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So we’ve got Ken Larson, on the call with us, and my name is Chris Riznoski. I’m vice president at Encircle, and we’re gonna be hosting this webinar. I’m not gonna introduce Ken. I’m gonna let him introduce himself, but he because he’s got a a pretty impressive resume. Ken, why don’t you you go ahead? Oh, I didn’t prep wasn’t prepared for that. So, yeah, my name is Ken Larson. I’ve been in the business since nineteen seventy eight. I originate from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. About twenty years ago, I moved down to the States. I’m now an American citizen, and I currently live in Tampa. And we just had that beautiful hurricane that just went right by us, a hundred and twenty miles offshore, just skimmed by us. We did fine here in Tampa. We had some, you know, a few branches that fell down in my local neighborhood, hit some roofs. No regional flooding in my area. Everything’s fine. But it was a little nerve racking to see such an influential storm come rolling on through. So I’m an instructor for the IICRC I should word that correctly. I am an approved instructor of IICRC courses, as well as, several RIA courses, Restoration Industry Association, and I also, from time to time, do, ACAC training, the American no, the American no. Accredited, certification oh, boy. ACAC. I forgot what it stands for. Council for Accredited Certification. That’s what it is. So I’m I think that should be good enough. That’s a little bit about my background. Yeah. Ken Ken was my certified restorative trainer, instructor that went through that. And I’ll tell you, this is we prep for this. We spent numerous days going over the information you guys are gonna get, and this is pretty interesting. There’s actually compared to last year, we’ve changed the tone this year, and I’ll get into that, but, it’s gonna be a great session. Let’s let’s get going. So we’ve got, in here, we’re gonna go in through a a few things. We’re gonna go through source and cause of loss and and talk about that, get through categorization of water, drying chambers, and and we’re basically gonna cover off twelve topics as we lead you down this path of documenting and running a water damage job. So Brooke said that this isn’t a hydro training for an Encircle product, but it technically is because what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna put the technicals that are behind running that documentation system. So in here, we’re gonna go through the difference of the source of loss, talk about cause of loss, the importance of categorizing water, how you’re gonna build your drying chambers and some considerations there. We’re gonna talk about psychometrics and vapor pressure differentials, and then we’re gonna get into the dryings dry, sorry, dry standards and setting your goals as well as material, permeability. And, and that’s the first half of the boot camp. And then we’ve got the second half, which is moisture mapping and moisture points. We’re gonna be looking at creating controls for stabilization and drying, and so we’re gonna talk about that, which a lot of lot of questions last year came in around stabilization, so we added to that this year. We’ve got equipment calculations and how those are used and how are they misused in the industry, placing equipment, reading your dehumidifiers, and then finally, inspecting the job to completion and all the documentation that goes with that. And and then if we have time, we’ll talk about some different strategies and some different things that you’re running into. But the tone of the presentation has changed this year. This came up from last year. Last year, we had a bunch of TPAs on. We had a lot of insurance adjusters, and we had contractors. And after we were done, we we got considerable amount of volume of inquiries from stakeholders on both sides, TPAs and carriers, as well as the contractors saying, hey. There’s a lot of things that were presented here, and there’s a lot of grievances concerning each other’s operational methodologies and in the realm of damage mitigation. And in the, I guess, would say in light of these inputs, we decided to recalibrate the the presentation to focus more, on a neutral position this year, and the objective was to scrutinize the contested information. So things where where there’s misunderstandings in the industry, supplement it with some unbiased data, corroborate it with with supporting facts or evidence, and then establish the and and the established standards and best practices so that when you guys are going into the field or when you’re watching this presentation, you’re not just hearing two people’s opinions. It’s actually supported by stuff that’s happening inside the industry. During last year’s events, there was a lot of discussion in the questions about inconsistencies between how TPAs ran programs and how restorers were restoring in the field, and that posed a lot of questions on on operational procedures from a TPA, and not all of them were substantiated. And then we had TPAs raise a bunch of concerns about the restorers and the was brought into their business. So, Ken and I were trying to figure out how do we put this together. So that left us in a position that we had to make some really big professional decisions because we have to main maintain the integrity of the the presentation you’re gonna see, but we also have to discuss the reality of the business. And so doing that, Ken and myself are both expert witnesses. We go to court. We we testify under oath. At times, you’re gonna things that we do in public are gonna be brought into that arena, and so we had a choice that today’s discussion is designed to remove personal opinion as much as possible, but we’re gonna present mostly the facts, and then we’re gonna be pretty blunt on the discussion. If it’s supported by the industry standards or the practices in the field, then that’s what it is, and it’s not aimed at any, one party or another. The standard is is a little different when and when we say the standard here, it’s nothing said in this webinar is not something that we’re gonna stay under oath. So we’re talking about the standard or talking about a situation. It’s the exact same thing that we would say if we were, we were crossed by a lawyer and having to give testimony. So just so you so we can elaborate. Little clarification. If we’re we’re not gonna call every party out on the insurance side. If we say TPA, it means third party consultant, carrier, adjuster, and anyone that’s working with the carriers in that capacity. When we say restorers or contractors, that’s anyone that’s doing mitigation or that’s doing rebuild. So you may hear contractor restorer. It’s the same thing.

