I just give you guys their contact information. These guys are are, you know, the juggernauts in the industry and I want you to be able to get a hold of them. Sharing my screen here. There we go. If you wanna get a hold of Chris or Blue Sky, you guys can do it here. This is if you’re trying to take on a job, but you’re just not at a position necessarily to be able to handle it, You do have resources. These guys are willing. We were talking earlier about, you know, them coming in and and helping out. Both of them are have been gracious enough to say, hey, you know, in the event that you need you need a call to make, call Chris or or call Brian. Let me see if I can move that forward. Brian’s contact information is here. Reach out to them if you need to use their eight hundred number. We’ll we’ll let them plug at the end, but I’ll tell you this, if you’re in need, you’re handling something you don’t know if you can handle or you get a big job and it’s just like, man, I hit the lottery, but there’s no way I can do it. Give these guys a call and and pair up with them and and they’ll walk you through it. And then if you guys need to get hold of Josh, you’re interested in a franchise or you want to work with his network or or just contact him and pick his brain, there’s his contact information as well. And these guys are more than willing to to jump out and give you a hand. Alright, Brooke. What do we got for, questions? And guys, link in with them. Jump on their LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you can find them. There’s their emails. And, and if you’re not LinkedIn with me, make sure you link in with me as well. Great. Thanks, Chris. So lots of questions, so we’ll just jump right into it. First one, how do you handle large loss claims that have involvement with an on-site PA or IA? For us, it’s the same documentation process, same execution project process. The the only where it gets a little a little wonky sometimes is, you know, a lot of times the public adjusters think that they’re the ones running the project, and they’re running the claims process. They’re not really running the project. So you just have to be mindful that sometimes their agenda is does not necessarily line up with the owner’s priorities and the project’s priorities. So you again, you have to have frank conversations up front and kinda let them know, you know, that you wanna collaborate with them. But, you know, just make sure that you’re doing your end of the project the way you should and following industry standards and following your your core documentation, principles. Yeah. I would say as long as you’re doing everything you know you should, documenting prop documenting properly, following all the standards, everything will fall in line most of the time. And not everyone that comes onto a claim such as consultants, I think one of, the people who’ve already mentioned, they’re not always your adversary. Now you do have to use caution sometimes because people are not there for your best interest. So as long as you’re doing the right things and documenting everything, you will be in a good space. That’s beautiful. Great. Thanks. Next one. How would you guys incentivize employees for cat loss mobilizations? I love to talk about this one. I have been a part of that from different levels in my career where cat pay can be really awesome. And, you know, there’s per diem you have to think about. That’s also an an incentivization to where people will go and eat bread and cheese for about two months and and bank the rest of that money. There’s some crazy people out there like that. But then the cap pay, matter what that is, x amount per day or x amount per week, depending on the position of the person going because there is there are different levels there. One of the things I made mention in my note, when you do have a program like that, if you’re setting a time limit on it, and let’s say you’re gonna pay cat pay for the first two months, that needs to be clearly, stated to the entire team that’s going out there. And if it’s gonna be pulled because there’s no time limit on it, you need to also clearly communicate that because that can rub some people the wrong way. Because I will be honest, I’ve seen people only sign up to go to CATS not to help people. They just want that extra cash, And that’s just a true reality of of what people are thinking about when they respond. Some people like the money and to help people, but, you do have to incentivize people to go out there because they’re not doing their typical jobs in most restoration companies because they’re not part of the national team, and the national team already has some other incentivizations that are built into their pay. So it’s just something you you pretty much must do. Yeah. Our so we’ve actually kind of struggled with this. We our national team has its normal comp plan that’s that’s built on, you know, responding to these events. So, people that are responding outside of their their their normal workdays. We’ve we’ve looked at some models, you know, where if it’s a time of material project, if they’re billing overtime, we’ll split it with them. We’re we’ll give them a percentage of it, and that that’s kind of a pay as you go. Other things that we’ve done is, you know, our ownership believes in they love showing up to the job sites and give them what they call them flash bonuses. And, you know, it could be either handing you a card that says there’s gonna be an extra