Welcome, everyone. My name is Leah. I’m the director of product and content marketing here at Encircle, and really excited for this session today. It is a field first real world conversation. You may have, may have seen it two weeks ago. We officially announced Encircle’s acquisition of the Edge. So we are gonna get into into the the details around that. We built this session, with insight from the people who who live it. So Tom, Paul, TJ, they are combining and in this session, decades of experience from the fields to the office for technology and and everything in between. So it’s really exciting. We’re gonna get three different perspectives. We’ve got Paul Donald, the CEO and founder of Encircle. We’ve got Tom McGuire, who is gonna bring us bring us the methodology and the the information around around the Edge. And then we’ve got the we’ve got TJ, the boots on the ground, the field reality. We’ve got Paul and Tom who are gonna live up here, and and TJ lives every day in the field working with both with with Encircle, with the Edge, and understands the day to day challenges, frustrations, and and everything around around restoration. But super excited to get into it, and I’m gonna throw things over to Paul, and he’s gonna talk through the new reality of restoration. Then we’ll get over to to Tom. He’s gonna talk about production rates, give a demo of the Edge, and then TJ is gonna jump into what does this all mean? What does this look like in the field, day to day? And then we’ll wrap things up with a great fireside chat between these three these three great men. And, of course, we’ll have time for q and a at the end, but I like I said, I’m gonna jump in and give q and give give time for questions throughout. Okay, Paul, as promised, over to you, and I’m gonna disappear. Wonderful. Thank you for kicking us off, Leah, and thank you all the guests who have joined us today. The restoration industry is critical globally. It’s not decreasing in overall size. It’s a growing industry, but certainly, it’s become more challenged, and I’m pretty sure all of you can agree to that. Restoration, today, you’re running a business that’s more complex because you’ve got reviewers, you’ve got adjusters, you’ve got systems, all hyperanalyzing the work you do. And for restore, you go out on-site, you’re the hero. Your job is to go out there and understand what has happened, how to mitigate the loss, get it back to a stable position, and then rebuild. While you’ve got people on you saying, can you get this done faster? Get it done faster. Get it done faster. Well, when we go through the reports, and and I’ll go through a bit of the RA industry report, what it’s really telling us is we need to step back or restorers need to step back and look at their business and understand how are you protecting your business first and being a hero second. And in fact, by analyzing your business, your standard operating procedures, the systems you use, the training you put in place, you can get control of it. And as you’re seeing across the, economy today, businesses are struggling. And restores, you’ve seen probably a twenty five to forty percent decrease in in claim volume this year alone. That now requires a different mindset. And so how are you planning for that? Are you in good times, planning that things may get slow? So we’re doing our training. We’re, optimizing our marketing muscles to be able to, bring on business that is noninsurance related. Now what are the things we’re doing to help us manage through the ups and downs, the cyclical business that restoration most often is? And it’s not easy. It requires a real deep focus. So talking to like, we’ll have TJ talk about what is it like being an operator. We’ll have Tom talk about really understanding the job before you get started. These are important things that you wanna consider as we go through because profitability is a byproduct of team wide habits and clear systems. So let me state it again. Profitability is the byproduct of team wide habits and clear systems. This isn’t just throwing a spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks or winging it just to get the job done and please the policyholder. It’s really a lot of forethought and planning that goes into running your business, and then you’ve got something that’s scalable. Because there’s no magic formula or plug and play solution for operating in what is a chaotic ecosystem. The restorer who is tactile oriented, the insurance company that’s administrative nature made up of lawyers, actuaries, and accountants, and then the policyholder, which can be any one of the above or something else. Pleasing everybody comes down to setting the right expectations. So let’s dig a little bit into the RIA cost of doing business report. There was really and and that this is my assessment of it. I hope everybody’s had a chance to read the report, but my assessment of this is is really, fundamental. And it comes down to, are you protecting your margin? What is your margin defense? Cash flow mastery, are you protecting that cash flow? And operational resilience. Those three things have come to the top of the pile of things that restorers have to be focused on. And all three of those, that’s operational mindset. Not one of those has talked about, you know, being better at doing the physical work. So let’s look at margin defense. The most significant financial challenge for the industry is shrinking margins. And, of course, the ten and ten model that’s promoted often is just not efficient or effective in your business because most of you have overheads that are twenty seven to thirty eight percent. But it’s almost a losing battle in certain circumstances arguing, against the ten and ten. And so you have to look at where are opportunities for margin, and am I picking that up on the on the job site? When you look at the highest margin components, they’re not always the big job types, the drywall, the flooring, but it’s the little things. Are you picking up on all the masking, the the plastic that you’re putting in, the doorknobs you’re removing and and and replacing, the light switches, the covers, are you picking up every billable item? Because you when you think about it, the reviewer, the adjuster, the you know, all of the other parties are looking to reduce your invoice. You’ve gotta look for every way to get acceptable billing into your invoice and better yet, outlined in the scope, and that’s something we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. Cash flow mastery. Is your documentation helping you get paid faster? Are you addressing the conflicts upfront such that when you’re done the job, you can invoice with confidence and the payer can pay with confidence? Payer That’s an important, component to, driving cash flow. The average restore is sitting at about sixty days, many ninety days, and I hear about contractors that are arguing over invoices that are over a year old. And almost inevitably, it comes back to the level of documentation that they did, the amount of human, resources they put on the site, the amount of equipment they put on the site that didn’t align to what their expectations were on productivity. And now you’ve got this friction point of now you have to prove that it was necessary. And if you don’t have the documentation, it’s a back and forth negotiation where the restorer typically is reducing their invoice. That is just not something that, is effective to a growing and scaling business. It will halt growth. And so being able to document and run your business such that you’re reducing conflicts upfront in order to get a faster payment is absolutely key for every restorer to focus on. And then last but not least, operational resilience. It is so important in today’s day and age that as we’re building systems and SOPs that align to a faster moving environment, we need to bring our people along. The level of training that our people need is way more than it was five years ago on the whys we need of why we need the documentation we need, why we need the scope detailed out on day one so that we can set the right steps for not only our internal people, but we can get alignment with the restore, really reducing the amount of back and forth that happens and driving more business volume. If we can get our SOPs aligned with our systems and our people trained on those, we should be able to reduce a lot of the overhead cost and drive up efficiency to be able to do more work in the good times and also be able to manage through on the leaner times like we’re seeing out there today. So delaying investments in technology, technological tools that streamline your estimating, your field documentation, your operational workflows, where you make or lose money, which is in the field, is really, you know, is going to hurt your business. Those that are investing in those tools are certainly able to scale and to and weather the, the storms that do hit. So technology investment is a prerequisite for overcoming scaling bottlenecks and getting through the lean periods. So let’s, talk about the scope because this is a good, point to to lead off with scope. Too many times, what we hear is that PMs and others in the field are just too busy. There’s so much going on that they take down high level notes on the job, but they don’t have the time while they’re on-site to to document a complete scope. And, unfortunately, that’s hurting a lot of restoration contractors to be able to pick up that high margin, elements that can boost their profit margins. And so the scope really is the cornerstone of describing the cause of loss, the resulting damages, and the work that needs to be done. Out of that, we build a a work order that clearly lays out the steps that our teams need to follow so that they can avoid margin killers, like making mistakes on jobs. And one restorer, just a couple weeks ago, was lamenting the problem. One of his teams on-site, you know, made a mistake. They were supposed to just lift the carpet but cut out the underpad. Unfortunately, they cut out the carpet and the underpad on this one section and ended up having to replace the carpet across the whole property on their dime. That’s a margin killer right there. Putting too much, too many people on a job site that doesn’t warrant it is another margin killer because you still have to pay for those, human resources, but the carrier may not pay for it. So how do we get to a reasonable number right at the outset so we set those goalposts? And then it comes down to how much equipment am I putting on-site. A margin killer, obviously, is not putting enough equipment on-site because I didn’t do a dry plan. I didn’t properly document it and calculate it to make sure I maximize the amount of equipment, but I don’t go over. That’s a mistake that restorers make because they’re too busy. Well, this should all be laid out in the scope. And something that Encircle is really focused on, my team has said, listen. We’ve gotta have a platform that allows the field workers to document every aspect of the job so they’re not leaving anything on the table, but they’re not doing work that they won’t get paid for. And so how do we outline that? It’s gotta be in the scope, and that drives your work order. It drives your estimate, and it also drives your initial communication with the adjuster so that you all get on the same page. So when your scope is strong, your estimate should be