Welcome, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us for the fire and smoke boot camp. So my name is Brooke, and I’ll be monitoring the chat and the q and a throughout the session today. For the q and a, we did have over fourteen hundred registered today. So, we’ll get through as many as we possibly can, but we may not get through every single question. And now without further ado, I’ll pass things over to Chris to get the session started today. Take care. I’m good. Thanks, Brooke. And and, guys, ask your questions as we go along, and then Brooke will if if she needs to, she’ll jump in and and interrupt us, or or we’ll pull over these question periods that we’ve got during the presentation. And then at the end, Joe and I will stick around and and we go through just, you know, ask all the questions you can, and we’ll try to answer as many as we can as we’re as we’re hanging out here. I got Joe Myers who’s the RIA’s fire loss specialist lead instructor, but he’s a guy who’s done a ton in the field, big building background. Joe, thanks for coming on today and and doing this webinar with us again. This boot camp was was a big success last year, and and we got tons of feedback. So we’re gonna try to improve on it and make it better. But thanks, Joe, for coming out of the field and doing this with us. Yeah. My pleasure. My pleasure. I don’t know if the camera’s picking it up, but I was actually trimming a house fire loss before I walked in here. So it’s not dirt, guys. It’s it’s man glitter, sawdust. Yeah. Well, it’s good. It’s good. We we grab the laborer off the site rather than the expert, but that’s fine. Alright, guys. So here’s what we’re gonna do. So we’re gonna go through a couple changes from last year. We’ve got the goals of fire restoration, and then we’re gonna talk a little bit about the new s seven hundred fire standard. We’re not gonna go into a ton of it because it it it was but it is gonna be published coming up, but we will discuss that. We’re gonna jump into field documentation, the four steps of remediation, and then we’re gonna get into detail on the source removal, cleaning, odor control, and then encapsulants, sealants. Are you ready for rebuild? It’s just a section we’re gonna go through to show some of the things that get left behind, which when you’re looking at a fire restoration, you’re you’re asking yourself is is it ready to transfer it over to a general contractor? Interesting thing, Joe and I and and and a couple others were involved in a pretty substantial billionaire loss that that we’re gonna share and and get into that, give you a little idea of some of the expectations that you would see when dealing with with ultra high net worth individuals. And then we have some bonus selling, just different ways that you can differentiate your business, and then we’ll hit that big question and answer period. So we’re gonna start this off. I’m gonna get Brooke to throw up this poll for you guys.

