where do we want this to go? What do we want our business to look like? Where how do we want our people to to operate and function? And and quite frankly, I didn't have any of that set in place. So as we started to analyze uh the operation, there was a lot of people that just that didn't fit. We hired, we hired great people, but we we we didn't hire for the role. We hired the people and try to meld them into that role.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

I think the terminology they use in the book is is right person, right seat, right? Because you can have the best people in the world. Hell, you probably hired family or friends or people from the community that you knew that were great people that, but the role that you hired them for, um, they're just not great at executing and being excellent in that role.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

You know, and then and it was hard. Like the the execution, you're correct, it was it was really hard. So once you start implementing or down that EOS path, you start realizing there's people it that are close to me that um just don't fit this role. Like my, you know, I hired my dad, and my dad's great, love him, but he couldn't execute the role of a project manager in the restoration space. Great, like his role is a is a site supervisor for electrical high voltage linemen. Like, that's what he knows, that's what he can execute. When you give him paperwork to read these line items and tell them, hey, go make sure that this is fixed. Like, he doesn't know how to do that. So now you have to have a conversation with your dad. I'm like, Dad, you're you're probably not the right person for this job.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Okay, so you go ahead. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah, it no, it's it's it's it's tough, man. My wife, my wife helped me out too, but she hated the job. Like she did not like admin. So we had to have a conversation with her of like, hey, do you really want to you really like this job? And obviously it's our business that she wants to be there, but he didn't really like the role. And so those those again, those are tough conversations you just have to you just have to do.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

So you so you read traction, um, you start implementing EOS, right? You start creating um, you know, processes, SOPs, um, looking at each individual team member to see if they're the right person in the right seat, and you have to have really tough conversations. Um, those people that you brought on initially, just a guesstimate. How many people did you really have to have rough conversations to just go your separate ways with?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Um out of we had we had 10 people on staff at the time. Out of those 10 people, only two of them remain. Okay. And they're like field technicians.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

So, like every single one of them. Some of them left um because they found different opportunities. Um, some of them we had to um, you know, part ways with, but but really it was most of the teams, like 80% of them are gone. So the whole the whole team that we have now is brand new. Okay. Well, let's talk about the financial component, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Because you're still covering all of this overhead, right? You still have um uh a warehouse, you still have service vehicles that you're making payments on, right? You still have equipment that you leased, right? So financially, um, you're not hitting the projected revenue that you thought would come in. You haven't done a great job of maximizing your margins on each one of the projects. And I assume that cash flow that you had in the bank starts going away pretty quickly. So, what what did it look like on paper financially for you? It was a mess. Uh it was a mess, Clinton.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Like, so you know, I'm I'm thinking, hey, I'm smart enough. I went to school, I have like an MBA with an accounting emphasis. Like, I'm a smart guy. Like I can I can figure this out. And then I quickly find out that the books run away from me, right? Like I start doing uh in like I'm not invoicing on time, I'm not collecting on time. So um we start, we we're not categorizing the balance sheet correctly. So there's misrepresentation on our income, uh, and there's misrepresentation on our on our balance sheet, and it's just a mess. So you make decisions on the data that you have, which is a you know, it's wrong. And and it wasn't uh it made you have you make those decisions based on the cash that you have on hand, but you're not looking at things that you don't know that are there, and so it starts all creeping up, right? So you're making decisions to spend more money, and then there's things that are creeping up, and it's just this giant balloon that's just growing and growing. So um in July of 25, like we was about to burst. Um, we're we were here, we got slow paying customers, we got inventory because we're still growing at this point, right? We went we went from 1.2 million to like 1.8 million. So we're still we're not growing as fast, but we're still growing and it's it's sucking up cash. And you're seeing things that are are you've got to cover that payroll and overhead. You you cover the uh the equipment. Now you have to cover all of these other expenses that you don't see are ballooning on the back end because you don't have accurate financials. And then um it just kind of it burst, right? Like the bubble burst. So we in July, we could see that it was coming, and we started applying for this uh like an SBA loan to kind of get some relief, right? So we're getting relief. Um and we're we we applied for the SBA, we get to the final stages, we have the we have the number, so we're not we're right, we're a couple days from getting assigned that SBA number where they can finally release funds and the government shuts down. So like government shutting down. And um, we're like, okay, last time this happened, couple months, not a big deal. We can we can figure it out, we can manage, we got a line of credit. Let's let's eat in this line of credit, let's manage, let's let's get going. Government opens up, and then we got uh we receive a letter um or a lawsuit stating that uh there was a fender bender in our parking lot at no more than five miles an hour. The the defendant claims that he has uh injuries, and so now he's demanding he's demanding um a settlement. And so now we go from government shutdown to lawsuit, two things out of our control, and hey man, we're we're we're struggling, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