fast. They should be, detailed and fully backed up, on that. So with that, let me transition to the Edge. Why did we acquire the Edge? Well, if you look at history with Encircle, our whole focus has been on field documentation, and there’s key elements that are unique product sets within Encircle. So it’s obviously obviously our photos, videos, and three sixties. Those are critical for giving visual evidence of the loss and, you know, what what caused the loss, the resulting damages, and what needs to be done. Then there’s how we capture the notes with added photos and videos that substantiate what you’ve what you’re showing the adjuster or the customer within the photos and and the details of the job. You’ve got hydro for moisture mapping. You’ve got our contents platform for documenting contents, and that’s not just if you do contents handling in terms of cleaning or disposal. It’s really documenting preexisting conditions. Because how many of you have been blamed for the dent in the fridge, the the damage to the dining room table, damage to the flooring? Those are all big margin killers, and you all face it on a regular basis using the documentation within Encircle to capture that information so that you can prove that you didn’t damage the the property while you were doing the work is is important. Then beyond that, you’ve got the, reports that detail out all of the, key components to whomever you’re dealing with. So the adjusters, the reviewers, and it all goes into their exact analysis or totality, estimate or sent our PDFs are sent directly to the customer. The other components of the platform that are important to leverage is the forms. Are you getting digital signatures on your authorization form? If you’re starting a job without an off authorization form, that’s obviously a huge risk to your business. Are we capturing health and safety forms on-site? Are we capturing health issues of the policyholder that have to be considered? These are all components that can be captured within our our forms. And then you’ve got the floor plan that substantiates the layout, the amount of work, the amount of equipment, and, of course, the you know, where the work is happening within the premises so that the adjuster or the reviewer can see what are the elements affecting the workflow. So this all leads to the information of how do we get this this scope, on the job. But it doesn’t necessarily give you and your team a clear understanding of how much resources do I need, how many people do I need to put on this job, how many how much equipment do we need, well, you get that with hydro, but not with the the ROM, and then, of course, how much, consumables are we going to use on this job. And that’s where the ROM comes into play. It’s really taking that field documentation you’re already doing in Encircle, instantly generating what is a clear understanding of the scope the the size of this job in terms of dollar cost, number of people, amount of equipment, amount of supplies. And that aligns with the scope that will eventually generate automatically within Encircle. So you’ve seen us come all the way through with developing these core applications within field documentation, And we’re excited to say that now is the opportunity to now leverage that to save you time. Because at the outset, what I mentioned was a lot of times the PMs and techs in the field don’t have time to do the administrative work behind generating the full detail scope while they’re on-site. Well, with the Edge and with our field documentation, we’re gonna allow the the PMs and others on-site to be able to accomplish this work with very little overhead. Literally, in minutes, you’re capturing the the details, and you’re publishing the details that you need in order to get the rest of the ecosystem aligned and get this job moving while protecting your margins. So incredibly exciting part of where we’re going as a company is really putting the control back into the contractor’s hands. It’s giving you the ability to set clear, goalposts for your teams, but also really have important discussions with the adjuster up front because, typically, the negotiation and discussions happen on day four, day five, day six, day seven after you’ve written the estimate and sent it over. And that’s not the time to handle disputes because, unfortunately, you’re not in a position of strength. The time to be able to handle those is to drop the the ROM and the complete scope into your Encircle report with all of your other photographic evidence, your moisture map, your contents laid out, your auth forms, all of the details there in your twelve or twenty four hour report. So we wanna back up all of that right to the day one or at least by day two so that now you’re in a position to negotiate and substantiate the details that the carrier needs in order to pay you. We are very confident that this is going to speed up AR. In fact, our goal is to make sure that we’re helping those restorers that are committed to being operators to get that AR down below, you know, to thirty days or below. And it is entirely possible because restorers are doing that today. So, really, the vision of Encircle is to allow you to be that hero on-site, to do that work that you take pride in in in reestablishing people to a pre loss condition. That is honorable. I spent time on job sites myself, and I know just how difficult your jobs and your team’s jobs are, and I take my hat off to you every day. But what we can allow happen is that weeks or month after that nobody’s remembering the hard work that you put into it, and all they’re doing is now nickel and diming you. And that’s not fair to you, your business, your employees, and it’s not gonna help you scale. By providing you all of the evidence upfront and with the wrong and with the scope of work all detailed out with very little administrative overhead, you’re now able to establish your ground upfront and decide, is this a job that I wanna take on? Is it profitable for me? Every business owner has to really consider what work is in my core competency that I could generate a significant profit margin on. One of the things we’ve seen in the cost of doing business report is there’s way too many restorers that aren’t returning a profit, and there’s way too many that are, returning a net profit of less than ten percent. That’s just not fair for the for how hard this industry works. And we believe that by combining all of these elements, we can now, bring up that profit margin by alerting you to whether this is a job that you can handle because with the ROM, you’ll be able to see right up front. You know, this is what I’m going to need in order to in terms of, the cost of the value of the job in order to do it properly. And if I’m not getting paid for it, do I wanna take on this risk versus starting the job and then going through the process and then working to get paid, which, again, if you’re carrying the cost and you’re applying all of the administrative overhead to chase the dollars, there’s no way you’re gonna get close to a ten percent overhead that those in the industry think you deserve. So that’s our goal. We’re really proud of where we’ve come to. For those that are using Encircle today, thank you for helping us, get to this point in the journey, and I’m super excited to carry it on with, Tom and the Edge and, and a lots of other really cool technology that we’ll be bringing forward over the next year. Thanks so much, Paul. And before we move on to the man of the hour to to give us a demo of of the Edge and to and talk through his his years of experience, I’m gonna launch a quick, a quick poll, to just gather some information from from the audience around current state for yourself. So just ties in with with a lot of what Paul was talking about. So what is or what are your biggest challenges with getting paid on time and in full? So choose choose all the things that apply here. Hopefully, everyone can see can see the poll. So if you have a chance to to throw your there we go. We see the answers coming in now. So just throw your answers in as we go. I’ll leave this up for for a couple of minutes. And, Tom, I’m gonna throw it over to you. And, again, if you have any questions for any of the panelists, feel please feel free to throw them into the q and a box. We can ask them as we go, but we will also have time at the end to to ask some questions and get some great answers. Okay. Tom, over to you. It is a pleasure to be here with everybody. Thank you for this opportunity. Very excited to be to have the Edge part of the Encircle family, and even more excited about where we’re going with the next generation. So with that, let’s let’s if you’re not familiar with the Edge, I’m gonna give you a little background on where on where it comes from and and why. And I’m a restorer. I’ve been in in the restoration business since nineteen eighty six. And there’s a lot of things that have changed since nineteen eighty six, but there’s a lot of things that are the same. So in other words, we’re still drying, we’re still cleaning, we’re still demoing, we’re doing all the things that we were doing then, we’re still doing them now. But there was one common factor that we found throughout all the all of the time of restoration is labor production rate. Labor production is the most common factor in in our industry, and it’s sometimes well, a lot of times, it’s the most overlooked factor on your projects. What the labor production rate does is it helps us determine the baseline labor of our projects. And why is that important? Well, Paul was talking about scope of work. The scope of work is the single most important document on the project. And we can’t do a good scope until we’ve gotten our our estimate. So many times on especially on big projects, and I’ve been I’ve been guilty and been there, where we’re sitting around arguing and going about the number, and then by the time we get done with finally getting our number together, now we don’t have enough time to work on our scope because we’re on an accelerated schedule to get an an estimate and a proposal together. And so the Edge was born by Restorers using restoration data. The same data that all of you are sitting on in your offices, in your in your business files right now. And so everything that we’re going to talk about applies to what you are doing right now today in your in your businesses. And so we started it in the original formulas for the Edge were started in the late nineties. Around nineteen ninety eight was when we first started to put them together, and we put them together so that we could onboard estimators quickly. And we were using the data that we had gathered on projects so that we could onboard. We could take somebody off the street almost and turn them into an estimator in in forty eight hours. And so we could only do that by understanding our project’s performance from the past. Our past performance is what promotes us and and propels us in the future. And so completely all the way back into the late nineties, we’ve been using this system. And I currently you know, I’m still in the field. I’m still, I’m a consultant. I’m still out there with with you guys, the restorers, and still using exactly what we’re going to show you. And so I’m very excited about where we are today. We, you know, we built it so that we when I put together the software in two thousand twenty, the name on it