Hello, everyone, and welcome. Thanks so much for joining us for our third annual Profitability Masterclass. So in this session, Chris is going to walk you through how to make your business more profitable, discussing things like strategies strategies to properly scope, estimate, and size jobs, how to spot areas of improvement in your profit margins, how to reduce costs in trades, material, equipment, mistakes, and chargebacks, and a bunch more. So before we kick things off, I’ll cover a few housekeeping items. So feel free to submit any comments or questions in the chat throughout the session. But we had a ton of people register for this, so we’ll try to get through as many as possible. But if your question’s not answered, we’ll try to follow-up with you after. So if anyone from your team was not able to attend the live session today, no worries. We’ll be sending out a copy of the recording, so in the next day or so. My colleague Josh is just going to send a link in the chat for you to submit your information to get your IICRC and RIA credits. So fill this out. That’s the only way you’ll be able to get your credits from this session. Last but not least, about fifteen minutes ago, we sent out a link to the profitability calculator that was sent via email to everyone who registered. So just download it from there, or it’ll be in the handouts section in GoToWebinar so that you can follow along with Chris, later on in the session. So a little bit of an intro to Chris. So he’s currently vice president at Encircle. He has a wealth of knowledge in the restoration industry based on more than fifteen years of experience. So without further ado, I’ll pass things off to Chris to kick things off. Thanks, Brooke. Good morning, everyone. There we go. Let’s get that set up. Welcome. And, yeah, this is the third time we’ve run through this. It’s gonna be interesting. We’re gonna go on this journey through that every business goes through. And and, basically, if you’ve been in restoration, it should be a a a journey that’s actually really enjoyable to get your company profitable. You’ll realize that not every year is a winning year, and not every year is a losing year. The goal is is to try to make the winning years as big as possible and losing years as as less least amount of damage to your business. There’s things that you can’t control that sometimes can get you, and, and then there’s sometimes when we just fall asleep at the wheel and and the business gets off off to a rough start, and it’s hard to recover. And just because we don’t control everything inside our ecosystem, we can be weather dependent. We don’t have claims for jobs coming in for two or three years because there’s no claims during a drought. It happened to my business, and this is the reality of of what we do. But the easier ways that you can make money and different things that you can do can really impact your business. And one of these things is is we look at restoration goals. There’s easier ways that you could earn an income or that you could run a business, but it doesn’t fulfill some of those needs that a lot of us enjoy coming to work and doing in the restoration world. And there’s kind of whether you’re a labor general manager or or someone in between those two. There’s three reasons that we’re in this business. One, we get to help people, and it’s part of your DNA. There’s not many restorers in the industry that just don’t enjoy enjoy helping people. You get to do extraordinary things every day. And for us, it sometimes seemed like it’s just the old run of the mill business. We go out. We do water damages, but we really are doing extraordinary things every day when we go to the jobs. The second thing is that every day is different. Right? We we get into jobs that are complex. We’ve never handled them. And that can be also a benefit to the business, but it’s also scary because if you haven’t done something before and you try to do it, you can lose money on those types of jobs. And then the last thing that we wanna do is we wanna make sure we earn enough money to take care of our families, build our businesses, and then keep helping people. And that’s what you have to look at your profits as is it’s the fuel that allows you to continue to hire staff, pay staff, encourage and motivate great staff, and then allow us to continue to go out and get those jobs. Now when you do this right, it feels great, but when you get it wrong, it can really feel personal. And so even within the business, you have people that will take those losses, really personally. Let’s face it. If you’re hanging drywall and you go out there and you make a mistake or you’re working in a bank, it doesn’t necessarily come home with you. But if you take that extra effort and that extra pride in what you do, that little bit of a hero, inside of you can can feel damaged when you don’t make money doing what you are out trying to do and not being compensated for what you’re trying to do. In here, we we look at it when when we don’t feel like we’re succeeding, when the business gets hold of us, it can actually, like, really hold you back. It can pull your business momentum down. It it can end your profits. It can close your business, and and it can end the line for you, And that becomes the end of your restoration journey. So we don’t want that to happen. So today, we’re gonna look at the profitability, reducing costs, increasing charges. And these are all the simple things I did for my business. Now I’ll tell you our story in a little bit of how I made some some major gains and then how I screwed up pretty bad and, and then how we recovered. And I used these tools to do it so I know they work, and that’s what I wanna share with you guys today.