They won't fund an SBA loan when you're in the middle of that kind of litigation, will they?

SPEAKER_01 18:02

No, so they won't fund it. Um they won't fund it. The well, and obviously the government shutdown. Um, and that happened like in October. So we're running from October to February of this year, and it's tight, Clinton. It's tight. We we ran. Um we were we were so bad in a backup in a corner that we took um those QuickBooks, like those those QuickBook loans. And we're like, okay, this this lawsuit can't last that long. So we are now mind you, we've already taken the uh the line of credit, we've maxed that out. We got QuickBooks loans. Hey, that that's we're taking those QuickBooks loans. And these things are high interest, man. They're only meant for like a one, two month period where you get some cash flow. Now we got some large losses that we think they're gonna pay us down. Hey, man, they don't they decide not to pay us. So now we got this rolling into this, this rolling into that, and it's all like it's bubbling. Um, I start looking for investors, right? Start looking for investors and probably trying to sell off parts of the business, um, having those conversations with people. Then we start looking at um other alternatives, such as um, you know, like other means of funding. But mind you, please please go back to it. We we our books aren't correct, like our books are inaccurate, and they everybody wants to look at those books and make sure are you profitable? Can you pay us back?

SPEAKER_00 19:31

They want to do their due diligence on you, absolutely, dude.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

It's a mess. So now we got issues with not only are we caught adding to this because we have we have bad books, but uh things outside of our our control are here. So we're looking for exit, we're looking for help, but all the people that can help us want uh a pretty large return, right? They're taking a pretty large risk. So we considered selling half of the business at certain point for seemed like pennies on the dollar.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Um real quick, Raul, do you yeah, is there a certain memory that you have? Maybe you're spending some time with your wife where like the it felt like the walls were closing in financially for the business. Is there a point where you just considered, man, maybe I just shut this thing down, file bankruptcy, go back to use my degree, go back and get a regular nine to five? Was that ever on the table for you?

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Like, it felt like every day, and then and then it felt like every day was a as a conversation of like, dude, I could just shut down. This would have been way easier if I just, you know, I stuck to insurance, it would have been safe. But then I think about it and I'd be like, Yeah, the upside's so great. Like, if we make it out of this, the upside's better. Like, I I'm I'll be a nicer truck, nicer vehicle. And and you start looking at those, uh, at talking to other business owners, the successful business owners, and there are every single one of them says, This is a rite of passage. If you can get through this, if you can get through this when you get through this, this is a rite of passage for anyone that's ultra success successful. So you just like it's on the table, but dude, I'm I told you two feet in, man. We sold their house, like I got everything riding on this. So no, like, yes, it was it's a possibility, but it wasn't an option.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

I understand that. So, all right, so financially, um, it's hard for you to look at those secondary um investment uh options, the secondary funding options there. Um, what what kind of clicked? Was it with the insurance? Uh I mean the I'm sorry, the uh uh the lawsuit when that settled. Like when were you able to kind of turn the page on that financially and get yourself pointed in the right direction?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, man, I think we just had a windfall. Like, I don't know. Um we we got a series of windfalls in like our direction. You know how they say um luck is 50 50? Like you do it, luck is fifty.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

