Restoration Pros Unplugged

Greg Hawkins went three weeks without hearing from his son after Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina. Then a stranger texted him asking for the address and sent a crew with water and fuel. That stranger is now his boss.

In this Veterans Day episode, host Clinton James sits down with two veterans running a BluSky branch together in Western Pennsylvania.

James Wiard spent four years in the Navy as a master at arms on harbor security, owned a restoration franchise in Charlotte for five years, and is now Vice President for Western Pennsylvania at BluSky. Greg Hawkins spent 13 years in the Army between the infantry and the chaplain corps, earned two degrees while deployed, and is now the branch's Project Director and head of business development.

You'll walk away with:

• Why Greg says being decisive beats being certain, and how that plays out on a loss
• The empathy-plus-competence approach that earns a homeowner's trust in the first conversation
• How James delegates without becoming the bottleneck
• The nine-month coaching habit that got an experienced tech to stop asking permission
• What fewer adjusters in the field has changed about documentation and negotiation
• Where AI is actually saving them time right now
• Why they both tell transitioning service members to look at restoration

Greg doesn't do LinkedIn on purpose — he'd rather meet you in person at an industry event.

Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

To every veteran listening — thank you for your service.

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

Every restorer who walks into a commercial building leads with the same line: we do fire and water damage. The facility manager has heard it. You leave with nothing.

In this episode, host Clinton James welcomes back Jeff Carrier, co-founder of Restoration ERP. Jeff ran commercial sales for a restoration company starting in 2010, back when a disaster preparedness plan meant weeks of work and a three-ring binder. He built Restoration ERP so independents could compete for commercial work against the regionals and nationals.

The focus here is the site access map, and how it gets you in the door in about five minutes.

You'll walk away with:

• What a site access map covers and why a property manager wants one for their own reasons
• Why most commercial facilities have nothing current or usable
• The walk-in approach that doesn't sound like every other restorer
• The discovery questions that lead straight to a deliverable you can hand over on the spot
• How to turn a cold walk-in into a second meeting
• Why becoming an approved vendor is only the halfway point to step one
• How the map earns its keep after you've already won the account

Jeff builds one live during the episode, so the YouTube version is worth a watch for that part.

See how the site access map works: https://restorationerp.com/features/site-access-map/

Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

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

Best month ever. $250,000 in revenue. Four thousand dollars in the bank and payroll due tomorrow. If you've lived that, this episode is for you.

In part one of The Profitable Restorer series, host Clinton James sits down with Nikole Mackenzie, founder and CEO of Momentum Accounting. Nikole started out as a tax and audit CPA and has spent more than 15 years helping owners make sense of their numbers. Her team builds and runs the finance function for restoration companies inside Albi and QuickBooks Online.

This episode covers the first two phases: Trust and Understand.

You'll walk away with:

• Why revenue grows while cash shrinks, and what to do about it in the next two weeks
• The three financial reports you should see monthly, and the one almost nobody reads
• The 50-30-20 rule for direct costs, overhead, and profit
• Why she always starts on the balance sheet, and the red flags she finds there
• Why a roller coaster P&L is usually an accounting problem, not a business problem
• The difference between a bookkeeper, a controller, and a CFO, and which one you're missing
• What a real month-end close should look like

Nikole put together four free tools for listeners: her Profit Points Assessment, the 2-Week Cash Planner from this episode, an Albi and QuickBooks Online job costing toolkit, and a Business Value Roadmap. One form gets you all four.

Download them here: 
https://momentum-accounting.quantogrowth.com/podcast

Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

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

A lab tech showed up to an active hazmat job site in flip-flops, grabbed drywall with his bare hands, and dropped it in an open tool bag. The invoice was $600. That's the moment AccuGuard started.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Ben Doebler, founder of AccuGuard Environmental. Ben came out of restaurant management and hood cleaning in East Tennessee, moved his family to the Portland area, and found restoration through a Google search. He built the business to just shy of $18 million before selling it, and now he's franchising the mobile environmental lab he created along the way.

You'll walk away with:

• How a nine-story courthouse flood became a $6 million job, and how they got paid after coverage was denied
• Why staying debt-free let them float that job for nearly a year
• Why he trained his management team for commercial large loss years before he needed it
• The truth about "next day" lab turnaround and when the clock actually starts
• What skipping environmental testing really costs in fines, payment, and lawsuits
• What selling a restoration company looks like from listing to close

Want to learn more about the AccuGuard franchise opportunity? Go to AccuGuardFranchise.com.

Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

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

You pay to make the phone ring. Then a tech walks into a house, has a conversation you'll never hear, and that conversation decides whether you got the job.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Nick D'Urbano of Porter. Nick spent 20 years in investment banking, venture capital, and building software companies before turning toward the trades. Porter records in-home conversations and phone calls, scores them against your playbook, and shows a manager exactly where to coach.

