Ep 197 - "Scaling Requires Systems: Lessons from Growing a Company"

0:00 All right, welcome back to the Head, Hard, and Boots podcast. This is Chris. Brandon isn't here, although he joins us for the episode, but it's just me recording the intro. This is an awesome show. So today we have Andrew Dobson of the ServPro Team Dobson. with 19 licenses across multiple locations, one of the top ServPro teams in the ServPro business. Really, really interesting chat that Brandon and I get into with Andrew. He's also the owner of Certified Restoration Training School, a technical training school and soft skills school that had always been kind of like a passion project of his that he's fully launched.

0:49 and is offering not just to serve pro people, but any restorers that want to get really awesome training for their people. And we spend a little bit of time on that, but we mostly talk about his origin story of how he came up in the business, working with his father, ultimately leaving his father's business, starting his own serve pros. And then later, anyway, I don't want to give away too much of the story, but Andrew, I mean, is a really impressive leader. And he has a very particular role. kind of profile and style to him that many of you are going to relate to. And some are going to be like, wow, okay, there's different ways to lead and run a business, but lots of gold nuggets here. So I'd encourage you to buckle up, have your pad of paper or your Apple notes open and ready to, to take some notes.

1:32 But what a cool guy and a really neat, I mean, he's, he's, he's all about the right things. And I think there's a ton that all of us can learn from him. So enjoy the chat. Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? 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. Super stoked. We've been waiting a few weeks for this one to pop up.

2:13 I am here, of course, with Brandon Reese, remote from Florida, sun, shiny Florida, or chilly, cold Florida. Yeah, it's not sunny. Yeah, or it's not warm. And I'm here with Andrew Dobson, the owner of ServPro Team Dobson, one of the largest ServPro teams ever. in the country. And we're going to have a great owner's chat here. I'm super stoked. You're going to learn about sort of the scale of company that Andrew's built. And along the way, I'm sure there's going to be just lots of note-taking opportunity with this. So owners, if you're able to like listen to this one while you're sitting at your desk at the office, it's probably great and have a little Google doc ready to jot notes. Andrew, I got to tell you, I want to open things up here.

2:54 One of the things, I've been following you longer than we've known each other. So I started out following you on LinkedIn. I first met, well, I think you and I, that's not true. We first met at the team hall. Yeah. Or Team Wall. Team Wall. Yeah, Team Wall. Yeah, Trish and Jim. Yep. Trish and Jim's place. Yep. That's where we first met, and you had a few of your key employees that were also in that workshop. And I think one of the things I noticed was you guys, the way you carry yourselves, very professional. You guys were all stylishly dressed, like really took yourself seriously and showed up to a training in a way that It was a little bit different than some of the other attendees. It stood out to me. And then subsequent to that, as I was following you guys on LinkedIn, your vehicle fleet, your building location, you give a lot of attention to aesthetic and the presentation to your market, your customers, even.

3:48 And you've also been very dedicated to social media presence. in particular, from my experience on LinkedIn, I really admire that. And I think so few companies in our space really focus on what kind of brand are we building? And so I'd love for you to weave, where did that come from in you, that instinct? And is that you or is that another, is that driven by somebody else on the team? But let's start. By where did Andrew come from? Like, where did this all begin? Because you appear to be a young man to me. We're at least in the same age range, I would guess. If not, you're younger and running this massive company. Where did all this begin, man? Gosh, that's a broad question.

4:29 Yeah. And I should say we haven't been in restoration in our entire lives, but we were in the cleaning field for a long time. My father owned a janitorial company and he dabbled in restoration for a long time. I went to college and I played college baseball. So I would like come back and help him out in high school or whatever. So I kind of had a background. helping whenever he needed to. So he did a lot of floor cleaning services, stripping and waxing, and it was the details in that that actually made an impact as well. So we were just very detail-oriented people and then image mattered to us. So I went to college, I played baseball there. And actually, I got into multimedia production in college.

5:13 And when I got out of college, my original path was going to be I wanted to go work for Pixar to do like 3D animation videos. I did some like virtual studio building and stuff like that. And I was kind of heading down that track and came home, started working with my dad a little bit. And, you know, he was we were just kind of talking and he was thinking about opening up a potential CERPRO franchise license. This was about 15 years ago. And he asked me if I wanted to help him run it, run his franchise. So I started doing that. And the first job we got was a very small plaza job. And I billed out $450 on it.