You you had got an all the storm, and now all of a sudden the sunshine comes out for another.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Dude, it it felt like that. Like, um, it felt like that. So the entire time, right? We're we're working with a broker to see if we can get any funding. He's like, hey, I got you got this this lawsuit on your hands. We gotta settle that before we continue. So we're we're working, we're we're getting through it, and then I don't know, like two, I think three weeks before cash was just about to run out, that was like gonna be our last payment. Somehow we get a phone call and it says, Hey, um, the weird story. Hey, the guy that was suing you, he they got in contact with him. He wants to settle. We've got him to a settlement amount because for some weird reason, he's in Lebanon, stuck in a war. Um, this or conflict, I should say. He's stuck in a conflict, and I don't know, out of conjecture here, he's probably just needed cash to get home. So we just wanted to settle this thing. Okay. Hey man, here's a windfall. There was a there was a job, a large loss job that we got prepaid for. Oh, those are winners. Yeah, here's a windfall, man. Like, right? So now we okay, great. Like we hit this windfall. Now, okay, now we got a little bit of runway. We we extend the time frame between a week. Hey, we've already done all of this work to get this SBA loan. Hey, great, hey, roll, you're getting great news. You're getting funded. So this is the fund date, right? Like literally two days before the last cash payment we're supposed to be getting. Um, that's your fund date, and that's when your money is supposed to be there. So just like a series of like lucky events just come through. And hey, we pay down those QuickBooks as uh the QuickBooks loans. We got some cash in the accounts to where we can manage cash flow. Uh we us um we were getting some help from uh Floodlight, kind of managing our cash figure out and those folks out there. Yeah, great. My um I'm working with Connolly over there, but uh Michael Satas um and his uh Kib finding, he's uh he's the broker that helped me. And um there was Blue Sky who helped us with our business credit. There's a lot of great people that if had if we hadn't like extended our hand and like asked for help, we'd like I wouldn't have gotten through it.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Restoration can be a lonely industry um if you don't make friends because God knows everybody wants I don't I don't see that many restorers out there, I don't see that many vendors that service the restoration industry that are greedy, that want it all for themselves. I constantly see owners like yourself extending yourself to give the next person an opportunity, give them grace, give them advice. Um what would you say what would you say to the restorer that's listening to this conversation right now that feels like he's in the exact place you were, um, you know, worrying about making the next payroll, taking out those high interest short-term loans there? What would you say to that person that's like sitting there like stressing? Maybe they're in the car right now, driving to a job site, they know they're not gonna get paid for for another month and a half, and they're worried about making payroll with their team, you know, the week after next. What would you say to that guy?

SPEAKER_01 25:22

You gotta ask for help. So it's one of the this you gotta ask for help. So so the reason so I don't keep um, and I'm I'm willing to be vulnerable like in with you and and and the people listening with you, because this is an often untold story, right? There's a ton of people that are kind of in the same space, but you don't see that through like Facebook or social media.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Oh man, every everybody's celebrating wins if you let them tell it.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Man, this celebrating wins, and I'm just I'm looking, and like you can get down on yourself and looking at it, and you're like, dude, why like why don't I have that? Like, why don't why don't I have my third home in Cabo right now? Like yeah, you know, there's there's a lot of restoration companies that that are very successful and they're very successful early on, but that's that's not the true story for everybody. Um, there's a lot of struggles here, and and you gotta be vulnerable and talk about your problems because others may have faced a similar situation. Without me talking about the problems that I had, there wouldn't be people that trying to help me, right? So without like you know, I shared with uh with um Alex and and his mastermind evolve crew was hey, does anyone have assistance with here? Alex introduced us to this person and that person introduces to this person, and then this person was ultimately able to do something like this, right? But if it wasn't for the sheer fact that I told them I was having a problem, I I would have never got there. I there's there's again, I consider myself a smart guy, but there's a lot that I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Well, I'm I'm I'm glad that um that you had that support system. I'm glad that you asked for that help, and I'm glad that you're sitting here now on the other side of it. So um paint the picture for what the next year or two looks like um for Wonderbuild. You guys uh in a better situation now? Do you feel stronger about the team that you have, the processes that you have, and the money that you're gonna make moving forward?