was I call it the Edge. And it’s called the Edge because it’s meant to give you the edge over your competitors. It’s meant to give you the edge over how you do business overall. And so it’s it’s all there. And what we’re gonna talk about is is the ROM. We’re gonna we’re gonna get into the ROM part of it. And remember, ROM stands for rough order of magnitude. It’s a military term, but what it so what you have to remember is rough does not mean a detailed hundred and thirty page estimate. That is your invoice. What it means is a number that you can come to, that you can use right now, and you have confidence in it, that that because what’s the first thing that somebody asks that the adjuster or the client ask you on a job when you get there? How much is it gonna cost? The next one is how how long is it going to take? Those are important questions that we need to be able to answer. The Edge gives you that answer. It works it works as as a companion tool to everything that you’re doing right now. This isn’t meant to replace or make your life more difficult. It’s may it’s it is the perfect tool that you can use on the front end of all of your projects. TJ’s gonna come on in a little bit, and we’re gonna do an an estimate for a residential. I’m gonna do a quick estimate on a commercial project, and we’re gonna show you, and TJ’s gonna talk about how this works for him on the front end of projects. And that’s where the power of this tool is. You can create your ROM, your rough order of magnitude number on the front end, and then still use Xactimate, still use whatever system that you’re using on the back end when you have time. Where we see this very, very valuable tool come into play is down here in the States. I live in Florida, and I I apologize right now, I’m going through a big allergy season for me, so my if I sniffle on any of that, I’m sorry. I live in Florida and we have we have hurricanes, and there’s times where guys will be putting together an estimate on maybe twenty to thirty projects at a time per day. And what this tool does is it gives them the power to put together an estimate on all of those in one day. And then put the work in the exactimate estimates for all of those over the next week or so. So the power of the tool is speed, accuracy, and it’s all built on data that we’ve been gathering for three decades. So some of the pitfalls of estimating, what what people fall into is the documentation, number one, not understanding, the production rate is number two. That the production rate is the the amount that of of production that you’re going to expect out of each person that’s that’s working on that job. When you have that factor, you can determine how much staff you need on that job. Like Paul said in the opening, one of the number one killers of profit on your project is too many people on the job. One of the number one killers of your top line, your budget, your project budget, is too many people on the job. Then you might say, well, Tom, what are you talking about? We just put as many people out there as as as as needed. Well, what you always have to remember is the first time that you do a job as a restorer is not the first time that job has been done. There’s a lot of history and data that is behind all of the projects that have been done in in the in the past. And so I’m also a third party consultant, and I see files from restorers. I’m still a restorer, but I’m also a third party consultant. And we see it in the field all the time where a budget that should be much lower was blowing up because there was too much labor on the job, the and the restorer just didn’t know how to factor their labor. Because if you think about all the training that we have in our industry, a lot of it is focused on on what? Sizing equipment. And so sizing equipment is is what? When you have CFM or pints per day, that’s your production rate of your equipment. So why are we not using the production rate of our people? The most important factor in estimating is the production rate of our people, not the equipment. That’s the that’s the easy part. The people part is where we get in trouble with our invoice. There’ll be over budget. It it adds to our payment time. So we might have a file that is taking a long time to get paid. It’s because it’s over budget, and they’re going to it’s gonna be a red flag. So we want to to have the tools so that you can be in a range, you can stay off the radar with third party consultants and and and adjusters. You’ll be in that range, you’ll get paid quicker on your projects. You’ll have less blow black blowback. You’ll have less red flags that will come up, and you will perform your jobs at a higher, more efficient rate. Alright. So I’ve got I’ve got to stay on target here. If you guys know me, you know that I’m very passionate about our industry and about what we do. And if you ever have some time to kill and you wanna talk about things, you just call me up, and we’ll I’ll give you the history of restoration and all the fun stuff. So we’re gonna jump in here. If I can get my phone be quiet over here. And we’re gonna get into the Edge. And hopefully, every everything is good here. Leah, I’m gonna switch over here. And what we’re gonna do is I’m gonna do now I’ve already come in and I filled in some blanks here because during the demo phase, we have a very short window here. And so we’re just gonna go right into it. And so I’ve already added some features in here. And if you’ve used the Edge before, you’ll you’ll see that we’ve we’ve we’ve been in two thousand twenty five. We have made an update to the Edge every about every sixteen days. So we’ve done a lot of changes that are functions. And if you know me, you know that I’m a practical person. I want things that work and that are accurate. And so I don’t want a lot of stuff that that is wasting my time because none of us haven’t have too much time on our hands. I would almost if you put the poll up, say, do you have too much time on your hands? There would be absolutely none of you that would say that. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna use a Holiday Inn as our example. Now down here you’ll see a hundred and fifty square feet. This is our labor production rate. This is our sweet spot. In other words, this is our target, our our standard target. So when we talk about labor production, it’s how much one person can do in an eight hour period or a shift. And so a hundred and fifty square feet is our target. Now most companies aren’t reaching that. They’re actually a little bit less than that. Our target back in nine in the nineties used to be one seventy. So that tells you what’s happened over time. We’re actually at one fifty. And I’m I’m right now almost at a point to where we’re going to reduce it down to one thirty or one forty because we’re working less efficient today. And one of the reasons is is because everybody has one of these, our smartphones. Because every time it ring, dings, or pings, we gotta answer it. We gotta stop working. And so that slows us down. So when you’re thinking about labor production in a hundred and fifty square feet, that’s gonna be our starting point. We’re either gonna go up or we’re gonna go down from one fifty. If the job is more difficult, we’re gonna go down. So we’d be we’d be at one twenty, ninety. That’s gonna be a more difficult project. An easier project with less things that are bogging us down, the production rate’s gonna go up. It might be at two hundred or two fifty. So let’s jump in here. I’m going to jump in here and I’m going to show you how we’re going to determine. So all of that information that I just talked about is cooked into our system here. And this is our production rate calculator. And we have our historic our historical data is built into this. And so you’ll see when I click on hospitality, it’s gonna start out at three zero five. If we go down here to the bottom, maybe into medical, you’ll see our starting point is all is fifty points lower at at two fifty. The reason that is is because medical is more difficult. There’s more things that are slowing us down. Hospitality, they want us in and out. And so we’re gonna get in and out here. So I’m gonna get down the road here. I’m gonna select everything that applies to this job. We’re gonna say it’s a light fire and water water damage job. We’re gonna pick the maximum ceiling height for the algorithm. We’re gonna pick the maximum ceiling height in a Holiday Inn, it’s typically thirteen to twenty feet. We’re gonna do a seven story building, content concentration, we’re gonna put it at a level three. We have a we have a description, open facility, congested facility, heavily congested facility, I’m gonna put it at a three, the same with, contaminant level. Again, I’m just clicking on everything that applies, we’re gonna do the HVAC, the demo, we’re gonna do content manipulation, false air, that’s gonna be any any air above the ceiling line that may be trapped, that’s gonna hold odor. Containment, we won’t do any containment on this job, this would be primarily for asbestos, related mold and asbestos jobs. It wouldn’t be a drying chamber. True containment, where you’re going in and out of PPE. We’re gonna put in our elevator system, then we’re gonna plug this in. So now we’re at one sixty, and you’ll see the metric rate down here because the system works anywhere in the world. And so whether it’s square meters or square feet, it doesn’t matter. So here’s our square meter rate or square footage. So for our friends in in in Australia and in parts of in UK and parts of Canada, if you’re using the metric form, can use square meters. We won’t hold it against you. And so let me put in a hundred thousand square feet, and we’re gonna say the hotel said, Tom, we want you and your guys out of here in eighteen days. We’ve a big convention coming up. So I’m gonna click on that and just by entering in that information, so the affected area, square footage, the working days, and our production rate, we have just ran our first calculation. So it has already calculated, and if you look down here at the bottom, you’ll see it’s already calculated that we need thirty five production laborers and four supervisors, a project manager, and a project account. So we know this as our baseline that we’re gonna we need thirty five people. So this is one of the only this is the only system of its kind that does that instantly for you, that will calculate your labor. Next up, I’m going to add in some labor, so I just push on this little button over here, and you can see I got I added in a couple here before we got on here. I’m gonna add in four more supervisors because we have eight stories. I want a supervisor per floor, and I’m gonna add in five more production people, production laborers, so that we are we have an even forty. My next little step here is going to be is also instantly calculated our supplies and materials, our company owned equipment, our subcontractors, and our subsistence. Now I’m gonna plug in my experience here because we’re gonna move this number here to one hundred percent, and this is our company owned equipment. Because it’s a Holiday Inn and all the all the guest rooms, we’re gonna use LGRs, air movers, and air scrubbers. And so we’re gonna bump that number to a hundred percent. I’m gonna leave our supplies materials at twenty five percent. I’m gonna leave our subcontractors, and I’m going to move. I’m gonna