5:54 It took me four months to get paid. And so I was like, this is not going to work. This is not going to work. I don't know if this is the path or not. It was funny, though, because as I started getting into it, I realized it's just I wasn't good at it yet. Right. So it's so funny because I always tell this story in progression because the plaza we went to, it was in the mall, which getting a commercial job for us at that time was like crazy. surreal, right? Most of the time, the work we would get from a friend's basement or something like that, and we might do two or three water damages a month and a good month, you know, and then summertime, we just figured no water damages.

6:38 We're going to do, you know, window cleaning and gutter cleaning and what have you. So anyway, just getting back into the plaza job. We did the first time it was $450. They must have had something wrong with this drain because it would back up the same time every year. And I remember the second time I didn't cut the drywall out because it was a cat three water damage. Right. So the second time I got to do this. Then I learned how to clean and dry appropriately because the first time all I do is lay down a microbial. And so my first bill was $450. My second bill that happened was $3,500. And then my last bill after year three was $8,000. So that just goes to show that, one, I had a whole host of liability.

7:22 I wasn't covering because I wasn't doing the job right. But two, there was a lot to learn. And I think what I fell in love with about this industry is in kind of working in that setting, was that this is a highly technical business, right? It takes a lot of understanding, a lot of, and I'm very process oriented. And so I just kind of fell in love with the process of it. And I think that's kind of what got me going in this direction. Of course, my wife and I, I met my wife. I met her through a small group at church. We used to meet at Applebee's. So it was, I used to joke because I didn't do small groups in church very often, right? I was, I'm a Bible going Christian, but I did not usually like get into the social settings too much.

8:09 But anyway, I got invited and I met her there and I used to call it half apps and all God. So just poking some fun there. So I met her there, and then we dated for two or three years, and then me and her started our own Serpro franchise. So we said, you know what? We think we know how to do this. We're going to go. We're going to invest. We're going to put our money in, and we're going to open up our own. So... bought a franchise territory like across town from my dad. And we still collaborated, you know, obviously as we grew. So he didn't want to get so much into the nitty gritty. Right. And I didn't have the resources that he had. So we kind of collaborated on that a lot.

8:51 We grew side by side. He had one and then he had two and three. And then I bought one and then two and three. And then I think I got to seven and he had eight. And then COVID hit. And so that pivoted the whole company. from just fire and water to also microbial remediation. It just seemed like every hospital, every connection we had in every hospital, every grocery store, every place that we had ever done, even contract cleaning in, was a great resource for us to pivot and do a lot of sanitizations and disinfections. My wife and I bought our, we grew so fast and we were collaborating so much that it almost became a burden because like I would do a job for him and then I would do a job for myself.

9:40 And then I had all this technology. We had two sign-ins. It was just, it was getting like a headache. So about three years ago, we merged under, basically that's when we became Serve Pro Team Dobson. Yeah. That whole weird thing about signing an operating agreement with your dad, you know, that's, uh, that's something that's like, so it's so informal because when you're a kid and you just start out and you're just doing things. Right. But then to kind of sit down and put all the language together, you're like, there's nothing more intimate than sharing a bank account with someone. So I joke, it's more intimate than, than my bed. So, uh, So, yeah, so we merged under Sir Protein Dobson.

10:26 We got an operating agreement going, and then we just continued to grow. So we're in the Pittsburgh, Cleveland markets now. Those are our biggest metro markets. And then we have kind of submarkets in the Erie and Youngstown area. And so we have 19 franchises total now. About 250, 300 employees, give or take, on a day, you know? But that's just the general story of it all. So, yeah. Dude, tell me a little bit more. I mean, so you're business partners with your dad now, right? And it happened in various forms, it sounds like. But tell me about the relationship with your dad. What does that look like? Compare a little bit of what that was like as a kid when you were first starting to work in the family business and stuff.

11:07 And then what that has kind of grown into today. Yeah, so my dad has dabbled in a lot of different businesses, and he ran a really respectable contract cleaning company, like I would say 30 years ago. He grew really big, and he learned a lot in that growth, but then he had some, what was it, the 07, he was doing a lot of Kmart distribution centers, and then Kmart just essentially closed all their stores, and they didn't pay a lot of their vendors, and my dad was one of those people. He had a pretty good, tough time. And so the company had shrunk. At one time, he had 400 employees, but he had ended up shrinking down to like five. That's kind of how small it got, because we were just doing one-time jobs primarily and dabbling in restoration.