five thousand dollars on your paycheck this week, or it could be an envelope with five thousand dollars cash. I mean, our our our ownership has been really creative, through the years in letting us do this in, you know, certain ways. But, like, long extended, projects, we’ve we’ve done the overtime split, and and we’ve had some tremendous success with that and and good feedback. It’s there’s unfortunately, there’s not one way to incentivize them all because, you know, your your project manager that’s used to doing missus Joan’s kitchen might struggle handling a large commercial, you know, project. So you gotta make sure that you’re paying everybody apples to apples, and it it’s it’s there’s no easy answer for it. You you just have to look at the financial health of your company, And, you know, you have to you have to model it out and say, is this does this work well for us, or am I am I too far on to the employee side? I just you have to be King Solomon, and and I personally have not found the one that that that’s plug and play that works in every every single scenario. I Yeah. And, again, I’m I’m in a different role than Chris, so he he may have the administrative piece behind him to kind of have a better idea of what works for that, but I just I don’t. Yeah. And it usually, when we set the cap pay out there, it’s for the larger spread events for a very large area that we know we’re gonna be there for a while. If it’s just a small thing, it’s not necessarily considered a cap, but it’s pretty devastated in certain areas. Those are the kind of things that we think about before we just throw that out there. Great. Thanks, guys. I thought this was an interesting one. This was submitted beforehand. But if you were to scale to a multimillion dollar company and had all the money to hire the right talent, in what order would you hire the support for the company? Oh, that is a good question. That is a good question. I’m gonna let you go first, Chris, so I can steal from your answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’m just gonna throw something out there. I think it depends on you as a person and what you’re looking for in your company to be able to really set that. For me, I I came into this industry as a technician. I worked my way through the ranks. So for me, the technicians are the backbone of anyone’s company, and you need to have a strong mitigation team. And then right after those guys, you gotta have a strong project management team. These are the guys that are really in the trenches doing the really the hardest thing. All the other positions come in, they have hard jobs. They have stressful jobs, but sometimes they’re in and they’re out. And they they might come back in a month. They might come back in two weeks, check-in, make sure everything’s going. But it’s the guys that are in on the operational side that are there day in and day out until that project is finished from start to end that, to me, that’s the most important key piece that you wanna have. Because if they’re not good or they don’t know what they’re doing, you’re gonna be screwed at the end of the day because they’re not doing your documentation. They’re not taking good photos. They’re not they’re they’re working a shift and craft is not where it should be. You’re really gonna pay if you don’t have that upfront. Now a close third, I would say, is the person that is creating those estimates or those ROMs. If they have no clue about what this industry does or how construction works, you’re gonna have another problem. You’re gonna be way off base on everything. So having people that truly know this craft, that’s what you wanna pay good money for. The leadership, other things, that that comes last to me. You do have to have good leaders, so don’t get me wrong. It it’s all dependent on what what you’re looking for. So I’m just gonna dovetail with what Chris is saying. For me, the operations piece is operations and production are the most critical component. I I mean, I I tell our sales team and I’m part of the sales process because I’m the I’m the estimator. But I tell the sales team, you know, it’s your job to make the phone ring the first time. It’s our operations and production team that’s gonna make it ring every time after that. So you you have to sell that job the one time, and our production team is gonna sell you know, we’re gonna get a re repeat a repeat customer because of that. But when it so you have your production side, then to me, estimating is, you know, estimating is sets the contract value. It’s it’s literally the the scope of work is the single most important piece of paper in the construction management tool toolbox. So so I would go production, estimating, and sales, and then invest in your systems and processes. You know? If you’re not using something like Encircle or or you’re not using Matterport or or DocuSketch or you should really consider investing in in those. If you’re not using tool trackers where you can, you know, have bar barcode technology, you know, those are those are things that are critical to help you. They they help you get paid. So those are all all things that I I put stock in and and, you know, the the mid level managers are, man, so so crucial to to our success as an organization. So I I would focus on those things. Yeah. If if you broke it down into, like, small teams, like a lead technician that’s really well trained and then some techs that have some basic knowledge, but they’re good. So