leave subsistence in there too. We’re gonna say we’re down here in Florida after a hurricane, everybody’s on the road, we’re gonna have our subsistence is our travel, our per diem, our hotels, airfares, everything like that. Alright. So let me jump in here. Our next step, I’ve already added in our subcontractors. So you can see we have power distribution because of one thing about hotels, they don’t have enough power. So we’re gonna have to provide power generate for all of our equipment that we’re gonna have on the job. So if you have power distribution, you’re gonna have a generator, you’re also gonna have fuel. So these are our cost plus items. I always put in everything at a cost plus twenty percent, straight twenty percent. I’m not a big, ten and ten guy, I think ten and ten is an old philosophy that needs to, go away, but that’s just my opinion. Next up we’re going to add in a supplemental drying, so we’re going to say that ten thousand square foot square feet of the building is going to be done with desiccant drying. So we’re gonna add in desiccant drying with this number, the square footage number, and these are all proven numbers, and you might find that if you go through your data that you might say, Tom, my our numbers are more like four or five dollars a square foot. That’s great. You can adjust this. This system is fully adjustable. All of the rates, all of the labor rates are your rates. Everything in here so if I go back up in here, these rates here in our labor, these are are all adjustable to your rates, whether you’re using Xactimate rates or your time and material rates. Doesn’t matter. It’s all based on you and your rates. Whether you’re in New York, Southern California, or here in Florida, it doesn’t matter. Or the UK or Melbourne, Australia, it doesn’t matter. So we’re going to add in ten thousand square feet and then we’re going to add in our deodorization, because obviously we’re going to have to deodorize. This is a proven square footage number for deodorization with hydroxyls and with ProCure. So what so two totally different methods. So next up we’re going to add in some drywall, you can go to the drop down, pick your poison, these are blend rates out of Xactimate in Southern California. You can add in as much as you want here, you can see we added in some drywall and some COVID cleaning. Our next step here is our custom fees, our taxable amount, and we’re gonna get down here to the bottom. Here’s our number, and you can see even with me adding in stuff, and TJ will tell you in a in a little bit, if we’re if you’re calling me up with this scenario right now, I’m gonna put this together in about fifteen minutes because of of experience. The more you use the Edge, the more powerful you become, and the more powerful it becomes for you. You will create ROM numbers. Once you get your damage assessment done, you will be creating ROM numbers very fast, that you’re very confident in, and we have clients that that only use the Edge now. And so so this would be our number. We’re gonna give a range. Here’s our low number, and here’s our high number, and our medium number. Because remember our ROM, we’re not talking about not to exceed, we’re talking about a ROM. And so we’re gonna say, here’s our range. We’re gonna for this project, I would be very comfortable telling the adjuster we’re gonna be between one point two and one point three at about a fourteen dollars square foot. I know with my experience, and this is an actual project, I know from my experience that we did did this project for fourteen and a half dollars per square foot. It never got questioned. So that’s what this is about. It’s about giving you a ROM that is quick, efficient, and accurate, and gets you paid. Alright. So with that, now I’m going to bring TJ in. And TJ, I am going to open up a brand new file, and we’re just gonna do a t t three here. Let me and when you’re ready, what we’re going to do now is we’re going to do a a residential project. And and what you just seen me do, that is a real project. And we’ve done hundreds of Holiday Inn’s over the over our over my career. And that’s why I use that as an example because we’ve done so much with it. So TJ, if you you out there, buddy? Yeah. I’m here. Can you hear me okay, Tom? I can. I can. We’re We are just gonna run through now this is gonna be a residential job. And so it will look a little bit different, but TJ is gonna tell me the the details and we’ll plug it in and I’ll follow his direction. I don’t we don’t we haven’t practiced this, so I don’t know what you know, we’re we’re gonna see what happens. Alright, Tom. Let’s lay out the the scenario. So you have a a residential water loss. Let’s say the home is two thousand square feet. If you wanna go ahead and plug that in. Alright. Two thousand. It was a water damage. Let’s say it was a a toilet supply line burst upstairs on the second story and affected both the second story and the bottom level below. We’re gonna try to get this mitigation done in seven days. And so if you go into your production rate calculator, let’s see what a production rate might apply to this job. We’re gonna select Residential. Yep. And we’ll just select water. It’s a clean water loss, so we’re not gonna select mold or anything. We’ll do, let’s adjust our ceiling heights to ten feet. K. Our stories would be a two story water loss. K. Our content concentration will probably be a level three just because it’s a residential setting. You have tons of content. Yep. Containment level, I I traditionally will probably go with a two. K. Let’s see what else might apply here. We’ll do demo content, and I guess that’s probably pretty good. You’re good with two seventeen? Yeah. It might be, a little high residential. You know, you have especially with, you know, working on two stories, all the content concentration. You wanna change change why don’t we do this? Yeah. Get it closer to two hundred. We can roll with that. Alright. We can always adjust it down below here also. Yeah. Let’s see what kind of labor, it shoots out for us. Okay. So now that’s instantly calculated for us. So it’s gonna tell us and we’re gonna come in, and and we’re gonna make some adjustments here. Right, TJ? We’re gonna take out a project accountant. Yep. We’ll take out the projects accountant. This isn’t a large commercial loss, so you’re not gonna have a project accountant on-site. So let’s move down to our production labor. Because this is a smaller, you know, residential loss, we’re gonna have to beef up our production labor here to get this done in seven days. One guy add labor? Yep. K. And I would probably take this up to four, two guys. You know, each floor is gonna make a lot more sense. For this full seven days? Yeah. K. Alright. Alright. So we only have four guys. One supervisor and one PM is plenty sufficient for, this scale of work. So I think I’m pretty pretty good on our labor there. So next step to our, yeah, our project costs. Supplies and materials, it’s a clean water loss. I don’t think that we’re gonna have a ton of supplies. I might bump that down to twenty, twenty percent. Company owned equipment, we’ll be using all our own equipment. I’ll probably, just because I know the data in my business around this, we’ll probably bump that up to thirty five percent, forty percent, see where that gets us. Probably not gonna have any subcontractors on this job, so take that out. No substance either. Any vendor or subcontractors? No? No. I don’t think so. Okay. Very basic water loss, you know, just cleaning and drying. So we’re not we’ve got full power, you know, no power loss. Any pack out or anything like that? Yeah. We’ll probably will have some pack out, and, you know, you could look at it two ways, whether you wanted to self perform it or bring in a a pack out subcontractor. Here’s our pack out window. Yep. So we’ll just what do you what do you wanna select in here? What do you feel like? Level level level two medium congestion. Okay. Alright. There are two thousand square feet in there for pack out. And since we’re using company owned equipment, you know, I think I’m pretty good on that number. I think we could leave structural drying blank. Good. If you wanna throw a number for, our taxes in there, I think our contents was around five thousand dollars for materials. Small, or what are thinking? Or for materials, you wanna did you purchase any purchase supplies? Yeah. It’d just be our supplies and materials. Okay. I’ll just throw something in here. And how much was it? Well, we already captured it above, right, in our supplies and materials? Yeah. So we should be alright. Yep. Alright. Alright. Anything else? No. Let’s see where that, spit out our ROM here. So our quick check per square foot, twenty six dollars, you know, is probably a little bit high. I might wanna go back and make some adjustments to to bring that down probably closer to twenty square feet just because we know based on our historical data, right, that, you know, we’re we’re not gonna perform that job at at that high of a square foot number. We could do this too. We could go, we’d go a range. We could throw that in here too. And so now our that would drop it down where our low range would be forty seven, and our high range would be so that would be our our median then would be fifty two. We could do that also. Tom and TJ, someone just pointed out in the chat that you there’s actually one too many people on your labor calculation. There was the one initial production labor, and then you added four more, and I think TJ only wanted four total. So I think that might Yeah. I mean, we could bump that down to three. That’s a good catch. Alright. We’ve got an active audience. I love it. Thank you. So then that would adjust our number down. So, yeah, I I would feel pretty you know, this might be a little high, but, again, this is your you wanna have a conservative estimate on the front end to capture and have a little bit of wiggle room in case you run into complications. So I’d be very confident going into this job, explaining to the customer and any, material interested party, you know, our numbers. Adjust supplies and materials at all, Maybe? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if there was anything I would adjust down, it would probably be the supplies and materials. So we’ll take that down to fifteen. Adjust it a little bit, not a not a whole lot. We also had someone else pointed out that you added demo when, I think you had said it was dry out only. I don’t know if you wanted to address that. There’s gonna be some level of demo to expose. You know? You have, you know, probably baseboards, you know, ceiling cavities you’re gonna have to access. So that’s why we applied that demo and debris removal because you will have some limited demo probably. There’s gonna be something on the job that you’re gonna it doesn’t it doesn’t always mean that, you know, you’re demoing the the whole facility. It’s limited demo. Yep. Someone someone also asked if there was a crawl space. This example, we we didn’t apply it to have a crawl space. You know, we just assumed a two level residential structure on a concrete slab. But if you if you were to, then you would just use a false airspace also in here. Or confined space, Tom. Yeah. Yep. And you can use the confined space also Yeah. If you were to do that. And you can see that’s gonna drop down our numbers when we get into the the the crawl space with confined space combined, it would take us down to one eighty nine. And so, yes, if we’re gonna do that, it can be added in very quickly. There was a question too that came in, Tom, while you while you’re on the production rate calculator. What is the water damage with demo option This is going to be if we were going to do the job, let’s say it was water damage with demo, and we weren’t gonna be doing any cleaning or anything, we could use this number, or can we get the right number here, and it would be four hundred. And so you have this option. And so this is going to be limited demo, maybe of maybe flood cuts where you’re coming in and you’re gonna be in and out. Then we also have the with no no demo. And so that would be six hundred. So this would be if you were just setting equipment and you weren’t doing any any demo at all to where we weren’t cutting any access and we were only doing you know, the technicians were coming in and setting it up. Because even if we’re only setting up equipment and we just have technicians on the job, we don’t have to have a full crew for there to be a production rate. There will always be a production rate on every single job that we do. And that’s why the Edge can be used on every single job that you do, because it applies that production rate. And so you can use these numbers if you if you want, so that’s a choice that you have in here, or you can also do above the line like we did here. And so if we wanted TJ, wanna throw in that, we’ll just throw that in here right now at four hundred and we’ll see what that does to our number. So automatically we’re gonna drop we dropped a little bit here, not dramatically. Forty two is our low number. Fifty one being our high number. Mid mid number being forty forty seven. What do you think, Tee? Is that alright? Well, I think it’s I think it’s still applying everything outside of the calculator. So Yes. Yes. It’ll still apply check those. Yeah. Yeah. It’ll still apply while it’s going right off of four hundred. And so what it’s going to do is is recalculate everything. But because of the square footage, our our labor is not going to change, and everything is really going to remain the same. So because of the square footage. So forty two would be the low, forty seven would be your medium. One other question that came in, and then we’ll, we’ll we’ll move on to the next the next section. Dan asked, doesn’t the software automatically calculate the labor requirements once the data is all entered, or do we have to or do we manually have to estimate labor time? Automatically calculate is going to be these four categories, And so your supervisor labor and your production labor is always going to calculate. And if you see the system when we first built it was you know, I’m a commercial guy. And so it was really built for commercial work. But then once we applied it to residential, we started to see, okay, we just make these adjustments and it will work. And so but with every project, we gotta look at these and say, alright, these are baselines. This is our the the baseline, and then we’re going to add into it with our experience. You know? Because we all we all estimate differently, and so and we all have a certain style. And the beautiful thing about the Edge is it adapt adapts to every single style that is out there. And so that’s why when you put together an estimate, we can have a a room full of people and give them exactly the same data, and they will have a different number because it’s just they’re different I I call it the human factor. And so the human factor is you’re gonna come in and make these adjustments. You’re gonna add in additional labor because you believe that’s what your what your experience tells you. And you’re also gonna come down and make the adjustments here based on your experience. And and as you get used to using the system, this will be automatic. You’ll come in and make these adjustments just like TJ did automatically, and just like I do also. And and so you will do the same thing. The more you use it right next so if you do an Xactimate and you use the Edge right next to it, you’ll start to see the similarities. And then all of the sudden, it’s like bam. You’ll get real close. And TJ’s gonna talk about that here in a second. How close he comes to Xactimate on day on a daily basis. Tom, just One of the prince Oops. Sorry. Go ahead, TJ. I was gonna say one of the the principles in estimating with the Edge is, like Tom said, it gives you that foundation of what the job might look like, but you’ve gotta take your experience as a project manager in the field and say is you know, look at it and say, is this reality? You can’t put one guy on a residential job to do all this work in seven days. So you’ve gotta you’ve gotta apply your real world experience, and it’s gonna give you that baseline to build upon. Tom, just before we we hand it off to TJ to give us some more of that real world perspective, we have a question to if we could click on the couple of the other tabs to show what this looks like in a final output. So can you show us that that scope tab and the the print and export? Absolutely. Now we didn’t enter in any of the information here in our project overview. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna slip back in here and show you the the Holiday Inn one. It’ll be more complete. Let me get into the right one here. So we’ll go to print and export, and we’ll select what we want to send to whoever we’re sending it to. If we want to include the the scope, we can we’ll click on it. If we don’t, we’ll just we’ll leave it blank. If we wanna include the the estimate breakouts, then we’ll we’ll do that. If not, we if we just wanna do the cover sheet, I was talking with a client yesterday, and he hadn’t used the system for a while, and so I was walking him through this. This is a new setup that we just applied in September. And so you click on that, and then you go to create your your PDF. And so away it goes, and here is what your client gets. And it looks like this regardless of of commercial or residential. And so here’s our cover sheet that has all of our information on it. Here’s our number, and then here’s our itemized estimate where we break out everything that everything that we did in the in the estimate is now in this in this breakout. We’ve we’ve added this sheet because we had some adjusters. They wanted more information. And so we we give everybody what they’re asking for. And and this goes for restorers also. This is a restoration tool built by a restorer. This is an estimating tool built by a restorer for restorers, and all of the updates that we’ve done in two thousand twenty five are from you, are from the restorer. And so this has been one of them, the restorer and also consultants. JS held and a lot of lot of consultants are on the Edge. They use the same tool. In the back behind it, you’ll see the scope of work. And then behind the scope will be our our time and materials. And TJ will tell you that he has come back in and got the job signed while his competitor was still measuring the building. And that’s how quickly it works because we could literally take this and email it to the client, get it approved, signed, sealed, and done that same very day that we finished our damage assessment. Great. We have, lots more questions coming in, but I think we will, I’m gonna hold off on those for now, and we’ll, address them a little bit, towards the end because I wanna get to to TJ’s quest or TJ’s portion of the of the presentation. Before we do that, we do have another poll that I’d like to, that I’d like to launch. And this one is, how are you currently creating your initial ROMs or that those first numbers? So we’d love to collect your input here. And, Tom, while people are responding to that, I’m gonna take over the screen share again. Okay. And Need to stop on my end? Nope. It should all be Alright. Seamless. Love it. I love it when technology works for us. Brilliant. Alright, TJ. I’m gonna, throw it over to you to give us some, real world, feedback results, of how you are interacting with, not only not only the Edge, but also how you’re interacting with Encircle. Because I know you use both systems on a daily basis and how you’re building. And Paul talked at the beginning about, this being an operator. And I know that you are sort of the ultimate operator, and so I’m curious to know how you incorporate these tools into your business to, to run a high performance team. Yeah. So I’ll throw things over to you. Thank you, Leah. I’m TJ Wiberley. Could have introduced myself earlier. I’m president of Patriot Restoration in Knoxville, Tennessee, we have been you know, let’s take a step back and look at, you know, our process before I really started leveraging this estimating methodology. You know, we used to use Xactimate and third party estimers. It would take, you know, sometimes days to even come up with a number or a scope of work. And every restorer knows that speed to lead and, you know, your speed and professionalism in front of the client to to present that you know what you’re doing is critical. It’s it’s everything. Anytime that you lose is losing money and losing opportunities. So, you know, our process before we started leveraging this was, you know, we were losing competitive situations not because we weren’t the best contractor, but because we were slow in getting a scope of work together and a ROM. So when you’re the slowest to respond, your your clients don’t have a high level of confidence in you, and you can’t grow your business, and capture these opportunities, with a slow process. So when it we looked at rebuilding this process. I went to Tom’s class in Florida, to learn about the Edge, and it just clicked for us. And that’s when we realized that we needed to change our process and completely change how we do things. And so now leveraging the system, we can put together a scope of work and arrange on the ROM, you know, sometimes within fifteen, twenty minutes, definitely within an hour or two, to not only show that we know what we’re doing, but our level of confidence in our numbers. And so that establishes trust with your your customers, with adjusters. You’re you’re providing them with a one page document that lays out your process from damage assessment to providing the scope and, you know, qualitative detail and your number. And so when you lay this out for your customers and material interested parties, you can break it down and explain these numbers with a high level of confidence. So we teach our team, you know, this estimating methodology, and we break that scope down, for our technicians for them to follow in the field. Our estimators know what the job, you know, requires and doesn’t require because we spend the time, the most time capturing that information and data, you know, in Encircle. We’re taking our inspection photos as you see on the screen here, you know, your thermal images, documenting the damage, doing a thorough damage assessment. And you combine that with your scopes, your floor plans, your sketches, to have a complete package at the front end of the job so that as you start the production of that, you have a budget to to track against and a rock solid scope to put inside your contract with that price. So looking at a, you know, a couple examples, you know, to tell you how we’ve applied this into the field, the photos here are residential