11:53 And so what I think... Our relationship was that I had a lot of technical expertise that I developed. I had a lot of energy, right? So it just takes a lot of time, a lot of energy. And he had experience. He had been through growths and contractions, and he had been through a lot of tough negotiations, stuff that you have to be. in order to be good at. So I label him a master of complex social situations, right? Like he knows when a scam is being ran, right? He's one of those guys that can come in and kind of feel people out and be like, oh, yeah, this person's running this scam right here.

12:34 You need to watch out for that, right? Or you need to be careful because this customer might be playing you here, right? And those are... Street, very street smart, very street smart, knows how to read people really well. And so just really good at liability control because he knows when when games are being played. So I would say that was his strength. And so typically when I feel a red flag coming, like if I say, OK, I have a problematic customer. I've done everything right. I've documented it appropriately. What's their angle here? What are they doing? And it seems like that's when I would go consult with my dad and say, hey, listen, I have a feeling there's a game being played right now.

13:14 Since I have a linear brain, I would sit there and say, hey, I'm here to clean up your water loss. I'm getting to get you from A to Z. Why aren't you happy? Right. And then it would be my dad would be the one point out. Actually, my wife's really good at this, too. So both of them kind of in this collaboration are fantastic. But they'll be like, yeah, they're trying to work you here because they're trying to set you up for this. Right. And so then I can kind of take the proper precautionary steps in my documentation and whatnot to do that. But as far as day-to-day training and stuff like that, that was all me and Katie.

13:55 And my dad, very good mentor. And that's been true for a lot of that then professional portion of your guys' relationships. Like early in the out of the gate, you guys established you kind of running lead operationally and him being more of the sage portion of that relationship. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, right off the get, you know, he was actually very transparent right at the front. He just said, you know, when he was opening up his first franchise, he says, I'm thinking about doing this, right, but I'm not going to do it unless you're in it, too, right, because I think he knew that I was trying to build a life at that time, and I was trying to get my family.

14:37 Like, I didn't have a family at the time, but he knew I was family-oriented, so, you know, I think he knew that we were, it could be a good partnership. Right? So, and that was, yeah, that was it from the beginning. Plus, it was my dad. Who doesn't want to work with their family is what you say at the beginning. And then you start with, So, yeah, but no, it was, listen, it's, it's, it was a great experience to go through because, and I had a lot of other good mentors too. We had our accountant, it was a great mentor in our life because he was the one that insists on an operating agreement when we merged. You know, fantastic, right?

15:18 Because that keeps things fair. My dad has owned his own bank account for 30 years, and now he's got to share it with his son. I don't think that left a good taste. Because, like, you know, it's, you know, if you... When you're an owner, right, you're a risk taker, right? Your chips are in the middle. And you can bet as aggressively as you want to bet when it's only your own money, right? But when it becomes other people's money, too, you have to take them into consideration as well to make sure you're making money. the best decision on behalf of everybody. So that was the good thing about the operating room is they kind of kept those things in check, which was great. I'm super curious about something, Andrew.

16:00 You had mentioned early that you had this trajectory towards Pixar and... At some point. And so I've heard you talk about, and I think this is just entrepreneurial in general, but just that willingness to take risks, take a chance. You've got a more creative side to you, clearly, and that had some level of influence. Where did the... And maybe I don't want to build something out of nothing, but when those two characteristics began to merge, did that play a role in some of the early growth? And kind of just... vision that you had for the business? Because it seems like what you guys have done, it's not been over a ton of time. It's been fairly consolidated that the progress has been made.

16:44 So my attitude has been like this, I would say my whole life. One, I like to have fun, right? And that's very much a Dobson family trait. No matter what we're doing, we're going to try and have a good time doing it. Playing baseball growing up was probably the best impact on my personality that I had. Face it, if you're going to take like two, three thousand swings a day to try and adjust your swing a quarter of an inch, that is a level of persistence and dedication. that an entrepreneur needs, right? So I think if anything, that was the driving force behind my personality is that I really am the person that believes that inches add up to miles.

17:25 And just put in the time every day and focus on the details, then what you'll get is a... a refined finished product. And then when you hit the field, people are like, why is he so good? Right. And it's because just hours and hours of tedious focus and persistence. I'll give you a good example. And this is a really dumb example in the business. There was one time I was trying to figure out why all my shelves always looked like crap in the warehouse. So, like, I would talk to the guys and they would, I'm like, hey, what? And I would just tell them, just put it back on the shelf. Why is it so hard to put it back on the shelf where it went? And I started looking at human behavior a lot.

