Ep 203 - "Restoration Done Right: The Clean Claims Standard"

0:00 All right, welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm running solo today. Brandon's got some other stuff he's doing. He'll be back next week for a normal recording. But I've got Lane Larson on the show today. And this is his second time on the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. Most of you or many of you know Lane as the founder of Clean Claims. Clean Claims, a software solution for our industry. And I think one of the things I love about Lane is he has so much experience and background. As an entrepreneur, having started, run, sold multiple restoration companies himself, he He's a true operator. And you'll hear this in the conversation we're going to have.

0:40 We do talk quite a bit about clean claims. This is not an advertisement. Lane did not pay to get on the show. But I think there's a couple of reasons why we have him on the show. One, he's just a great interview. You'll hear that. He's just got loads of insight on operating a restoration company and the struggles that you all face. And I think there's just a fair bit of insight. If you listen and you kind of read between the lines, you know, Lane talks a lot about sort of best practices in terms of how we train our technicians, how we equip them in the field. You know, we talk some about just our overall mitigation process and what's important and how do we create transparency for, With, obviously, as we're submitting our invoices to our clients and carriers, our invoices are getting reviewed by adjusters and so forth.

1:30 How do we leverage transparency to get paid what we're billing and get paid more quickly? And I think there's a pretty direct line between us embracing transparency in our field processes and us getting paid more reliably. And obviously, that's a real huge topic today in restoration. And it would seem that clean claims goes a long way to solving that problem for us as restorers. So buckle up. If you've never heard of Clean Claims, get your notebook out, take some notes, and then reach out to Lane so he and his team can get you a demo. It's a pretty neat product. We have an awesome conversation here. Enjoy. Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head Harden Boots podcast?

2:14 I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. Okay, and we're live. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I had to do this new gong feature today. We're broadcasting live on LinkedIn. So hey, everybody in restoration world. I'm here with Lane Larson, the founder of Clean Claims, a rapidly growing software company here and solutions company here in the restoration industry.

3:02 Lane and his team have been friends of ours, Brandon and I, for a while. He's been on the Head, Heart & Boots podcast before. But it's been a minute. What's that law of technology where things like double in speed every three years? It's like outdated every like six months or something. Yeah, I forget what it's called. But anyway, things change so fast. We saw Lane and Paul and the crew at some conference recently. We're like, man, we're overdue for another podcast. So here we are. Here we are. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Welcome, dude. Well, listen, one of the things I want to kind of call out as part of our show today is something that I know you're very familiar with. I mean, you've successfully started, bought, sold multiple restoration companies. And so you're an experienced operator and a very successful operator, not just a software guy.

3:45 In fact, not primarily a software guy. I'm not a software guy. I just joke. I just work here. Yeah. But I think something that all owners like yourself will relate to is it is very difficult to make decisions on software in this industry. Like all of us have a felt need. We got challenges, problems, repetitive tasks and stuff in our business that we know we need software for. But then like at what point do we switch to different software? Because that's a hassle beyond hassles. Oh, yeah. And then how do you evaluate value? You know, it's like how many better features or better user interface or cooler looking or functioning software, how much better does it need to be to justify making a switch?

4:30 I mean, these are all the things that I think people really wrestle with in our industry. And then at the end of the day, I think most people generally feel like once they then onboard a software, it's not as great or it's not as easy to set up or use as it seemed to be during the sales process. And I don't care who you are, no matter how honest and intentional all of us are. I mean, that's just a very common thing is it ends up being a little more difficult or tricky than it looked like it was going to in the sales presentations. Right. So totally. So my hope with today is, first of all, for people that aren't familiar with Clean Claims, I'm going to give you a second here to just give us the download. What is Clean Claims? Because I think it's different now than it was a couple of years ago, even.

5:12 And then I think I want us to get into just the landscape of field operations software and maybe where you see it going and likewise where Clean Claims is going. So anyways, start with... What is Clean Claims? Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on, man. This is awesome. It has been a while. So this is awesome. I'm stoked. So yeah, Clean Claims in a nutshell, right, is we're a field documentation tool. It's built for technicians. It's built from the technician's perspective, right? And so to your point... all the chaos, all the stuff in this industry. And I think people can relate that are contractors like me is that the over-promising, the under-delivering, the futures and promises, and three years later, it still hasn't come out and all that nightmare, right?

5:55 So clean claims is field documentation and then remote monitoring all at the same time, right? So essentially what we do is we make it, it's all process enforcement driven, right? So it's not about whether I trust the technician or not. It's about like, it was built because of all the mistakes that I made at my companies. And it's just like when you're doing five jobs a day and you've ripped them all out and it's, Midnight, you know, you get home and it's midnight and you're trying to remember what you did and all the chaos. Like, that's what we problem solve. We make it process enforcement driven, for lack of a better term, kindergarten level. So if I want to require my technicians to take a picture of the front of the structure, to take an outdoor reading, to take a photo of that, to... You know, take the psychrometrics to sketch it.

6:35 All the things that people need to do, it makes them do it. So you can't move on to the next step until you've done everything in that order to make sure that you're documenting and capturing everything you want. So you're eliminating the human element. It's not about whether I trust my guys or not. It's about did you do it or did you not? That's what gets us paid, you know. So that's what we problem solve. So we replace currently, now that we're out of beta, 21 different software applications into one. It's pretty crazy. We've got some exciting things going. At the various conference in February, they announced to the world that we're the first and only remote monitoring system directly tied into Xactimate. So that's big. We just cut a deal with the Ramsco and Legend brands. So Ramsco, we have our SKUs and a Ramsco site.