loss, similar to what we described earlier. And, you know, we you guys saw how fast we could walk through putting together that ROM based off of just photos that we capture in Encircle. You can do this in the field, or you can also estimate with the Edge, you know, from the office. If you have an estimating hub, your technicians can take these photos in the field, giving you, you know, your your moisture points, in hydro, your your photos of the damage in Encircle, and the office can capture this information, and an estimator can plug into the Edge and get you a ROM and a scope of work very, very efficiently. So we’ve applied it to, you know, not only residential, but commercial as well. And so I had a a commercial water loss that was caused by a fire main burst. It was about fifteen thousand square feet. The property owner called us, and the property manager called another vendor to where we arrived on-site at the same time. You know? Very competitive situation. We’re both, you know, kinda lean and and maneuver to try to capture the job. And so we took this on-site and put together a scope of work very quickly, based on the the data that we had, you know, the the publicly available property data. We knew our square footage. We knew ceiling heights. We were standing right there and put together a ROM in about twenty minutes and had it available in PDF form in the client’s email, for him to review. And that professional presentation, our confidence in our numbers, is what won us a job, and my competitor was still measuring the building with a laser. So when you look at your ability to produce a scope in a ROM with an insane amount of speed and have a high level of confidence in it, the Edge, you know, it’s exactly that. It gives you that edge to be able to, you know, react quickly and show your professionalism. So now when we we build these scopes, you have to remember this is this is on the front end of a job. This is not your invoice. You’re producing a scope and a price to put in your contract to win those opportunities. And so when we provide these to adjusters and explain, you know, if they have questions on where we get our data, you can break it down for them. And the result of that is throughout your entire process as you produce that work, and track against that scope, it’s gonna make the back end way less of a fight and help every other process in your company, mainly being your accounts receivable. You know? It doesn’t matter if you use Xactimate on the back end. If it’s very close, your final invoice is very close and within that range on your ROM and you fully supported that scope of work through your documentation with tools like Encircle, it’s way less of a fight to argue and seek approvals, you know, and get paid. And so combining the Edge and Encircle, that’s that’s our process here at Patriot Restoration. Encircle is you know, it captures your job documentation and the damage, you know, your your moisture readings, your psychometrics in hydro, and then we leverage the Edge. You know? And now they’re gonna be combined into one platform to make it even faster. Thanks, TJ. When you look at, applying it with your field teams, and and Tom talks about, you know, labor production rates, how do you manage your teams to make sure that they’re not going offside with the goalpost you’ve set on labor production rates. Yeah. So the beautiful part about, the ROM within Edge is that is essentially your budget. And so you have a budget for labor, and you’re tracking against that through the whole project on a daily basis. And so you know if you wanna complete that project in our example in seven days with four guys and you’re three days in, but you’ve eaten up half of your labor budget, you know, are you on target to to, you know, finish that project on time with the amount of people that you outlined from the the get go? And so it it allows you as an operator to capture those inefficiencies the middle of a job versus looking back at the end of the job saying, where did we mess up? Yeah. And and, Tom, let me bring you into that discussion too because you review files. How often do the files that get reviewed go over on the, labor rates that you would assess from within the Edge? Is there a correlation there to number of files files getting pushed back on and labor production rates found in the Edge? Well, what we see is is if you’re using the Edge, you’re gonna you’re off that radar. If you’re not using the Edge, then it shows up in the labor. And so one of the first thing that we do when we’re looking at a a file, and this is the little secret that I’m gonna give to everybody, this is a freebie, is the first thing that a file when somebody’s reviewing your file, the first thing they’re gonna do is a square footage number. And so they’re gonna take your the total of the job divided by the square footage gives them the the square footage cost per square foot. An experience someone like me, if I’m looking at that Holiday Inn, for example, someone like me is going to know if that Holiday Inn came in at twenty five dollars a square foot instead of the fourteen dollars a square foot, I’m gonna have questions because it’s like, okay, why my experience is telling me that that doesn’t that something’s wrong. And usually well, not usually. Every single time, it’s the labor. There’s too much labor on the job. It’s not you know, and that’s going to bring down your production rate. So remember we wanted to be at one fifty, now people are operating at fifty square feet, sixty square feet per person per day. So think about fifty square feet. That’s all you’re producing. And once you start looking at your jobs and thinking and thinking about what are we actually producing, you’ll be asking yourself, man, why are we why are we not producing? But the only reason and then the reason why people get in trouble is they just don’t know what they they need to look for. And these are the two your square footage numbers and your labor production rates are the two main factors that you need to manage your jobs with. Thanks, guys. TJ, there’s a couple of questions that have come in before we move on to, to more of this great, group discussion. Quite a few questions have come in around how does this how does this work in terms of, different types of jobs? How how receptive are TPAs and carriers to receiving, this number versus something like an Xactimate, estimate? Can you just talk through that a little bit? I know that you do still use Xactimate in some in some cases. Can you just talk through that a little bit? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, TPAs, you know, you you can track with TPAs to follow their process, so you’re not really gonna be able to follow this process. But what I love utilizing this is educating adjusters on the data. And so by taking that that itemized estimate that you saw earlier that breaks down your ROM into labor, materials, and equipment, you can explain to adjusters what the production rate is and what it, you know, how it translates into your ROM. And so when you when you educate your customers and adjusters on the methodology, it they start to understand, and it it makes sense. You can still do whatever you want on the back end. You have to remember, this is the front end of your process. So whether you’re billing time and materials or using Xactimate on the back end, you can still invoice utilizing, you know, your your same methods that you’re using today. It’s just backed up on the front end by a very powerful set of data that, you know, like Tom said, production rates are around every industry. You look at manufacturing. Any industry has a production rate for the output of the work. And so by explaining that to people and bolstering it with, look, we’re still gonna present our invoice and exact to make form for you. This is just how we come to our our estimate faster, and they’re very receptive to it. Yeah. Transparency upfront, you know, for adjusters helps in setting loss reserve. I mean, they always want that report as detailed as possible on the first day, and this just provides that detail. So overall, we found that they’ve been receptive to the greater degree of detail. And it certainly helps when when the invoice comes in, there’s gonna be less questions because, hopefully, that discussion has happened upfront. Yeah. And then I and then I and then I think Paul is is it’s easy to read, you know, for the client. Yeah. Just very easy for the client to read and understand. Yeah. Tom, that’s and TJ, that’s a question that actually came in is like, how are you what’s your your process for physically, like, showing this to to the client? Like, are you are you getting them to sign this? Is this part of a package? Is this part of sort of, like, an onboarding sales process? Can you walk us through that a little bit? Just how you’re using it as an educational tool for the for the client. Yeah. For me, it’s all of the above that you just mentioned. So we actually take the scope of work, and we put it in an addendum to our our contract or your work authorization, whatever you wanna call it. So we’re putting that scope, you know, in writing in our contract as well as that range of price so that it creates a a binding contract with your client. There are several you have to have three components in your contract to create that cost incurred for your client when it’s an insurance claim, and it’s scope of work, price, and the period of performance, how long it’s gonna take you. So we embed those three components into our contract to create a really bulletproof, you know, agreement between our customers and our company. Great. One of the questions, really leans leads us nicely into the first topic that I wanted to talk to, around, use cases for the Edge. So, some of the questions have come in. Is this more for t and m jobs or commercial jobs? And I know you touched on it a little bit, and we showed a residential. But can we talk can the three of you just sort of talk talk about the Edge and Encircle as part of the entire portfolio that a restorer can can use it for and all their different types of the different the different work that they’ll see and how that ties into, like, the profitability and and profit margins. I’ll throw that over to you, Paul, for oh, go ahead, TJ. Go ahead, TJ. You you’ve taken it off, and I’ll back you up, buddy. Yeah. I’d be happy to. I mean, we apply it to every single job because it doesn’t matter if it’s residential, commercial. The same principles still apply. It’s just at a different scale. You can take this and apply it to every single job type. You just have to make those adjustments in your production rate to account for the size and scope of the work that you’re gonna be performing. So to me, it’s you can use it on any job type. Yeah. And so, you know, there was a question in the chat about floor plan. Encircle, floor plan is there. You can, you know, see the numbers off the floor plan and plug it right into the Edge. So that’s not a problem. Looking out further, the floor plan and all the detail in Encircle will eventually go into our AI scope that will automatically plug in with the Edge. That’s a future, but today, you can just take the elements and Encircle and plug them into the Edge. You saw there’s not that many fields in there. And now you have confidence in the job. Your team has confidence in the job. The customer has confidence in