you get you’re basically looking at your organization as one, two, three of those teams. And then to Chris’ point, they’re experienced and they’re delivering. And then you got a supervisor who’s more qualified and and and more of an expert, and then a project manager or an ops manager. Now that triangle has three teams with a a big stack of experience. You’re gonna make more money, you’re gonna be more efficient, you’re gonna make better decisions, you’re not gonna run those costs. So Brian then again goes, say, I can now estimate because I know what the team’s production rates are. I know what they’re gonna do because I’ve watched them work and I understand where we’re gonna get in trouble. Most people that hire on the frontline, a junior person with one course, and you think that your entire company’s all run smooth, you’re that like, that’s where we get into trouble is that restoration is so complex and so hard to learn that if you have the experience, you can make a lot of money in it because you can see all the opportunities. But if you don’t have the experience, it’s really hard to see the what needs to happen. You haven’t made the mistakes of finding out or you haven’t had someone show you where the mistakes are. You lose a lot of money in making those mistakes or those inefficiencies. So I would agree with these guys as operations is number one, sales number or sorry, estimating is number two. You can actually put estimate as number one because you can offset your price of your job for the inexperience of your teams, but it’s really hard to keep selling and then sales three. And leadership and everything else that goes with it. It’s good to have, but you can see some poor organizations with poor leadership make money. But if I were spending my money, that’s that’s the order I’d put them in. Hard hard to make money with a bad leader because you won’t have to turn over. You have to be hiring and and rehiring. Great answers, guys. Next one, how do you hold Cruise accountable for lack of documentation, and how do you explain that documentation is one of the most important things to present to a carrier to cover the company as a whole when it comes to proving your numbers? I’ll I’ll start because I was harsh. I’m I’m the guy who put our teams on the road a little longer than they should be. For us, if we weren’t getting paid on those, I lost like, that was a that was a no go zone for us. You lose your job if you aren’t doing it. That that to us, that was one of the most critical things for us was documentation. Those that didn’t document, we were on them. Like, if you’re technically good, but you could care less about protecting the company, we can’t make money. So you put us in what happens is the front end of our business got so lax or or if they didn’t focus on documenting, the back end workload had to go up so much that the back end was struggling with adjusters upset, clients caused too much stress. So on the front, you do this is your job. Your job is documenting, then your job is restore. And we just went with a hard hard line and and I’m believing it and then believed it so much. I came to the circle. I was like, I think everyone should do this, but that’s that’s the if you don’t do it, your your back end of your office, your your admin teams, they’re gonna be swamped in in paperwork, and we’ve seen them time and time again. So let me devil’s advocate real fast. So, I do agree with what you said, Chris. And I say I’m gonna use a cattle prodder to hold people accountable. For me personally, I I do feel accountability is one of the biggest things. But something that everyone needs to do before, they need to understand the situation And always look first at what what have I done in this situation if these are my direct reports? Have I overloaded them and given them more than they can actually handle, and they are too afraid to say it? Because I’ve been in those situations before. So sometimes they just physically they can’t get to it all because you entrusted them with too much because you don’t have enough personnel out there to do it. So then that’s when you need to come in and help them get through that or give them what they need. But outside of those kind of situations, I agree with Chris a hundred percent. You have to toe a line. You have to have accountability there, or it will continue to happen, and you will lose big time. For us, project documentation, site safety, OSHA standards, things like that, that’s all incorporated into their into their compensation packages. So if if for some reason the documentation is deficient, there’s an impact to their incentive plan. Not their not their base salary, but their, you know, their the each each bonus is eligible for incentives. And if if they have not done a a thorough and accurate thorough job of documenting, it it impacts them. It’s so they’re not you know, like, each thing is weighted. So, like, documentation may be ten percent of the bonus plan bonus plan for them. Well, if it if they take a hit on that and they lose ten percent, that’s that’s ten percent of their bonus. And and our guys, some of our project managers are eligible for pretty significant bonuses based on on the profitability factor. So, you know, if there’s a chance for them to receive a twenty thousand dollar bonus, losing two thousand dollars of it, that kinda lights a fire on them. So it’s kind of a a carrot and a stick method. But but you’re sharing the risk. So you’re saying if