7:16 They're selling that. So our remote monitoring has been taking off. Like we've beaten all of our competitors in this space. And they're all good products, but it's again, the multiple usages, the multiple logins, logouts, the double, triple entry, all that kind of stuff is what we're eliminating. We're trying to provide the convenience of ease of use. And that goes along with direct integrations into Xactimate, into all the CRMs that are out there for the most part. You know, like we just launched last week our instant ESX files. So like our sketch is like as soon as you're done with the sketch, you can literally push it directly into Xactimate as an ESX file. So yeah. It's essentially just creating ease of use for the field technicians where they don't have to think you're getting perfect documentation on every job, whether it's a rebuild or mold or asbestos or water mitigation.

8:01 It doesn't matter. We just make it kindergarten level. I mean, I've been on a loss with a client where I've trained literally 68 technicians in 15 minutes how to use our program. We go to a lot of different events and trainings and the places that we go give us 20 minutes to train on the program. We train 40 students how to use it in 20 minutes and then they go through and document a whole entire hospital. So it's just built to do what we need it to do, essentially. Wow. Talk more about this process adherence and kind of the internal functionality of the software and how you guys kind of orient around this process accountability piece. Yeah. So essentially, like a residential loss is different than a commercial, you know, a fire job has different requirements than a mitigation job.

8:44 And so in our system, what we build out is in the settings, the admin dictates and controls as an organization. If you want efficiency and perfect documentation and consistency. It's essentially you're creating templates for every different type of loss that you're running into. You know, so if I go to residential water loss, kind of talking about those settings, there's project settings, there's room settings, there's level and chamber settings. Like in the contents piece, you can control what kind of contents you want to document, how you want it documented to your documents. So you can upload your documents. We replace DocuSign, you know, is another one. And so the process enforcement is if I'm Lane Larson restoration and I mostly do residential, then on a residential water loss, I'm going to set the parameters of that.

9:28 Every time I text go to a residential water loss and they pick those two categories, it'll auto apply these settings to the job. So I want the picture of the front of the structure. I want the outdoor reading. But on top of that is, well, how many pictures of the front of the structure? I can put a minimum requirement of two or three photos, but I could take 100 if I want. But we're putting minimums to what a tech has to do, right? Then when you get into like that process, you can't even open up the job until the exterior photo has been done. The documentation has been done like on the psychometrics, you know, and then I can force that reading every day. So every day I show up, it starts over. So then it's making me take the outdoor reading before I can unlock the job. So then when you get into the rooms, if I get into an affected room, what do I need to capture in here?

10:08 So then I'm going to require before pictures, videos, like we've got direct integrations into 360 cameras now to where like it eliminates having to go to another provider, another app. It's all directly in our system where I can click a button, scan a 360 and it's done instantly. Right. So those are the requirements. Same with equipment. Do I want to require the equipment on here? The S500 standards are built into our system. So when I force my sketch to be done and they have to do it, it then takes the calculations from the square footage and cubic feet of what's affected from the floor, ceilings, and parameter walls, and it tells you what's recommended on the equipment side, right? Then getting into the psychometric readings, you know, what part, you know, our sketch auto labels, the walls, like which walls.

10:48 So then we can be in the sketch and put where we're putting our moisture points on the sketch, where it is, how it's labeled. So if I started today and then you show up tomorrow, Chris, it's, you don't have to call me and ask like, well, where did you go? What did you do? It's literally all lined out showing you exactly where the equipment was placed, when the pictures were taken. So all that time stamped, unmanipulated real time data, creates that it is what it is. So part of my obsession with this is eliminating the three day dry out BS that we have to deal with, right? This is providing transparent data, all these reports and the data's live. So as it's happening, I could share this data with the homeowner, with the adjuster if I wanted to. It just allows to where it is what it is.

11:29 So we're eliminating the normal process of doing the job, waiting till the end to start the conversation or the debate of whether you did it or not, it's capturing all of it in real time. So we're just changing. I'm guilty of it. When I started in restoration, it was all about, we got to get in and do the job and get out. Right. And then we'd start documenting afterwards. And that's where the crap show starts where all the problems end up leading. So this is just changing it to making you do it right. The first day, the first time you step in, it's all there. And then the follow-up days you're in and out because all the data is there. You know, so that's kind of the flow of the process enforcement is just there's so many opinions. And if 10 of us go into a room, we're all going to document it different. Right.

12:09 But this program where it's consistency across the board, no matter if it's a day old technician or a 30 year veteran, you're getting the same perfection and documentation every single time. And we're not dealing with opinions now. We're just dealing with doing it correctly. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Did you use a version of Clean Clams? Is this the genesis of Clean Clams? Was it your last restoration company? Did you guys have some version of this that you mocked up? Yeah. How did this come about? We actually pulled it up. So my company obviously was the Guinea Pigs. So I have kind of like what you brought up. When I had my restoration companies, I used everything out there. I was promised how great it is, how amazing it is. Yeah. PowerPoint after PowerPoint, you get out in the field, you use it, it doesn't work.

12:52 And I just got frustrated with, I'm just like, there's got to be like something easier out there. And I used everything like everybody else has done, you know? So it's kind of funny when I go into demos or speak at events, I'm like, this is not another add-on software to your 50 that you're already using. This literally replaces like on average five of the different applications you're using into one, right? So my company was the Guinea pig. Like I literally had a friend of a friend that was a developer that I literally on my conference table in my old office, I drew on paper what clean claims is today. I was like, Hey, these are the steps that needs to do. This is the flow that it has to be. You got it. And they're like, yep. And then I literally swipe off the table and I have my next like set of drawings that I put out of like, this is what I needed to just flow through this.

13:36 So, Doing that for years, I built it originally to franchise my company because I had four locations in three states and I was going to start franchising. So I bought a Jimmy John's franchise in the meantime to learn how to franchise, talk to friends in the business world that know about franchising, own franchises. So that was the plan. And then it was I got a call from State Farm. This is probably six and a half years ago. And I've told this story a couple of times to people. But I literally had a big State Farm executive call me and they're just like, why is it from your company, whether in Utah, Colorado or Nevada, we get perfect documentation with you guys no matter what. You're not even on the preferred list and we're paying you in like two days. Like we were just getting jobs left and right. So we weren't the bank anymore.