18:07 And this was another thing, another aspect of my background that helped out. When I was in college, I would design websites and I would do what's called usability testing. Mm-hmm. Not many people give a lot of credit to websites, but when you go to Google, what are you supposed to do there? You know you're supposed to search because it's a very simple interface to interact with. And that starts your momentum forward to the end result. So then I would build these websites. And the thing about the website is that you don't have someone training you on the other side how to use that website. It has to be intuitively understood when you're interacting with it that it can be done.

18:50 So that was, I would say, one of the... The scariest moments for me in college is when I had this class. We would go to a client would come to the classroom. They'd ask us to build a website, but then we'd have to do usability testing. And when we would lock random people in a glass proof kind of studio, we would give them 10 tasks to do on the website and they'd have to figure it out. Right. The most frustrating part was that you would build these incredible designs and buttons and stuff like that, and then they would get lost. You would start seeing their mouse drift, and you would see their eyes drift, and you'd be like, no, it's right there. Just click the button.

19:31 Right. And the craziest thing is you put all this time and effort into designing something. But here's the thing. It's not their fault that they couldn't navigate it. Right. It was our fault because it was a poor design. So we would scrap it and start all over again. And so to tell you back on my warehouse, that's what would happen with the cleaning products. I started looking at why are they not putting it back on the shelf? Like, why is this so difficult for them? And because the organization wasn't there. And so the first thing I did was I started implementing a bin system, right? But then I found out that the bins were the wrong size. So here I am in the warehouse with a little ruler measuring my width and length and height of all my cleaning products.

20:14 And I'm going to find that lowest common denominator of a bin that fits each product perfectly because if it doesn't fit perfectly, then they're not going to return it back to the shelf. Right. And then labeling like it where now I have a product. When do I use this product? OK, now I'm going to put a label in front of that bin that says you're going to use this product for a kitchen fire or you're going to use this product for a water damage or what have you. And they explain now instead of, say, me taking someone through an elaborate training process. of, you know, hey, make sure you use, you know, ServPro wall and all cleaner for this kind of soil contamination.

20:57 Now, when they're picking out their products, the products are telling them when to use it, right? And ServPro was really great because they have a lot of great supporting information on all of that, but all I was doing was putting it all on an interface that was easily understood, right? That was pretty much the premise of, of that exercise. And so I did that with almost everything, the way we lay out our trucks, the way we lay out our warehouse, the way we stock our semi-trailers, everything is just to the inch. You know, we want to make sure we try and make the most of the square footage in every area. Can we hang in this? Because this is interesting to me because I think what happens, I'm just going to speak for myself, is I'm more the gut entrepreneur.

21:45 So it's like I'm more the relationship version of this. I'm more about like, we can negotiate this. I'm going to leverage my charisma to get you to buy in on where I want to go. But then at the end of the day, an operator like you, it's very difficult to argue what success comes. to design and asking ourselves really hard questions like, how can this be better? And what's interesting, I think, about your approach, and this is where I want to kind of dig in with you, is super self-accountable. And I think our default often, right, can be better employees, I need better this, if only, I wish. And you went right towards, again, it's like that background's helpful, right?

22:30 The user interface problem is the designer's fault. It's not the user. You're translating this into your business. How do you teach your new leader? So at 250 some employees, you've got layers of management and leadership. How are you ensuring that that mentality continues to penetrate the ranks of your business as you've grown? That's a hard thing. So one, training is still necessary. I came to this conclusion even just the last two, three years. I was so obsessed with creating the perfect platform kind of interface that people can interact with. But at the end of the day, and I don't know if you guys read my article for Restoration Remediation magazine, but it was all about soft skills, right?

23:15 An operational guy writing an article about soft skills was probably not what Kayla McAllen was thinking over there. But she published it, so I was very appreciative. But essentially, at the end of the day, we're still in the customer service business. And my job is to, I can assist with having good attitude by making their job less frustrating throughout the day, making sure they have reliable transportation and having quality equipment and all those things. My job is to reduce the friction with the operation. But at the end of the day, those are all just enhancements.

23:56 to soft skills training, right? And so I would say it was around about five years ago, I started my restoration school. And when I do teach, I do teach the technical aspects of restoration, but I actually have a huge emphasis on soft skills training. How do I approach the front door? I literally have a half hour bit on how do you approach the front door? I have a story that I tell every time I go through the first class, which is the importance of a first impression. And so I'll tell you guys right now because I've told the story 100 times. So but essentially one of the first times when we were really small, we had about five or six employees.