You'll walk away with:

• Why coaching a field team without recordings is like coaching a game you never watched
• How recording actually works in the home, including consent in two-party states
• Where most restoration teams sit on conversion, and where the top performers sit
• Why incentives have to be in place before any of this works
• Why you should never hire just one salesperson
• How this speeds up hiring and firing decisions
• Where to start tomorrow using the call recordings you already have

Want to see what this would look like in your business? Nick's team runs a free conversion and ROI assessment using your own numbers. Book one here: https://calendly.com/nick-runporter/porter-demo-wrm

Learn more at runporter.com.

Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

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

One 11-inch rain event cost Tyler Hendrix and his partners an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 in a single day, because they weren't built to handle the volume.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Tyler Hendrix, co-owner of Voda South Kansas City and incoming general manager of 1-Tom-Plumber Kansas City. Tyler came out of construction project management, building municipal water plants across five states. A ski trip with two friends turned into a business, and they opened their doors in April 2025.

You'll walk away with:

• Why a year of trying to buy an existing business never worked out
• How carpet cleaning gives them a non-emergency touchpoint and a steadier cash flow
• The first hire they held onto too long, and what it cost them
• What the storm taught them about paying for capacity before you need it
• What a fractional CFO and a 13-week cash flow forecast changed
• Why the plumber referral war pushed them into 1-Tom-Plumber
• Why Tyler says restoration's low barrier to entry is just deferred

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Want to connect with Tyler? Find him on LinkedIn or on Instagram at @TylerHendrix360.

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Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

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

At 20, Caleb Owens took over a $525K mitigation department that had bad hires, heavy churn, and stolen equipment. Fifteen months later it was running at $1.5M with 37% profit.

Then he left, liquidated his Roth IRA at 23, and started his own company.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Caleb Owens, owner of Kern Water Damage Restoration in Bakersfield, California. Caleb is 24, came up through demo and containment work, and is now building AI systems most restoration companies twice his size don't have.

You'll walk away with:

• How he grew a small mitigation department more than 3x in profit in 15 months
• Why his first AI build wasted four hours on a 20-minute email, and what he changed
• How he connects calls, texts, email, and documentation so AI can actually help
• How his system drafts carrier responses overnight
• Why most owners let their inbox decide their priorities
• How he answers the premium-increase objection with real numbers
• Why he gives his whole SOP library away for free

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Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com

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

Rick McGuigan asked Larry Braun to join his company for ten years. Larry kept saying "you can't afford me." They finally settled it on a napkin.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Rick McGuigan and Larry Braun of Pine Ridge Cleaning and Restoration in Cleveland, Ohio. Rick bought a small carpet cleaning business in 2003 and grew it to $3.5M largely on his own. Larry came out of 30 years in steel. Together they've taken Pine Ridge into mitigation, reconstruction, and contents.

You'll walk away with:

• Why the visionary and integrator split works, and why two visionaries would have sunk them
• Why Larry spent a year learning the business before changing any of it
• How they built a contents division in eight weeks after avoiding it for years
• Why they hired a department manager with no restoration experience at all
• Why Pine Ridge doesn't use job titles, and what that does for the culture
• How they handle disagreements without letting them fester

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Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit https://restorationprosunplugged.com

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

Malik Stevens believed what everyone says about TPAs. Then he ran five fire claims in six weeks, and the first one billed almost $60,000.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Bobby Thomas, CEO of Extreme Services, and Malik Stevens, a Louisiana owner converting his independent company into an Extreme franchise. Bobby came up from carpet cleaning to technician to owner and runs corporately across five states. Malik covers Lafayette, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge.

You'll walk away with:

• Why the margin vs. volume argument doesn't hold up once you run the numbers
• How to find margin on a job when the obvious line item isn't billable
• Why getting approvals before work starts ends billing fights before they start
• How tighter documentation on program work improved every job they run
• What the independent side actually costs you in waiting, guessing, and unpaid work
• Why Bobby caps his franchise growth on purpose

Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com.

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

Most restorers think contents is easy. Put stuff in a box. Kristen Stein says the box was never the hard part.

In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Kristen Stein, owner of Blue Kangaroo Packouts in Randolph, New Jersey. Kristen came out of international trade, bought a restoration franchise three years ago, and now runs 20,000 square feet of storage serving New Jersey, New York, and parts of Pennsylvania.

You'll walk away with:

• Why contents is an owner-operator business, not a passive one
• How to set homeowner expectations when a job runs three to six months instead of three weeks
• Where contents companies quietly lose money on box sizing and inventory
• How to push back on carrier guidelines with documentation instead of arguments
• How she uses video and AI estimating to size crews and trucks before anyone rolls out
• What restorers should ask before handing a contents company a client's entire home

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Subscribe to Restoration Pros Unplugged and visit restorationprosunplugged.com

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