14:18 Because it just comes down to the basics. If you have the data to prove what you're trying to collect on, then they'll pay you. You know, so all these contractors are like, I'm sick of being in the bank. I don't want to do this. It's like, dude, just provide the data. If you give them the data, they want to get the claims off their desk, you know? And so my whole thing is, is I, even though the homeowners and my clients were my clients, who's paying the bill is the carriers and they need to know what you did or what you didn't do. So when you're providing unmanipulated real-time data, so all these experiments that I had in my own company is what like, okay, this is working. This works now. No, this works. So that was the fun part of how it started. But it was all from the tech's perspective, you know, from my perspective, being in the field, how does this need to flow?

14:58 Where can it be easier? Can this data be live? Like, how do I get these documents out daily? Like all these different things where you can kind of create that transparency. So that's where it started. was a friend of a friend, built it. And then once State Farm called me and told me that this is not your problem, it's an industry problem and you're solving it. You know, he's like, you should sell this to franchises. That was kind of where the light bulb went off. And I was like, oh, I mean, I literally had no idea. I had my niche. Did my own thing. And so after all of that, we decided to, here we are, clean claims. You know, seven years later, we've been building it and just officially started selling it in August of last year. So it's fun to be out of beta. And we've got so many features and new things that we've done.

15:39 So it's been really fun. And we're on a trajectory of just kind of going up. So fun part for me is showing the product. is I don't feel like I'm trying to sell anybody on it. It's like, here's what it does. Here's what it solves. Here's what it integrate with. Here's what it replaces. Here's a 10-day trial. Go use it. We'll set you up and make sure you're trained. And then you tell me if you like it or not. And anybody that does that will sign up for it because it just does what it's supposed to do. Wow. Well, you know, it's interesting, man. I've gotten brought into a handful of different companies, professional services companies and software in our industry just to help them and their customer success teams and sales teams talk through their sales process and their onboarding process because it seems like a universal challenge that most software companies have in our industry.

16:26 And I'm sure it extends outside in the other services. Yeah. is full utilization and adoption and onboarding is just so difficult. And I think in particular with our industry, it's even more difficult. And we experience this sometimes when we're onboarding clients around our consulting and our fractional sales management services, simply because as owners and operators, we really struggle to... That whole analogy of stopping to sharpen the axe... like the idea of having like leadership, like a cadence of meetings, like planning inside of a restoration company, for the vast majority of operators, that is a really difficult hump to get over.

17:09 And I imagine you guys have big and small companies that when you guys go to onboard them and like have some kind of onboarding call with your customer success people, a certain percentage of them just don't show up, right? Oh, I had to reschedule, right? So talk about like... As a restoration company, speak to us as an operator. What is the best way to think about, plan for, and manage onboarding of a software platform? Do you have any tips or suggestions on that? Because I think that's a struggle for dang near everybody. Yeah, I think, and this is from my experience, right? The struggle is, one, nobody likes change. Even if it's a better product, it's something different. If anybody has ever switched from an iPhone to an Android or vice versa, it's like you want to throw it through the wall because you don't know where anything is.

17:55 It's just different, right? For us, what's awesome that makes us look good is how easy it is to onboard. I literally did a training a couple weeks ago. I think there was 50 people. In the meeting, we trained them all in 20 minutes how to use it. And then they were going out on jobs. I mean, I've gone to trainings in person and a job comes through and I'm like, well, let's get out of the classroom. I'll go to the job with you, you know. And so we're going out to the job and we'll do it. We'll even do a comparison. I'm like, hey, you guys use what you currently have and I'm going to do this. And it took them two hours to go through and document what they were doing. I did it in 10 minutes and was sitting there waiting. Like, do you need help? What do you need? Like, here, I'm already done. Like, so the best part is, is again, that kindergarten level, it's been built to where it just shows you and walks you through what you need to do without even thinking.

18:42 You don't need to know anything about restoration. I've got, I mean, hell, my developers don't know anything about restoration, but they could go through and document a whole entire building just because of like how we built it. And that was the point of it. You know, when I hired my UX UI developer for the flow, right. He was asking, he's like, what do you want me to do? How does it work? And I'm like, I'm not going to tell you anything. I'm like, if you can't figure it out, that means it's too complicated. I'm like, and that was the perspective. I was like, I don't want you to know about any of this. I'm not even going to tell you what restoration is. If you can't figure out to get from point A to point B and C and get to the end, then it's too complicated, you know? So it's like, it's built that way to where it's so easy to onboard. It's nuts. Like in two hours, I had a company of 78 trained.

19:23 I had their... all their documents put into their system. We set up all their settings. I trained their guys in the classroom. And in two hours, that whole company was trained and out rolling. And the best part is I've had some people tell me I'm full of it, that I tell that to. And then when they do it, they call me after and they're like, holy crap, you weren't kidding. Like this literally like we're already day one rolling and we were already busting it out. So that's the beauty. And some clients don't even want training. So it's like, cool, I'll just set up the parameters for you. Go nuts. And they're out doing it. So all other softwares out there, it is... months and months of like, here's where this is and here's how this goes. And this is how, I mean, it's insane, you know? And so that's a huge advantage we have is that we're coming in and making the change, but it's so easy to switch.

20:05 It just, it takes a couple days of just getting used to where buttons are in different things and you're rolling. Like once you, once you create a project once, it's the same process every time. So it just makes it that much easier. You know what this makes me think about? Brandon and I, when we first started consulting five, well, it'll be five years ago this month. In fact, we incorporated, I think, on the 21st of March. There you go. Yeah, five-year anniversary floodlight. Here we go. You know, as we started working with clients, one of the things that we would tell our clients, because inevitably, finding technician talent... and training and getting a technician up to speed where they can respond to a water loss, a two-man team, a senior technician that can talk somebody through a work authorization, begin stabilization, placing equipment, all of that stuff.