Welcome, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us for the fire and smoke boot camp. So my name is Brooke, and I’ll be monitoring the chat and the q and a throughout the session today. For the q and a, we did have over fourteen hundred registered today. So, we’ll get through as many as we possibly can, but we may not get through every single question. And now without further ado, I’ll pass things over to Chris to get the session started today. Take care. I’m good. Thanks, Brooke. And and, guys, ask your questions as we go along, and then Brooke will if if she needs to, she’ll jump in and and interrupt us, or or we’ll pull over these question periods that we’ve got during the presentation. And then at the end, Joe and I will stick around and and we go through just, you know, ask all the questions you can, and we’ll try to answer as many as we can as we’re as we’re hanging out here. I got Joe Myers who’s the RIA’s fire loss specialist lead instructor, but he’s a guy who’s done a ton in the field, big building background. Joe, thanks for coming on today and and doing this webinar with us again. This boot camp was was a big success last year, and and we got tons of feedback. So we’re gonna try to improve on it and make it better. But thanks, Joe, for coming out of the field and doing this with us. Yeah. My pleasure. My pleasure. I don’t know if the camera’s picking it up, but I was actually trimming a house fire loss before I walked in here. So it’s not dirt, guys. It’s it’s man glitter, sawdust. Yeah. Well, it’s good. It’s good. We we grab the laborer off the site rather than the expert, but that’s fine. Alright, guys. So here’s what we’re gonna do. So we’re gonna go through a couple changes from last year. We’ve got the goals of fire restoration, and then we’re gonna talk a little bit about the new s seven hundred fire standard. We’re not gonna go into a ton of it because it it it was but it is gonna be published coming up, but we will discuss that. We’re gonna jump into field documentation, the four steps of remediation, and then we’re gonna get into detail on the source removal, cleaning, odor control, and then encapsulants, sealants. Are you ready for rebuild? It’s just a section we’re gonna go through to show some of the things that get left behind, which when you’re looking at a fire restoration, you’re you’re asking yourself is is it ready to transfer it over to a general contractor? Interesting thing, Joe and I and and and a couple others were involved in a pretty substantial billionaire loss that that we’re gonna share and and get into that, give you a little idea of some of the expectations that you would see when dealing with with ultra high net worth individuals. And then we have some bonus selling, just different ways that you can differentiate your business, and then we’ll hit that big question and answer period. So we’re gonna start this off. I’m gonna get Brooke to throw up this poll for you guys.

Alright. Alright. Well, let’s get started. We’ll kick things off. So hello again, everyone. Thanks for joining us. My name is Kristen. I’m the event specialist here at Encircle. So today’s webinar will cover topics such as understanding the different estimating systems and challenges, some practical tools and techniques, and the importance of accurate documentation. This webinar is eligible for four IICRC continuing education, credits. So this isn’t an Encircle training. However, if you are looking for support, you can always reach out to us at successencircleapp dot com. So without further ado, I will pass it over to you, Chris. Awesome. Thank you, guys, and thanks for for joining this afternoon for the East Coasters. It’s morning for the West Coasters. This is gonna be a good one. This is one that we’ve been working on for for a while and then put it into play here. Today, we’re gonna go through the agenda. We have a break this time. You guys have asked for because they’re so long, a fifteen minute break to catch up on email and bio breaks. And so we’re gonna go through. We’re gonna go with the estimated struggle today. We’ll go and look at the five estimating systems that are used, that are around the the restoration insurance space. We’re gonna talk about buttonology versus estimating, and this is based on some experience I had back in two thousand nine that became very real. And then we’re gonna go through the estimating traps, some of the businesses that you are running, maybe experiencing some of this. We’ll talk. There was a lot of questions about programs versus nonprograms that came in, we put this section in, and then we’ll jump into a q and a and a break, at that point. Now what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go through and take a look at some of the unit pricing risk. That’s one of the more common systems that you’re looking at and some of the more problems or some of the, more identifiable problems come out of there. We’re gonna talk about tools of the trade. This has been a discussion that’s gone on for years. What is tools of the trade? Should it be included in your price? Should it not be? We’re gonna look at parts of an estimating system more from a high level than than the details of what you need to start putting in if you’re writing an estimate, how you would sort of support that estimate, and it comes in from a little bit more of a legal perspective there. And then we get into documentation to win. So if I was me building a file as an expert, here’s what I would put into it, and here’s how I would document it so that you guys can get out without getting a lot of scars. And then why you should be focused on being a profitable restorer. And then what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna close it out, we’re gonna jump into a, probably, a forty five minute q and a at the end. If you guys have questions along the way, ask in the, the question box, and then the team’s gonna pull those up. And then we’ll when we stop for question breaks along the way, we’ll try to get to them. And then if we don’t get to them, we’ll get to them at the end of this session.