you don’t document, we take on more risk. We’re gonna take the the risk out of your compensation to cover for the the monies we’re not gonna get, which at the end of the day, your your staff have to understand. I think that’s the disconnect we talked about a little bit before. You’re rushing to do the job technically correct. Documentation is a business decision that we need you to do, and and that’s why it’s it was so so forced in our companies. That’s great. Thanks, guys. Next one, when do you pivot when you find that the cat loss is costing more money than you will be making, or is there a solution? That’s a tough one. Yeah. Because usually at that point, you’re already fully committed to that job. You better find a way to stop the bleeding and and make some drastic changes to see if you can salvage that project to give you a quick answer. Yeah. I there there’s not a there’s not an easy way to do it. I mean, it’s you you just that’s why you have to know your your, you know, your weekly cash burns and to to know if you’re really upside down on a project. And, I mean, we have never walked away for I don’t and I’m I don’t know that you got I’ve never heard of you guys walking away from anything, but it’s it’s just once you’re in there, you’re it’s like the old thing about being you’re somewhat pregnant. You either are or you’re not. And Yeah. It it’s hard. When a project is going south, it’s really hard to write it. And sometimes sometimes you have to make a a management change. And, you know, those are you lose continuity when you’re doing that, and it’s it’s tough. So, you know, you gotta set yourself up for success and make sure that you got the right project manager for the right, you know, for the right scenario. You know, if if and if you don’t, you’re behind the eight ball from the start, and it’s you’re you’re never gonna catch up. And so you have to in my mind, do I look at, man, if I just recover all my costs, is that gonna be a winning job for us? Or if I I make five percent on it, is that is that gonna be a winning project for us? So that’s you have to you have to look deep within yourself to make sure that you can answer that question. Okay. And then if you if you would take that and put it in or if you’re losing on a big job, that’s one thing. If you’re out on a cat and you’ve got a lot of little jobs and you start seeing your margins coming down, it’s probably time to sit down with your team and and do a you slow it down so you can get fast again, but you have to slow down and and figure out why you’re you’re almost on sliding normally. I think Brian touched on it. Your scopes are are now falling farther and farther behind. You’re rushing. You’re not capturing the information. You need to write good scopes to capture the right estimates or to get the right numbers down or you’re not doing your paperwork, which is leading to your you’re doing work, but you’re not charging for it. You know, that’s that’s why I’m a big fan of rate material in the field because you can capture it. You know, you’re making a set margin on that. If you get into unit prices and you miss it, it’s pretty hard to play catch up after that. Yeah. And your teams might be burned out at that point, you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re gonna find out very quickly. Next question here. So how do you handle jobs where you have a signed contract with the customer, begin the work, and the insurance company hires a consultant and everything changes? They wanna change the scope of the job midstream. Document. Document. Document. And notify everybody that the that the consultant is changing the the scope of work. And then and that gives you the opportunity to reevaluate your ROM and and update all the interested parties. You know, you you have to keep the material interested parties on on both sides of the wall, you know, whether it be the owner and then the claim side. You you gotta you gotta notify them when when there’s gonna be an increase or any really a decrease in the ROM and and let them identify why. And if it’s from a consultant that’s and, you know, it’s best to collaborate with the consultants. I know sometimes we don’t you know, it can be a very adversarial thing, you know, they have some of them have a tremendous amount of experience, and they may have seen something they may have ran into a similar project in another area, and and they may have some insights that’s which, you know, you’re not looking at. Sometimes it brings them out of the box thinking, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if if something’s gonna change based on what the consultant says you know, because remember, you’ve met with the you’ve met with your owners before the consultants ever showed up. So you know what the priorities of the of the client is. You know the priorities of the what the building is, and you know what the project priorities are. And so you gotta get an alignment on those. And if if the consultant is telling you something else, well, you need to try to figure out a way to bring alignment to it, or you have to you have to call it out for what it is. It’s it’s different from what’s what the owner wanted and and just document why you’re doing it and and proceed. But you gotta make sure everybody knows why things are changing. And I think if they’re definitely adding to the scope of work, that’s amazing. Let’s keep going. If they’re reducing it, find out why. If they’re coming in way after things have