20:50 We were of the belief and mindset. Of course, this wasn't my wheelhouse. I've always been the sales guy, but Brandon is an operations leader. It had always been our conviction that you should be able to take somebody from being green to to being able to collect a work authorization on your typical residential water loss in 45 days. And we would get a lot of pushback from, oh, well, you haven't met my technicians, or you haven't been to whatever Arkansas or tech, you know what I mean? I don't know about that. And then, of course, we had a process for, one, helping them document their mitigation process flow from call intake to what do we do then? What do we do next? What do you next? Developing that. And then from that, our whole shtick was helping them put together a 45 day training plan that incorporated all the steps and the people that did it, it always worked.

21:41 They always had, at the end of that, it spit out a technician that could respond to your average $4,800 water loss, explain it to the customer, collect the work authorization, direct their helper, set the equipment, and we were off to the races. Reliably, right? Yeah. What I'm hearing from you is that how technology has progressed and specifically how you guys have set this up with this process adherence, that actually could be a whole lot faster than that. I'm hearing you say two hours, but it doesn't necessarily tee up. Is there anything in your guys' process or interface or the way the software works that helps a technician present or explain or collect the work authorization and get the work authorization signed?

22:26 Talk me through that initial customer presentation slash discovery. And is there something that Clean Claims does to expedite that or make it more turnkey? Yeah. Yeah, the best part, again, like replacing DocuSign for critical documents like that, for example, is that it's literally you can upload your documents at the system, pick if you want signatures, multiple signatures, like, you know, whatever you need, you literally pull your document in. But if you need checkboxes on it, you know, a health survey, is this, is this affected in your house? Are you over the age of 60? Do you have asthma? Whatever. So you build out the documents and it's again, automated to the type of loss. So then I can like, so if I get the call and I'm in the office, I can literally, if I'm getting all the information, I can send that right to the client and have them sign it there.

23:11 Yeah. Or we can show up on site and on your phone or tablet, you can literally sign it with your finger. But the cool part is it's not, now what am I picking? What should I do? When the admin sets it up, it automatically pulls those documents. You can make it require the signature at the sales call. Like you can't even open up the job and start until you get a signature signed, right? You can make it to where on the certificate of completion, it automatically, when everything's been done correctly, your equipment's picked up and it checks off, it'll automatically pull up a COC so they can't forget it. So it makes it to where you can't even close out that job until it's done. Or if the homeowner's not there, then just click send the link. And it emails them and said, here's the COC. And then it timestamps when that link was sent, who sent it.

23:54 Like it tracks all of that. So it's just, again, techs are there to get in a demo and do all the things. I've always said that the most critical data in a company that is being collected is by the people that are sometimes paid the least amount, right? Right. They're doing the hardest work, but it starts with them. All these other programs that you want to build and have, if you're getting the data from the technicians right every single time, then that trickles down. That makes the estimating go faster. That makes, like, payments go quicker. That makes the arguments go away. Like, you're just, you know... I mean, hell, we had a client last week. They had three or four temp laborers that they hired for the day to do contents. So they just gave them a login as a temp user for the day.

24:35 You can put it like, hey, you guys have access to this till this time. And this is what I need you to do. In five minutes, they had all the temp labor documenting all the contents, doing it perfect on site with feedback. five, 10 minutes of training. So it's, again, it has to be simple or else it's not going to work. And that's, that was where it came from is that everything this industry was either built by a software company and our insurance company for the most part, that's telling us what they need, but they're all looking at it from their perspective. You know, it's like an engineer saying like, Oh, well, this is what I would do. And it's like, well, dude, most people don't think that way. Like it has to be to where it just does what it needs to. I mean, I've told this story before, but, and we've had clients have the same experience, but one of my experiments is I hired a kid from Taco Bell being on the go.

25:20 And all the time I was in a drive-through, this kid had such a cool attitude. And I was like, hey, dude, I'll pay you $2 more an hour that you're making here. If you want to come and work for me, literally two days later came in. I had clean claims at the time. It wasn't called clean claims, right? showed him in 30 minutes how to use it. I had a flood house in my facility. He did the whole thing perfect. I sent him out on a job right then and there, and he went and did the whole job by himself. Perfect. Like, it's just, it literally just do what I tell you. It's like, everybody's like, I just need you to do what I need you to do. And then people forget. It's not that our guys don't want to do it. But they're busy and they're doing hard labor and it's like it's a lot. So when they don't have to think about it and it makes it easy for them and they're getting what they need perfect every time. That's just where it's just simple.

26:01 It's just like we're all we've overcomplicated everything in this industry. And it's like, just get back to basics and make it easy. You know, and that's our obsession is just convenience and ease of use. It has to be. how does this work in a large loss environment, right? We've got a multi-floor impacted hotel loss and we've got 40, 50 laborers on site. Like how does Clean Claims work in that large scale environment? We built it on purpose for those events as well. So the way that we built it is that you could have all 50 to your example. Let's say we're on a 32 story loss. I've been on these jobs with clients, right? All 50, 60 people can be in the job at the same time, all working and documenting together.

26:45 So like we could each take a level or we could each take a room and you're able to work simultaneously because all the data is coming in live. So I did this with a client. We were sitting in their war room, right? Right. And had it pulled up on the computers. And we were literally watching what everybody was doing in real time and what floor and who was doing what. And so everybody's login, it timestamps who did it, when and where, and geofences it as well. So it upholds in court. So you literally can just divide and conquer with text and move so much quicker through a big disaster like that. And just you're freed up now. It's not one guy trying to do it and figure it out. And then when you throw in the remote monitoring on site of that, you know, on a big loss like that. Now, instead of sending out five, six guys a day to go moisture map and you're paying all that labor and all that time, the remote monitoring has billable items in Xactimate.