24:38 We went through a really long pipe break season. It seems like pipe break seasons lasted longer back then because now it just seems like the market's a little bit tighter. But anyway, it lasted like three months. So I was working 14, 16 hours a day for three months, you know, physically doing the job. So I was just exhausted. And I remember coming up, I lived in a duplex. And I remember the stairs to my upstairs apartment was on the outside of the building. So that says everything you need to know about where I used to live. So I go into my house and this is going to be TMI. But the first thing I do is I take my pants off and I need to take like a breather on the couch for like five seconds. Cause my pants are like covered in like sewage water and stuff.

25:20 So I remember like, like just sitting there, sitting there cause I'm trying to get the energy to go shower. And I still remember what to say. I'm getting ready to go and take a shower and the phone call rings and I get another emergency lawsuit. I'm like, Oh, all right. So I take my water damaged pants. I put them back on. I go down to my truck and at the truck at the time, we did not have the funds for nice vehicles. They were a little, a little rusty around the edges. You know what I mean? I would get in that truck, I'd go. And then at the time, my go-to energy was Monster Energy Drink because there's not like a million monsters like today. There was only one. It was Liquid Sweet Tarts. I would go out to the house.

26:02 I pulled into the driveway. I chugged my energy drink. I dropped it on the driveway. And then I remember going up the path. The security light came on. She had like a security light right in the path. And I'm like getting out of there. And I'm like, oh, excuse me, ma'am. This is Andrew with Serapron. She said, get out of here. And I'm like, wait, what? She said, get out of here. And I'm like, you know, I'm just here to try and help. I heard you had a water damage. like cursed me out, sent me packing. And funny, I was so tired. I didn't like even say, okay, whatever, I'm going home to sleep. But the funny thing was at that time I was also getting up and answering the phones in the morning. And so when I picked up the phone, she was one of my first callers.

26:46 And I'm like, it's a great day at Surf Road. This is Andrew. How can I help you? And she goes, by the way, I want to let you know that one of your technicians came out last night completely disheveled, drunk. And I assume he was high. So I sent him away. Now, I was not drunk. I was not high. Right? But that was her impression of me. Right? And so that's a story I tell my guys because, and most of the time this is what happens. Because I've been there in that situation. I said, the thing that I, like you fight with in your own head, you say, Doesn't this customer know I've been working 14 hours a day? Doesn't this customer know that I'm here to try and help them?

27:26 Doesn't this customer know that I'm the only person at this facility and we're just completely run down all this stuff? And aren't they just appreciative that I showed up? And the answer is no. Right. Yeah. Yeah. She has no idea the world that I'm coming from, nor does she care. She called me to take care of an emergency. Right. And so it was right then and there I had to ask myself going to the front door. OK, could I have loaded my truck better? Could I have made it look better? Could I have planned my vehicle better? The energy drink that I let fall onto the driveway. Was that an energy drink or a beer can?

28:07 Right. Could I have brought a change? Could I have paused for five minutes at my apartment and put a different shirt on, put a different pair of pants on, maybe splash some water on my face? Right. Make myself look a little bit more appropriate. And so I think, you know, I became so obsessed with that customer experience because I realized that at the end of the day, I didn't win that job. I didn't win that job because I didn't present myself like a professional. So I think that's why I'm so heavy, especially when I'm teaching my classes on soft skills, because I've seen people who don't know industry standards succeed simply because their customer service is there.

28:53 So I still use my technical savvy to set up my teams for success, But I use my school to train them about public perception and customer behavior, right? Most of what I talk about is language, right? So I'm teaching people how to articulate standards more than I'm actually teaching them about standards. So both are important and we cover both, but those soft skills can get you out of jams because I always tell them, you're going to make a mistake somewhere. And if you do make a mistake, and you've done your soft skills right, then the customer is going to forgive you. If your soft skills, your rapport-building skills were not established, they're going to be less likely to give you any kind of grace on your project.

29:43 Yeah, it's huge. I've heard that term or that example used in the idea of making deposits, right? In fact, we were just kind of talking about this as part of our internal team here at FP, is we have to aggressively, from that first moment, the first call, begin to try to make deposits in that account. Because inevitably, something's going to happen with the project, especially in the recon side, where it's like, there's a lot of variables. You're trying to control the controllables, but there's going to be things that are outside of your ability to control. And if you've got a really nice bank account full of deposits that you've been making intentionally, When you got to do that withdrawal, it doesn't put you into the red.