acclimated, they’re two weeks behind and they’re not seeing walls being wet where the surface of the walls are dry, but we know something’s going on inside the wall cavity and they’re basing it simply off of that, you may have to bring in an industrial hygienist or someone else. There’s really no telling, but there’s gotta be a lot more conversations. But Brian hit the nail on the head by saying you have to document it. Every day you send if you’re doing daily, reporting to all interested parties, you definitely need to have every detail in there. These were the people that were on the job site. These were the people and what was being said and what they’ve asked us to do. That also tells a story down the line. So documentation, again, is paramount. Yeah. And, you know, they’re bringing in all kinds of consultants as well. If you know, don’t don’t ever hesitate to bring in an like, we really rely on industrial hygienists, you know, all over. And, you know, if it’s a regional cat, you know, make sure you have a relationship with somebody that’s outside that area because they may become overloaded with work. And so, you know, you can bring somebody in from outside the area if you have to or when you’re going to a national event. You know, it’s okay to have a relationship with somebody and to feed them work because they may be have the opportunity to feed you work later on, and they may be a little whispering in somebody’s ear. They look this the contractor you’re working with is not, you know, not not where they should be for this time in the project, and it might help you get your foot in the door that way. So, you know, if you guys want, we, you know, we rely on a couple just like Blue Sky team does. So if anybody needs recommendations, you know, shoot me an email, and I’ll give you some national con companies that we’ve had great success with. Yeah. Well, one part I wanted to say on that, it triggered a response something I meant to say earlier. But depending on which state you’re working in or you’re going to a cat, Texas, Florida, make sure you have the right training, certifications, licenses. All of those things are extremely important. But even with industrial hygienists, which Brian’s mentioning, you may have to consider, please test for asbestos and lead. That’s something that people forget about. Don’t be that guy. Make sure you test for those kind of things too in advance. And the the last piece I wanted to say, because I know we’re we’re nearing the end, and I don’t know how much further we’re pushing. Somebody told me once, and it really stuck to me, is that a rising tide raises all ships. So we’re all out here. Yeah. We may joke around and say this person’s our competitor. We don’t have any competitors. Whatever you might say. But at the end of the day, all of us restorers, we need to work together to help each other improve no matter what we’re doing. So I know I don’t always have all the answers. Brian would probably say the same thing. Chris, he knows all the answers. But, anyways, there’s someone out there that does know when you don’t, so don’t be afraid to reach out. That’s a great point. Thanks. Yeah. I’ll just wrap it up with one more question. So what are the key areas where contractors lose money on cats, and how do you avoid them? If you guys can answer this in the last couple minutes here. I know it’s a big one. That’s it can be an easy one. So sometimes with documentation, and it’s something that we somewhat touched on but didn’t really, if you think about it, photos stay a thousand words if you’re taking appropriate photos. I have seen too many jobs where we did not have enough photos or good quality photos that we missed out on being able to charge for certain things. So photos are extremely important or just overall not documenting every little thing that you did. Some people can come in and be like, I got my labor hours. I got my air movers and my dehumidifiers, but you forgot your your fall arrest systems that you could be charging for, your small tools, all these other things that you need to be thinking about. On time and materials, every little thing costs something. And that’s usually where things go wrong because people aren’t itemizing every little thing that you’re doing or utilizing. Yeah. Hidden and hidden margin erosion is is just the biggest deal that you don’t think about. You know, the carrying costs for your working capital or, you know, hitting your line of credit. The mobilization costs, you know, those those are just things that people really don’t take into account. Have you are you going through the exercise to make sure that your rate schedule is in alignment with what your vendors are charging? You if, like, we try to make a higher percentage on a profitability on our equipment rates than we do on labor rates because we first of all, we own a lot of gear, but we have favorable terms with all of our suppliers so that we know generally, we weren’t we know that we’re gonna maintain the same the same profitability goal on rented equipment, you know, throughout throughout the nation. So we do we really do fine tune our our rate schedule so that we know what our what our profitability is going going into the event. Yeah. You said profit erosion and that it’s probably a big one. Also buying your gear. When you’re buying your gear, don’t buy it right at the cat time. It’s it helps if you have a CapEx plan. Buy when it’s on sale, buy it off season, not when everyone else