27:31 You can bill for it. Like we had a client. that spent 30 grand on a remote monitoring set that we had. He ended up, long story short, they ended up billing out. It was like a 30-day dry out. They billed out for $73,000. So they made 40 grand off that first job. And then we did the math when they were done that replacing the five laborers and everybody and all that, you know, the per diems and all that that came with it, we ended up saving them about $103,000 just in labor. So that first one job that they used it, they ended up making an extra $150,000 on that job just being more efficient. Are you a business that's under five million in sales and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit, but now you've got to build a sales team?

28:15 Or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. Like how do you manage, lead, train, develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market, They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owner's meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep. Their plan to actual results, what kind of performance improvement they're working on with them. Also let them know, hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well.

29:00 How great would that be to have a bolt-on sales manager for your one sales rep and it's only $2,500 a month? If you're interested in talking more about that, reach out. Let's grab some time and let's talk shop. Our floodlight clients this last year in 2024 generated over 250 million in revenue. Supported by, advised by, an industry expert who's owned and operated a business just like you. So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment. And let's unlock the next chapter of your success story. You know, another thing that makes me think, man, there's been this rise over the last 10 years that Brandon and I've observed. And frankly, we're advocates of, which is this concierge job file coordinator role.

29:45 Yeah. Right. This this idea that from cradle, we have this cradle to grave project support that's that's both like equal parts. compliance and really preserving the quality and the completeness of the document package that each job has, and equal parts customer-facing, creating a single point of contact for the customer outside of the PM. And we just feel like we're huge advocates for that model. And I think you see more and more big teams. We've worked with a number of large, large surf pros that have adopted a similar kind of concierge model like that. When I hear you talking about the functionality of clean claims and the real time, not just tracking and uploading information, but the visuals that you talk about, sort of that dashboard, you can see everything going on in that 30-story water loss.

30:36 Like, where do you see the industry going in terms of service delivery? right now. Because I guess let me clarify that once more. So one of the big things that we end up helping clients with on the operations side is closing the gap on their attachment rate or their conversion rate from mid to recon. And when we take a close look at just anecdotally, but also the data, is the companies that have a shorter, there's a shorter silent phase between demo being complete and that project manager engaging them on the scope and walking the job for the recon portion. The tighter that delta, the higher the conversion rate by far. Big time. And so we had a real manual process of essentially teaching our clients the standard to hold was, hey, the moment demo is complete on that water job, we get recon in there.

31:28 to walk the job, begin scoping the work, negotiating with the adjusters, creating their Gantt chart with sub-availability, all that stuff, to close that gap. So before mid is even completely done with the project, recon's already in there. And I just, I wonder this real-time documentation that you guys have, it seems like it would... really open up the possibility of a much more rapid, tighter transition or almost like... I mean, this is the other thing we teach teams. As restoration companies, we think of ourselves as MIT team, recon team, contents team, and then job file coordinator just talks to all of them. When really we should be talking about a single process with our customer.

32:11 Because our customer doesn't give a rip, right? They don't give a rip like what team is doing what and when this happens. All they care about is coming back into their finished home, right? Yeah. As fast as possible. What are your thoughts on that, man? And is this something you guys are thinking about in terms of just how you guys are developing and whatnot? Yeah, no, it's, I mean, that's the big, one of the big problems, right? And you're talking about future things that we're doing. Like everybody's talking about AI and the hype and AI is amazing. There's a lot of cool tools out there. We haven't advertised or said anything about it yet. Like we have where you can build and create your own macros. Like you can get an estimate right on site. So if you want to send in a project manager, build out your macros with your pricing and everything, I can literally just do a scan of the room, get the sketch, it pulls everything in, pulls up the line items that I want that are specific to that loss specifically.

32:58 specific to, I mean, you can get specific to a bedroom, to a bathroom, to whatever it is. And when you put in the unit, a measure of like square footage or, you know, and antimicrobial, you name it, right. It's automatically giving you a total at the bottom. So that's there. But what we've been doing on the AI side that we've been practicing with right now, and we're beta testing is that we're able to get estimates in like two seconds from a, I mean, AI is amazing. So the AI that we have on estimating with all that live real-time data before the jobs, even I could do this day one. If I already know I lined it out and I know what's happening, I can literally build an estimate off of it. On top of that, we have it to where it's linked to the ESX and exactimate the line items and the rules.

33:39 So then it would automatically, if I say I'm going to do two foot flood cuts on this wall, as soon as I do that, it puts in the rule and then it automatically starts building the rebounds. build with it. So then it knows I need drywall, but now I need tape. I need texture. I need paint. I need, so it's automatically doing that to where instantly in like less than five seconds, once you put in all the information, this is what we're working on now. It can literally give you an estimate in five seconds. Not only the mitigation, but the rebuild with it as well, like instant. So we're working on that right now. We haven't, this is the first time I've said anything about it or announced it, but we're getting closer to having that done as well. So, I mean, but then you don't need, you don't need that guy. That's $150,000 a year.

34:20 I literally can have a technician do this. Because it's again, it's set up to where once I automate it, and then they just have to pick the line items of what they did. And again, this is all live data, I can see what they put in, I can see if there's a price on it or not. And you click the button and boom, you've got your mitigation and your recon done in like five seconds. Dude, how far out are we from... I mean, it feels like we're very close, and maybe there's even like... This could be created and delivered right now, but it's like, how far out are we where they're creating that estimate scope, identifying two coats of paint, all of the line items... And the system automatically looks at products and supply inventory in that company's shop, identifies, do we already have this in our shop, the antimicrobial or whatever it is that's required for this job?

35:11 If not, automatically places an order with their vendor of choice or Ramsco or Lowe's or whatever. And then times, I mean, I could imagine we're not far from that kind of... It's funny you bring that up because part of what we're doing with the Ramsco is we've been having conversations about this because we're in their system now. And so it's like, hey, for chemicals and this and that, like we could put the suggest. So instead of like, you know, nobody looks at the bottle. They're just putting in whatever. It's like we've talked to a Ramsco about this to where it's like, well, with all your chemicals and your supplies and whatever you have. When we put in the sketch, you could literally suggest and say, hey, you're going to need two ounces and a gallon of water and you need to spray this out.