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yeah, so you know, it's it's we're we're not out of the weeds yet. I mean, there's light, right? So there's there's light at the end of the tunnel. Um it was about tackling some of the most important things that we we had to tackle. Personnel was one of them, culture fit was the next one, making sure our books are accurate. We've we brought on a great team, so we have a fantastic team behind us, and they're executing what they need to execute, right? So we hope that um that with our our strategic sales plan that we can hope like we're trying to double by the end of next year, right? We want to double by the end of next year, so that puts us right around six million dollars, uh, and then hopefully double the year after that. And and it goes from it goes from uh painful from you're just about to shut down to hey man, this is the greatest experience I've ever had, right? And it and it's weird, and I want to say this is weird because this what it's been six months, and it goes from it flips, it flips like that, six months, one day to another, it can flip.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

That's um I think that's for any entrepreneur out there, right? Like you can be on top of the world one day, uh, and the very next day um feel like the the whole world's against you. Um, but I'm glad that you have started to put together the infrastructure um so that because we know these these storms for your business are gonna come. Not the actual storms that bring us business, but the storms in your business, they're gonna come. There's no way to avoid that. But it sounds like you've got the team and the infrastructure in place that's gonna allow you to weather those storms a lot better than you've had in the past. Does that does that sound right?

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Yeah, yeah, we've we've implemented a lot of things, right? Uh your the SOPs, we're making sure we implement those, making sure we're implementing the processes, we're making sure that uh our team is held accountable for the job functions that it's supposed to do. Um, we're making sure that we we put the right steps and the right processes in place in order to be successful, right? You can't the the way I was running the business isn't the way I'm running the business now, but it it's come with a lot of pain. A lot of pain. And but you know, the upside has been great, like been successful, right, man. I drive a nice truck, uh, my family and I can take nice vacations like a couple times a year. Like it it and ultimately I think we've been able to do a lot of great things for our community. So a lot of the things that um I set out to do at the beginning, we're accomplishing.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

So it's exciting. Roel, I I wanna before we wrap up here, I really want to thank you because as we mentioned in the beginning, like nobody has these vulnerable conversations, right? Um, you know, home service business owners, like everybody wants to talk about the wins, the good times. They might mention a little challenge here or there. Um, but this was honest, right? This is and and I'm sure that a lot of the audience uh either is feeling this way right now or has felt that way in the past. So I really appreciate you for coming on the Restoration Pros Unplug podcast and telling us a little bit about your story.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Yeah, I appreciate you having me. I hope this isn't our last conversation, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

No, Raul, man, what are you talking about? This is great. We're gonna keep having so I invited Raul. Um, actually, let me mention this because it kind of ties in there. Um, myself, uh Nicole McKenzie over at Momentum Accounting, Chris Nordick from Floodlight, um, and we've actually got a couple of speakers. We're actually doing a live event at the end of August in San Diego. Now, Raul, I know you can't be there, but for our audience listening, a lot of the sessions are gonna revolve around some of the same challenges that you mentioned before, right? It's creating the SOPs and the processes for your sales team. It's about making sure that you're measuring the right KPIs and making sure that you're profitable on every single job. It's about building a business that when the time comes for you to go out and get the financing you need to take that next level of growth, that we're gonna be having those real conversations, small, intimate group. I think we're down to like the last five seats available. So um, Raul, I know you can't be there, but you're gonna be at the next one. Uh for the audience, if any of you guys are interested in attending, uh, go to restorescaldominate.com. I think we still have a few early bird tickets left. Get in there, apply. If you're if we uh uh bring you on board, it's gonna be a great two-day experience. Uh, last week of August in beautiful San Diego. We got a huge restoration facility that's actually gonna be hosting us down there. So um, Raul, thank you again for joining us on the Restoration Pros Unplugged podcast. Audience, if you like what you heard, um, we'll be back next week uh having great conversations and sometimes vulnerable conversations with guys like uh Raul. Um I just want you to walk away um and know that you're not alone, and I want you to walk away with actionable things that you can instill in your business that day to help you move forward and scale. Um, so thanks again. If you like what you heard, make sure you follow us on socials, give us a like, give us a five-star review on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We've also got the Restoration ProsUnplugged.com website, and you can find us all over social media. So make sure you give us a like and a thumbs up and a follow. All right, thanks again, Raul. We appreciate you. Appreciate you, sir. 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.