you, and you’re able to answer the questions to the adjuster. This isn’t your estimate. This is your rough order of magnitude with all of the backup data that you’re, encapsulating in Encircle. And so, you know, the output from the Edge can be pulled right into your Encircle report and sent to the adjuster, uploaded into exact analysis. Again, you know, the biggest thing is inundate them with highly relevant, easy to read data so that the onus is on them to find a crack in your documentation and not you to prove every point where you don’t have the level of, detail that is required. And, Tom, I’ll throw it over to you with any comments. Yeah. It was it can be used on any on any size job. Now when we created it created the formulas in ninety eight, we were we were a commercial restoration company. And when I started Large Loss Mastery, my the training program, is when I started to realize that it translated into residential also. And TJ has done an an excellent job of you know, he came to he came to our our class here in in Cape Canaveral, and he’s taken and transformed how he does business. And now he’s you know, we you know, we call it the matrix, and that’s where it began, because we when we started putting these together, putting the formulas together, it was the same time the the movie The Matrix came out. And so we always joke about it, you know, I’d like Keanu Reeves, you know, he’s like seeing the, you know, the numbers and the bullets and he’s like dodging everything, because he can all of a sudden, he can see everything. So what what sometimes happens in our industry now is we get into silos and stay in your lane. This is a tool that allows you to manage your business as you’re doing it right now, but also grow your business to where now you can look at it through the lens, through the wide lens. And that’s what we want. We wanna give you a tool that is proven and I’m still out there in the field with you guys and using everything that we teach what we what we teach, we do. And so it’s all it’s all all there and that’s what makes it so effective is it’s had such a long history of success. Alright. I’m gonna throw a throw another question out to you guys. Tom, I’ll start with you. You have been in the industry for for many years. What’s the biggest shift that you’re seeing, let’s say, in the last, you know, twelve to eighteen months and and going forward? What’s the biggest shift that you’re seeing and how contractors are approaching estimating and maybe how they how you think maybe they should think differently about estimating going forward? Well, you know, I I started forty years ago and a lot of changes. You know, there’s been a lot of technology changes. I think the best changes that we have seen are in the in the software. We can track jobs, track our documentation, but I can tell you the number one thing that’s always been difficult to get on jobs is documentation. No matter how easy you make it, it’s like, dang, you know, daily daily daily, you gotta get the daily reports in. And and that’s always been an issue. So for everybody out there, take advantage of Encircle’s products because where where we’re at and where we’re going with this is is phenomenal. What bothers me about what’s happening with some of the the younger restorers is getting into that, you know, stuck in in your lane type of mentality. And and I don’t like that. I’m you know, I come from a world where there no there were no TPAs. Back back in the eighties and nineties, there there was no such thing as a TPA until the late nineties and early two thousands. So we went out, we’d seen a job, we got a job, and we sold it, we ex you know, we’re doing the estimate, we did everything and performed the job. I don’t want restorers to think that there’s only one way to do things. You know, there’s you know, Xactimate is an incredible tool. It was originally created for construction projects, and it translated into into the carriers because obviously they want a standardized deal. But it is not the only way things the only estimating system out there. The industry as we know it was born on time and materials. And so you can use the Edge strictly for time and materials, or you can plug in into the Edge, you can plug in Xactimate rates. You can it’s a perfect companion tool for whatever estimating system that you’re using. What it’s made for is to give you the edge and give you the power to create a a a number quickly that you can have faith in, that you can you can run the project on, and also all the data that comes with it, all the breakout, what what you’re expecting the job to be. And it looks really, really professional and and easy to read to the client. That’s the big thing. You don’t wanna create a ROM that has a hundred and or two thousand line items. That’s not a ROM. You know, two thousand line items in in forty pages. That’s not a ROM. That’s an invoice. And so your ROM is boom, to the point. Here’s what it’s going to be. Here’s our estimated range, what we’re expecting it to be. And so if you’re turning in a a hundred and thirty page document, that’s not a ROM because it’s gonna take somebody two days just to read it and to see what’s going on. You wanna produce a ROM to where you can sit down and have a a forty five minute meeting and sign the job, and that’s what this is all about. It’s about giving the restorer the power. And so that’s what what I what I from coming from the from the the child of the eighties in restoration, I want the restorers of today to have that that power that we had back then where we weren’t there were no constraints on us. We were not in any type of lane or a silo. It was wide open, and that’s the way you need to treat your businesses. It’s wide open. Don’t leave anything behind. Make sure you’re capturing everything and and being as profitable and as efficient as possible. DJ, do you have anything you wanted to add add to that from from your perspective? I mean, you’re in the field every day. How are you seeing this this shift to taking back control play out, day to day for you? Yeah. I mean, in my opinion, there’s a shift to, you know, retail where restorers are contracting directly with their customers. Deductibles are higher. Insurance isn’t always involved, and this tool gives you the ability to present, you know, your knowledge and professionalism with with accuracy. And as we move forward, you know, with all the chain changes in technology, the AI, which is coming into Encircle, your data inside your business is gonna become more critical. And that’s what’s changed the game for me and my business is actually tracking this data and see how we perform on our production rate and on a square foot basis. And so we know, you know, with a high degree of certainty where we’re gonna be on jobs and how we’re gonna produce them. So data management is, you know, on the back end of using the Edge, actually tracking how you perform on these jobs, it it it can change your business. You you teed that up perfectly for me, TJ, because my next question was gonna be for Paul, around, AI and and where does AI and automation fit into all of this and this shift that that Tom talked about. Yeah. Thanks, Levy. Really, the field documentation is a critical part of substantiating the work that you’ve done because restorers get paid for the work they they document, not the work they do. But we’re able to take that documentation now and build components that would have taken you hours and hours of administrative overhead and reduce that substantially and drive up the accuracy, meaning not leaving line items, on the table that are high margin that will help, in your profitability. So think about, you know, our floor plan, our photos, videos, notes, your video recordings of the cause of loss resulting damages and work that needs to be done, all generating a detailed scope that’s also plugging directly into the Edge, giving you, you know, number one, the the the ability to look at the scope, doc you know, make it your own, edit it, and and and make it the final scope, and then generate the ROM through the Edge with very little administrative overhead. You’ll be able to do that in a field. Your, estimator in the office, will be able to do it in the office if we want, but this will take a fraction of the time that it used to so that you can spend more time, like TJ said, managing the important elements of your job, gaining an understanding of the resources you need and what those resources need to be applied to before you even, have them go out on-site. So instead of a historical looking in and going, why didn’t we make money? This is a proactive look to know exactly how we’re gonna make money, and I’m gonna track this job to this profit metric. It’s the way Amazon runs. It’s the way all scaling businesses run globally. And like I said earlier, this industry is not going anywhere. Your businesses are solid if you become an operator, and that’s what I’m super excited about. We’re now gonna leverage the hard work you put into learning Encircle, and then help you really run your business. Yeah. I think that’s a good point. I think, TJ mentioned to me, earlier this week that I think, TJ, correct me if I’m wrong, but you spend ninety ninety percent of your time is spent on that scope upfront. So taking what we’re what we’re doing in Encircle to really cut that administrative time of producing that scope just based on the documentation that they’re getting to that scope faster. So then you can take that information that’s done within minutes, add it to your ROM that you’re creating in minutes and just being able to be on top of what what’s ahead and being able to plan and and look at your data. I think that’s that’s super exciting for what we’re what we’re looking ahead for. Super exciting. Also controversial. So I’m gonna throw up a poll, and I’m just curious to to get everybody’s perspective. If there is a position in the workflow, your entire workflow that you would most like to see disrupted by automation, what would that would that position be? So this is the, the the million dollar question. It can can ruffle some feathers, but we like to, you know, we like to be disruptive around here. So I’m gonna leave that poll, pull up for a little bit. And we are just starting to come to the end of our time together, and I wanna make sure that we leave time for some of the questions. There’s been some questions coming in around logistics, around purchasing the Edge, which is super exciting. But I wanna just get to some key takeaways. So, Tom, I’m gonna start with you. You talked a lot about production rate and knowing, and and really nailing that that labor and your staffing number. So if you if restorers could remember one thing about production rate estimating, what should it be? I’ll give you I’ll give you some, the the one thing that you have to remember, and Paul touched on it just a second ago, is every major manufacturing facility in the world manages their factories on production rate. Amazon is a perfect example. They know down to the minute what they’re expecting out of their people or robots, because it doesn’t matter if it’s people or robots, it’s still production, and there’s still a production rate involved. And so what we’ve what we wanna do is take what they’re doing that those companies that are managing their their time perfectly. We wanna do the same thing for rest for restoration companies. Because once we start