35:52 And this is how much this bottle has. So I think it's coming sooner than later. Right. It's not there yet, but it's definitely a conversation that we're having as a company with other companies that are dealing with that, too. That's wild, man. Well, what are some particular features that you're able to talk about that you guys can be rolling out between now and the end of the year? Any big ones that people would be interested to hear about? So a big one that we want to announce to the world is like we just launched our instant ESX file. So our sketch, literally when you're done with a sketch, you can do it room by room. You can do it per level. There's a button in Clean Claims that just says ESX file. So as soon as I'm done with the sketch, click the button and I can import it directly into Exactimate, Exact Analysis.

36:33 And the ESX file is live. It's done. So that convenience factor that just got launched that we're kind of marketing. We're going to we're putting marketing together to really make sure everybody knows that, you know, because that was one of the problems. We launched our sketch and it was awesome. And it's like, well, is this an ESX? And it's like, not yet. So now that it is, that's a huge deal. Right. The other thing that we just launched on Monday as well is OCR photo recognition. So for anybody that doesn't know what that is, it's literally now when you're doing manual readings, It doesn't matter if it's the dehu output, like the screen. It doesn't matter. Like whatever meter you're using from a thermal hygrometer to a moisture meter, it doesn't matter. We've eliminated to where normally we'd have to, it would require a reading.

37:14 So we put in the temperature and humidity. It would auto-calculate the dew point, GPP and vapor pressure and grain depression, right? But then you'd have to take a picture of it. Well, the OCR photo recognition now, it's a scanner. So you click on scan reading. You take a picture of that reading in your hand or on the dehu, and it pulls that data from the picture into clean claims automatically. So it's huge for big losses and different things. It's way faster, less clicks. That's like one of our obsessions is eliminating all that. So now you're just taking a picture of the meter in your hand, and it pulls that reading and that data right into it and timestamps it and geocoordinates it as well. So it's just conveniences. Like the fun part is that we got the software running, Now we're having a ton of fun with like, how do we make it better? How do we make it faster?

37:55 How do you make it? You know what I mean? So now it's diving into all the, everybody had needs and I feel like we fulfilled the needs. Now it's all the ones. It's all the fun part now of like, how do we speed this up and make it quicker, like easier, even more, you know? So yeah, those are big ones. Well, what about people that are primarily oriented around TNM billing? Yeah. TNM, originally our scope and estimating tool was built for TNM. So you can put in all your own pricing. So in our macro like scope tool, like we have all, all the line items from Xactimate already prebuilt into there. But if you're dealing with square footage pricing and stuff, you can put your own line items in there. You can create what you want and like how you want to bill it. Is it by square foot or linear feet or gallons or whatever and save and put your pricing in it.

38:39 But you can do that. Like if I work with, you know, this company, and this is their pricing that we agreed to. And then I work with this company. So you can build and create templates for companies you're working with. And when I click that, it automates that price list to what that company wants that you're working with. And so then it's that same thing. When I've got the macros already prebuilt, I click on the macro, select all the line items instantly, and all the prices are in there. And now I'm just putting in the square footage and what we did and boom, we're getting a price out. So it works great. There's been some recent conversation, and I think you and I were kind of part of this. I think Verisk, all these events start to run together for me.

39:19 I'm sure it's the same for you. People are like, I'm trying to get an event. I'm like, I don't know which one. I can't keep track anymore. And then, of course, we all run into Jeff Moore and we all talk shop with him at these various events. And I remember, I think it was actually Jeff's particular conversation I'm remembering is, he was just really kind of obsessing and has been along how as an industry, do we start to behave more like retail contractors? And optimizing not only our sales process, our service delivery, all of the above, really thinking more like retail contractors versus entrepreneurs. how we've grown to think about and see ourselves in the restoration industry. Some people get really upset when we start referring to this as the insurance claims industry.

40:03 Yeah. Whoa. Like, come on. So for all of you, I don't want to use the wrong words. Yeah. But right, how do we take a page from these retail service companies like the A1 garage doors, right? How do we create this value proposition people are willing to pay for in a customer experience that people are willing to pay a premium for, right? In your view, what is your view on that? If you were going to go start a restoration company, another one today, how would you maybe approach it differently given the direction the industry is headed? Well, so yeah, it's a great question. Like in my opinion, restoration is still the wild, wild west.

40:45 You can literally, you can ask any contractor, different companies, everybody's going to have a different opinion on how to do it. And I think that's the problem is that there's not a, I mean, hell, you go to auto claims, right? There's a process of like, this is how it goes. We're going to send you a link. You take a picture of it. We send it. Here's the invoice. Where's the body shop you're going to, right? Right. We don't have that. What we feel like we're creating, because my big thing this year that I'm doing is working with insurance carriers, right? There's so many carriers like the RIA, like I'm working with fraud prevention companies, like in with like, you know, different insurance carriers and different things. And everybody's like, how do we standardize this to be done? Right. We're even building SLAs in our system, the process enforcement side of it to where if I'm working with XYZ insurance and it's a residential water loss, What are their SLAs?

41:32 Because we're used to being given a binder. I don't know if that's still the case. That's how it was with me when I got on the TPA side is that this is what so-and-so insurance wanted. This is what this one wants. And you're supposed to remember that. And nobody does. And so we're building that out with certain carriers right now to automate it. So what we're trying to do to help the industry is standardize that there is one way of doing it. I mean, there's not like one way. I say that in general, right? Like there's so many different scenarios you can run into, right? But we're trying to help create a standard of this is how it should be done. This is what should be done. And if everybody's using our system, everybody's going to get the same results every single time. Where anybody else in our space, because we're the only company that does process enforcement, it's still you can put the plan together, but you're going to do it different than I did it.