is trying to get gear and be like, hey. Can I get a deal? Oh, you’re not getting a deal. You get a premium. Yeah. Buy it when you can actually get it because catabens, it goes it all up. Yep. So one thing I was gonna mention because, Brian mentioned mobilizations and being able to charge for that, there’s a couple jobs every once in a while where you may have to stop work, demobilize, mobilize, demobilize, and do it two or three times. You’ve gotta have that written down too because that tells a whole different story of what’s taking place on that job, and you gotta be paid for those items. You guys well, one question. What do you deal with on, like, when job starts and you’ve got forty people on a job and then you hit a a delay, and those forty people are in market? How are you how you know, that’s another part where if you’re not tight on your contract, you could not only a road margin, you could lose it all. How do you guys handle those those uncontrollable stops or breaks in the work for whatever reason? So it’s the standby time is actually in our contract. I literally started to mention standby time after Chris has stopped speaking, but so that that’s actually written into our our contract portal to portal time is written into our contract. That’s you know, if you’re having to stay two hours outside away from the job because you can’t find any hotels, you know, that’s four hours of travel time that that that gets billed, you know, that you’re gonna incur that cost. You’re gonna be paying for it. So make sure you track all of that stuff separately. And, you know, when you mentioned about doing you know, collecting four checks up front, that’s to to follow-up with what Josh said, you know, if the insurance company is willing to do that for you, you know, be there’s they’re giving it to you. They want something in exchange for that too. So be prepared to you know, instead of charging ten and ten on on lodging, maybe you only charge five percent because they’re paying you, you know, once a once a week. So just, you know, everything’s kind of a two way street. You know, if if you’re paying out something, you want something in return. If you’re collecting something, you know, they’re gonna want something in return. So just just be mindful of of that. So how are you guys sorry, Brooke. I’m gonna just jump in here. How are you guys handling it? Know, a lot of owners get personal on when you get into negotiations, like, I I should be paid for this, but you’re looking at it as, hey, it’s a give and take. How do you take the emotion out of it? Right? Like, you you’re coming in with an open mind of being willing, but how do you take the emotion out of it so you can make good decisions, make good good barters in in that process? Well, you’re you’re asking the wrong guy if you’re asking me that question. I I I struggle with that. I don’t it’s I I take it sometimes I get a little too personal. I take it personal like, hey. You’re attacking you’re attacking me. You’re not attacking the process. So I I’m gonna defer to Chris because he seems much more calm than I am. I can be calm, but I’m also a ginger. So, unless you’re not there. But, no. The the biggest thing is at the end of the day, there there has to be a little bit of give and take because consultants wanna come in, and they’re gonna ask for concessions and certain things. And sometimes we can we can accommodate that. Other times, it’s way too much asking for, and you just have to have it documented. But there can’t always be give and take if you’ve already done your absolute best as a professional in this industry to bill fairly for everything. I know there’s conversations about an exact amount estimate and having fluff in it or whatever it might be. Don’t have the fluff. Just write your estimate. Have it true to what it’s gonna be, and you’re making your margin. Everything’s good. And I think that’s kinda where we’ve gotten to this situation in the industry where we are having to have concessions and all this because people are not writing estimates fairly. So there’s a lot to it. That’s the best answer I can get for that question because we can go round and round on that one. Right, Brian? Yeah. No. I agree. Great. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us on this webinar. This was a really great session. Chris, if you don’t mind sharing the screen, I just have a couple of resources I wanted to share with the group. The first one yeah. This is everyone’s contact info. And then on the next slide, you can scan the QR code on the screen to download our emergency prep kit. Has a bunch of interactive PDFs that you can fill out for your own team, and you can use those to prep for cat season. And then everyone who attends is gonna be sent our cat readiness playbook, so that’ll be coming out in the next couple weeks. And then on the next slide, we have a couple upcoming events. Sorry, Brooke. No problem. You’re a slow operator on this end. So our our next event is actually tomorrow. So we have an event with Sanctum. So we’ll discuss KPIs you should set and monitor for sales reps in the restoration industry, And then we have a water damage q and a with Ken Larson as well. So thank you everyone so much for attending. As mentioned, you’ll get a copy of the recording tomorrow, and you can claim your ICRC credits on the on demand version as well. But thanks so much to this panel. We really appreciate your time, and have a great day, everyone. Thanks, gentlemen.