doing that, all of a sudden, there’s nothing to argue about in our invoices. All of a sudden, you’re getting paid quicker. All of a sudden, there’s less blowback. All of a sudden, you’re getting more approvals on the front end. All of a sudden, things work smoother. But the problem is is we we don’t make that transition. I’ll give you two numbers to remember for the rest of your life for everybody who’s on this call. Two numbers. So one is your square footage number, and your square footage number, you’re gonna have a range, and you’re gonna start in this range of about ten dollars to fifteen dollars a square foot. You’re gonna go up or you’re gonna go down based on the difficulty or the ease of the project. Your production rate, your square square foot per person per day, you’re gonna start at one fifty, and you’re gonna go up or go down based on the the complexities of the job or the ease of the job. So if it’s easier, the number is going to be higher. If it’s lower if it’s lower, then it’s gonna be more difficult job. Maybe it’s a mold job, maybe it’s a industrial job where we’re in and out of PPE all all day long, lots of filters and stuff, our production rate is going to go down. So think about that one fifty on every job that you go out to now and think about, okay, is it going to go up or go down from one fifty on this particular job based on the criteria of the of that project. Great. Thanks, Tom. Tj, I’m gonna kick it over to you for your your last thoughts on, advice that you would give, to the folks who have joined us today who are considering, changing up their process as well. What do you what what advice can you give to them? What’s changed the most for you since since transforming your your business processes and becoming more of a more of an operator? Yeah. I think for me is, I would try to think outside the box and step out of the norms and doing it the way that everybody else does it. Because there there are other ways to do it, and it can dramatically impact your business, you know, from a process standpoint, from a people standpoint, all the way down to your profitability. So don’t be afraid to step outside the box and try something different, but lean into it and track the data, on the back end as well. Great. And, Paul, I’m gonna before we take some of the last questions that have come through, I’m gonna leave you with with the last words. What’s I know you touched on this a little bit, but sum it up for us. What’s next? And Circle has acquired the Edge. What’s next for the Edge and the Encircle, as a as a team? Yeah. It’s all about integration. And, remember too, we we operate as an open ecosystem. We do have APIs on, GitHub. Maybe not too many people are familiar with it, but you, the restorer, are in control of what other systems you wanna connect and circle into. So we will always maintain that, but there’s some certain elements that we think are just a natural fit with the Encircle platform because you’ve got the data all in one place. So applying the ROM, using AI to auto generate the scopes, and then eventually using, the the scopes in our in in the Edge to generate, an estimate. So the estimate could be out of exact to make, could be out out of, hopefully, totality, estimate, could be custom price list, could be t and m. We want to democratize how the estimate is written because at the end of the day, we’ve got all of the referenceable, auditable details within the platform. You’ve captured those as a restore or you should. And then it’s about now you applying your rates because it’s a free market system. What are the rates that you need to charge in order to make a profit? And you define the profit you wanna set for your organization. So, again, to wrap it up, it’s leveraging the hard work you’re doing in Encircle to get paid to then drive greater efficiency upstream and greater control over your business for each restore. Great. Thanks, Paul. We’ll just we’re moving on to the the last section before we before we wrap for the day. Just a couple of questions that have come through. The first one is for you, Tom. Does the Edge have predictive reasoning for labor base labor based on company, data that changes over time? And second part of the question is, can we see our production rates, or is this based only on the built in numbers? Here’s that’s a great question. Well, I’ll I’ll tackle the we’ll we’ll have we’ll come back to each one of you has labor production rates that you’re operating on right now. Each job that you have performed, there is a labor production rate inside that project. So you can use either the production rates that are in in the Edge currently, those are your baselines. So what we’ve done is we’ve we’ve created baselines for you can start. You can start, you can go up or go down. It’s totally adjustable to the user and and how you perform. Because we all perform differently on projects, But we give you those baselines. And so from there, you can make those adjustments. So what was the first part of the question, Leah? I’m sorry. Back to it. So what so It talks about does the Edge, have predictive reasoning for labor based on company data that changes over time? I think it’s it’s related to the first the the second part that you already answered. Yeah. The the it’s it’s all it’s all based on how you perform and how you estimate. And so what you’ll find is as the more you use the Edge, it becomes how you’re thinking. And so just like when TJ and I fired up, if I have a client that called me up right now and they might be they might be looking at a million square foot building, we will and they give me all the data, we will have a number within thirty minutes. And it doesn’t matter if it’s if it’s a if it’s a thousand square feet or or a million square feet. You can even use it, you know, all the way down. I think TJ will tell you five hundred square feet is is kind of the minimum on the the bottom. You can still use it, but I’ve had guys use it, you know, just on use it for factoring a board up job. And and so Let me take this in a in a different way. If you were using predictive reasoning, you’re you’re kinda looking at a historical view because you would need to see how you’re producing in order to give you the prediction. Really, what we’re doing here is giving you a baseline, which you can calculate on your own. Just go back to projects and say, you know, what were my, you know, my my labor cost and the square footage? So using the same methodology that Tom laid out for you, calculate it and say, are you happy with that? Did I make a profit on that job? Maybe I need to adjust my labor rate expectations with my team on the next job of this type. So, really, it’s a it’s it’s a fluid situation, but I would guarantee you that TJ, in his mind, he knows exactly what the production rate should be on each of those jobs. Right? Yep. Yeah. And and the main reason I know that is because we track it on every job. So after the job’s over, we look at the square footage, how many man days did it take, and how many guys did it take to perform it, which gives you your production rate looking back at the job. And so I know in my company, across all jobs that we do, that we average a production rate of around a hundred and forty. And so I start with that as my baseline going into every job and adjust up or down based on the scope. Yep. And in the future, as we integrate in, the Edge into Encircle, we will track that across all jobs and give you what your current run rate is. But again, you’ll need to adjust that based on whether that’s delivering the profit margin you expect or not. And that way and that will be per type type of job too, Paul, where it’ll be fire, water, mold, whatever it is, you will have that running number. And so so yes, it’s it’s very exciting very exciting things. Great. TJ, I’m gonna ask the the next question to you, and Xactimate has come up quite a bit in the in the chat. But how do you find when you are using, let’s say, like, T and M or Xactimate, how accurate or how close is your your ROM typically coming to your sort of final end of the chain invoice? Yeah. So, I mean, you can take your labor rates that are in Xactimate, plug them into the Edge where they match, and we’ve come within a hundred dollars of our ROM using Xactimate for our invoice, because we’ve gotten so good at scoping and, you know, mapping that ROM to that scope. So as you use the more that you use it, the more fine tuned you become to your own data and your own production teams, and you can get very accurate. I mean, we had a commercial loss. That example that I gave that was competitive that we won, it was a two hundred and eighty thousand dollar job, and I think my ROM range was two sixty to three ten. So we we just about nailed it. Right. That touches a little bit on on another question that I have for you guys, around learning curve, and we know that it’s that learning new things is is always fun, learning new software especially. So, Tom, TJ, what’s the learning curve like, with the Edge? TJ, I’ll let I’ll let you start because I I’m I’m partial. Yeah. I mean, when I first started using the Edge, I I went home after taking the class and, you know, practicing with it and just started doing it on jobs, not even as a part of our workflow, but just started using it. And it’s very intuitive, especially to your operationally minded, you know, PMs or technicians because it’s stuff that they’re looking at every day. Those components that go into your production rate are are the component same components that you look at on every single job. So it’s it’s very easy to apply, and it’s just knowing having a baseline of, you know, five to ten jobs where you track your production rate and you you do this process on the front end and see how you come out and they can fine tune adjustments adjustments from there. So to me, the the learning curve is very easy. Very much so easier than exact make. Yep. I think one of the keys is to, as TJ said, calculate the production rate you’ve had on on like jobs in the past, and that’ll give you a a a a sense of where you are now today and then track and then compare that to what the Edge sets as the median on your labor production rates and then make a a decision from there. But you’ve got the historical data and it’s fairly easy to calculate, I would say. Correct, Tom? Yes. Yes. And and always remember that the the EDGE was created by restorer in the field. And I need we we needed numbers that would that we could get quickly, and so it’s it’s it doesn’t have a huge learning curve. It’s new when you first see it, but it’s built on on old formulas. And so formulas that are proven, I shouldn’t say old, but proven formulas over the years. And so it may be new to you, but once you learn it and you and you use it, you’ll be like, man, where why have I not been using this for the last, you know, fifteen years? Tom, Paul, TJ, that’s it. We are at time. Anything any final words for people before we go? Yeah. My my final word is I want all of you to be operators. I want all of you to run profitable shops, scale. The opportunity is there. We’re here to help you get to to that point. It’s it’s within everybody’s reach to achieve this. So thank you, everyone. Thanks, Tom, TJ, Paul, for joining us. This was a great session, and, we’ll see you next time. Thank you. Have a great day, everybody, and thanks for hosting, Leah. Thanks. You. Cheers, everybody.