42:18 even though it's in the same program, it's still different. We didn't do it. You forgot this, or I added this extra to it. Trying to remember all that is the chaos. So what the carriers and everybody's looking for is that, and like Jeff Moore, like you said, is the standardization of how do we do this, right? And we feel like that's where we're coming into play is because it is process enforcement driven we can then make it to where it doesn't matter what company is using our program. And if I pick XYZ insurance, this is their SLAs. This is what they want. This is what they need. And it walks you through the steps. So that's been my focus this year is working. All my team is working with all of our contractors because that's what this program was built for. But we're getting calls from TPAs and different people and insurance carriers because they're seeing clean claims reports and that they're getting live real-time data.

43:03 So for them, they're loving that like we're eliminating fraud. It's either you did it or you didn't do it. And so that's my thing, again, is that we're creating a standard of this is what you do, and you can have full transparency of what was done. Because carriers have tightened up like crazy since I've been out of the day-to-day on what's covered, what's not covered, because there's so much fraud. So we're trying to help standardize to benefit the contractor that if I did 10 days on this dry out, we're not meeting at seven, five or three. I've got the data to prove it and you're paying me for 10. And I just saved you 20 grand on the rebuild because I'm an actual restorer. And I dried out this structure without just being bulldozing the whole thing.

43:43 So that's what we're trying to do. That like we're in the beginning phases of with these conversations of like this. This is the standard that needs to be set. And that makes it to where it's automated like an auto claim. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's what we're working on. Dude, that's awesome. Okay, listen, I want us to pivot a little bit in this conversation. Because again, I mean, I just think it's so cool that you have so much background successfully as an entrepreneur in this space. Not one company, but multiple companies that you've built and sold. I guess there's a couple of questions I have for you. One, I'm curious how you have learned over the years to maintain... You're married, right? Divorced.

44:25 Okay, divorce. Okay. Do you have children? Do you have children, Lane? I have three kids, yeah. Yeah, okay. So you got three kids. All right. Divorces happen. I get it. All right. So, but how... I mean, what have you learned along the way? How to manage... your life and your relationships. I mean, now with the fast-growing software company and being all over the country and stuff, but when you were operating, like what are some of the takeaways for owners listening of how you've learned to kind of manage that dance of having a family, having a significant other, How do you order yourself? You know, like, how do you manage your, your life? Curious. That life work balance. If anybody can solve that problem, I would love to know because there's like, it's so hard as an entrepreneur to like, it's not nine to five.

45:11 And especially in this industry, it's not like, you know, you're going out to a family dinner or something. You get a call, you know, it's like, you have to drive separate because then you got to bail out or whatever, you know? So the big thing, honestly, having been through my divorce and different things is like making sure that you have the right partner that can understand and grow with you. You know, like me being gone as much. I travel a lot, you know, and that was a big problem in my previous marriage, you know, and that was part of the issue is that I was gone all the time. And a lot of us live in that space, you know. So the main thing is picking the right partner, communication, talking about your goals, you know, what you're doing. I live for my kids, like everything I do is for my kids.

45:51 That's why I do it, you know, and so it's just making sure that's the time, you know, and when you have a good team and good people in place and you want that for them as well. Then there's the help internally of like, hey, I need help getting covered right now so I don't miss my son's appointment and vice versa. Like making sure. My big thing with my employees is that I wanted them to know that I cared about them. You know, like I wouldn't make them do anything that I wouldn't do. If things came up, I would cover form. Even when I got out of the field and I wasn't doing stuff, if there was something going on, I would go out and do it. That's again, that was a detriment on me because then it put my family stuff on the side. So I honestly don't have a good answer because it is so hard. So I think it's just communication with your partners, honestly, about what we're trying to do.

46:36 Everybody says that the marriage is 50-50, but I love I've seen podcasts and different things that it's like. I'm a 20 today. Can you be an 80, you know, or a ham? I just saw that this morning. Yeah. You're burned out. Like it's that communicate communications key. You know what I mean? Just being able to understand, have some empathy, different things like that. Like I, that was, that's what I would say. It's such a hard question. It's a good question, but the work life balance is really hard, especially in this industry. You know what I mean? It's just like, it is 24 seven. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, okay, I want to actually poke to this comment you made about doing everything for your kids. That resonates with me. And I feel like legacy, like everything I'm building ultimately is for my kids and my wife.

47:18 And how do you help make sure they know that? What are some of the things you've learned to do when you're home or when you're away to just stay connected with the kids? Because this is something I dealt with. I had my busiest travel year last year, and it was like... It was bonkers. So I'm just curious, how do you specifically think about that and try to stay on top of that? Right now, when I have my kids, I have 50-50 custody to my kids, right? And my staff has my schedule of when I have my kids and when I don't. So my staff knows when I don't have my kids, tell me where I'm going. Who needs training? What event am I going to? Like, send me off, right? But when I have my kids, they're my focus. Like, all their sports I go to, I make them breakfast every morning.

48:01 I make their lunches. I take them to school. Like, I'm present all the time that I can be. You know what I mean? Yeah. I do have that balance. But I mean, I did that when I was around. I got I think one thing that was really cool. I got complimented all the time is like doctors, teachers, whatever. They're like, I have never seen a dad more at these appointments. Like I was always I made it. It's just being organized. Your calendar gets crazy and it's knowing where you're going, what you're doing and when to cut it off. Like you need to be able to, that's the hard part is me and some of my entrepreneur friends get together and we laugh and we're like, we can't really complain about anything. We say yes to everything. We're creating our own problems. So it's like, we can't even complain because it's like, we're the one that made the problem. So saying no is a good thing sometimes too, you know?

48:44 But that's where building trust with your company of like, how do you get to know your employees to know what you can do? I'm a big believer in the one three rule. You know, like if a technician or somebody comes to me with a problem, like my team learned that you better have three solutions for me. I'm not going to solve the problem for you. Like I want some accountability. And when the team has, they know that and they have to come up with three solutions that teaches me what each member of my team is capable of, how creative they are, what they can do, where their strong points are, because that's one of the big problems. And so doing that over the years and all my companies has helped me to know who I can rely on and not, you know, and you can, when you have a good team around you like that, and you're all supporting each other and they know that they're supported.

49:28 It's that win-win scenario where like, you can say no to this and get somebody else to do it. And then, Hey, I got you on the next one or whatever it is. But when they're coming up with the solutions and then we pick that solution that they like, that gives them accountability and ownership. You know what I mean? It's like, it was their idea. Like, good job. Like that was awesome. I love your solution. Like run with it. And then next week let's follow up and see how it went or whatever. You know what I mean? So yeah, I think that's kind of like all over the place, but it's literally once you can do that, it can give you that balance to know where you can trust your team or not or whatever you need to do. It's just, it's getting back to communication in a relationship or with your employees of what's going on, you know, like it all ties together.

50:11 Dude, that was great. I almost hit the applause button, but I thought that'd be a little too corny. I do that with my kids. I do that with my kids. You know, they come to me with a problem. Like my son didn't want to go to lacrosse practice yesterday, you know, and it's just like talking them through. I want them to think. I don't want to tell them like, well, no, you have to do this. It's like I'm going to make him go anyway. But I want him. I'm creating questions and asking things to get them to think about like why they should go. And then when they get that idea, it's like, oh, that's a great idea. That's definitely why we should go. And then they're stoked to go, you know? So it's like, I'm all about people figuring out their own problems and taking ownership because then they own it, you know what I mean? And then they're proud of it. And you should be proud of them.

50:52 They're like, that was a great solution, you know? I mean, it all just kind of comes together. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Anything you're reading or listening to or a person you're following right now that you feel like is helping you level up? I love Mel Robbins. I listen to her a ton. Joe Rogan podcasts all the time. Sean Ryan. And how are you staying in shape on the road, man? Inquiring minds want to know, how do you try to stay in shape on the road with all the travel you guys do? What's your program? What's your state? So I've dropped 42 pounds. I used to be in really good shape before. To me, it's just a decision. It's like I made every excuse for years of like, I'm so busy. I'm so tired.

51:32 I can't do it like the snacking, all the crap. It's just it's essentially just to me, it was just committing to I know what to do. to be in shape and I just need to do it. So it's just like, I just went back to like snacks or, you know, like yogurt, you know, like protein yogurts and throwing in berries and like cottage cheese and like, it's just staying away from the crap. It's just, I stay off the scale. The only reason I know what I weigh is going to the doctor My whole focus was consistency. If I do this, then like the weight will drop. So I've just been paying attention to my belts. I've had to put new holes in all my belts. So that's, I don't care about my weight. I care about the consistency. How you look and feel. So much better, dude. Yeah. So out of town, it's the same thing.

52:13 I mean, hell, all my clients in Texas, every time I go out to dinner, I'm like, I want a salad and this. And they're like, you little bee, you know? And it's like... I'll take a ribeye, a loaded mashed potato, and I need a whiskey. But it's just like I just don't give into that stuff anymore. It's just like, no, I'm going to stay consistent with what I'm doing. And then working out in the hotels, quit being an idiot and getting drunk till 2 o'clock in the morning and hungover all day. I go to all the events and the first hour. And after that I'm out because everybody's getting drunk and all the conversations are going to be forgot about anyway. And then I can go to bed and get up and go work out and be ready for the day. So it's just consistency. It's just, it's deciding. I finally made the decision had a coming to Jesus that I'm tired of being overweight, tired of feeling like crap.

52:54 And it's just, it was just a choice really. Yeah. That's good, man. Through motivation, it's consistency. There's days you're not motivated. It's making yourself get up and do it. Have you recently read the book, The Science of Scaling? I haven't read that one. Oh, brother, it's captivating me right now. It's one of those books where you get done with a chapter and you're just like, I need to read that chapter about four times more. You know, it's like so meaty and so good and so relevant. Anyway, so I'm just curious if you'd already been turned on. I'm going to look that one up. Yeah, I'm reading right now as a man thinketh. Oh, yeah. Is that Napoleon Hill? What is that?

53:36 James Allen. It's just like, it's just, I just started on that one. It's your ship. They had the presenter, Michael. I can't remember his last name at the various conference about his book. That book's incredible. Atomic habits. I just finished the atomic habits. Love that one. 48 laws of power. That's an interesting one. That is. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, I've got a bunch. They're all audio. I got too much ADHD, dude. If I try to read a normal book, I have to reread the page twice. I know. Same thing for me, man. I have to. With all the travel, I can listen to them a lot better. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, listen, dude, I think we've covered a lot of ground here. This was really great. If people want to inquire about clean claims, what's the best and easiest way for them to do that?

54:22 Best way, I mean, there's tons of stuff on LinkedIn, Facebook, all that, but it's just cleanclaims.com. There's a big old banner at the top that says request a demo. It just pulls up a calendar invite and you can book a demo to see it. And that's our big thing is don't take our word for it. Like sign up, check it out. We'll show you how it works. And then you guys can tell us if you like it or not. That's the best part. So we do a 10 day free trial to improve its worth. Because again, back to being burned so many times myself, it's just like so sick of like, I'm locked into a contract and then I hate it. I don't want to switch and now I'm stuck. We want to give people the opportunity to like use it, put it in their hands and then just make an educated decision. They're like, yep, this is the route we want to go. So cleanclaims.com is the best way to go.

55:03 That's awesome, man. Okay. Well, we started with the gong. We're going to end with the ceremonial gong. Might've started a new thing here. I don't know, Lane. Yes. I feel like I need a bow with this. Thank you for the time. Thank you very much. Yes. And for all the rest of you, until next time, thanks for listening to the show. Thanks. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.