30:24 And there's something there to take without turning that client into a non-cheerleader, if you will. It's interesting, Andrew, because a lot of what you... I can hear the linear in your brain when you're talking through stuff. There's definitely this train of action or thought that you're trying to put into place. How are you helping leaders in your organization be more of that? Is this a lot of the way that you're hiring? Are you looking for specific avatars? Is there a role that you play specifically in coaching up your leaders? What's that look like? I think we're adamant about kind of a grassroots approach. We did not grow in a major metropolitan market.

31:06 So we had to develop people from the ground up. And that's what I would say I continue to try to do. But what you're saying is, I would say something that I'm still learning. I find myself, I could be a good leader, but developing leaders, it's almost like a recipe or a soup. And if the conditions aren't just right, the leadership doesn't take. So it's a combination of competence. Do they understand what I'm talking about? It's talking about heart, right? Are they really empathetic to their teams or are they just saying they're empathetic to their teams?

31:46 Their actions have to back that up. So it's one thing when I obsess about designing the perfect box truck or implementing the perfect macro set, the heart of what I do is the user's experience, which is going to be our employee. Right. If I've had an operations manager and the box truck setup has stayed the same for the last year, two years, they're not working on it. I don't look for like miles of progress. I look for inches. Like what did you do to improve that setup for them today? Right. How did you relay out the shelving in the next new box truck we bought?

32:27 How does it just a little bit better? How is it version 5.0, 6.0, or are you just kind of carrying on the same? as you always did. So I guess that's back to the baseball player in me. I'm not ever satisfied with where it is, right? You want to make it just a tiny bit better, even if you're on the cutting edge of a lot of areas, right? You have to keep exploring other industries and other areas to try and add inches and smooth out the wheel a little bit more. So to make that long story short, some people don't have that same obsession. And I'd say the leadership in the company has a degree of that obsession.

33:10 And the really good ones are intentional every single day and the ones that are passing, they're intentional about it every other day or once a week. And that's not to say that's a bad thing. Right. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. I had a marketing director. His name was Jim Standhart loved his people, but actually like, I think he knew how to lighten the mood in the room. Cause I would kind of get really serious and then he would be the one guy that kind of would shake things up and loosen it up a little bit. So I would appreciate that because like, just like you said, my brain gets middle of like solving a problem. I have really bad RBF. Yeah.

33:53 Yeah, so I'm going to get a middle of a problem, but someone will be talking to me like this, and my eyebrows are like that. I'm like, okay, but then I'll kind of be trying to picture it. My wife's like, are you upset or something? I'm like, no, I'm just trying to figure this out. She's like, you look mad. Anyway, so he's really good that compliments me too. Like I wouldn't want him to be process oriented, right? I don't need him to be exactly like me. I actually need him to compliment me, right? And loosen things up when I get too serious. So a leadership team is like a soup. I don't have that down. I just know that it has elements.

34:35 Like if I'm making chicken noodle soup, I know it's... broth, noodles, and maybe some carrots and some chicken in it, right? To what degree are you mixing those? I don't know, but you're trying to get at least to some semblance of chicken noodle soups. So I wish I had the exact recipe, I just don't. Are you a business that's under 5 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 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.

35:21 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. 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.

36:04 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. I think sometimes we have some successes in certain categories or approaches, and it's pretty easy then to tell ourselves that that's the way. And sometimes you just kind of worked your ass off enough that you got lucky. And so if you're not trying to re-explore what the system or the process is, you could catch yourself actually playing with a bad playbook. You just don't know it because you got lucky and didn't get impacted maybe by the lack of a system.

36:49 I got to leave you some room, Chris, because I've got 10 more questions lined up. Well, I'm so curious, because this process orientation, this user experience kind of thing that you've drawn on from college, I just find so interesting because it is a really valuable perspective inside a business. Just your original example of designing websites that are intuitive, people in your example in the warehouse and so forth. I'm curious, how have you brought that orientation to the sales function in your business? Do you stay out of that part of the business and allow a more touchy-feely person? What is your fingerprint on the sales operation at Team Docs?

37:30 In sales, okay, and I have to make sure I define sales correctly, because this is where we get mixed up sometimes. So we have a marketing department, and in our marketing department is business development. And business development is like going out, forming relationships. I believe, and so it also helps to give you more background, say, from my father and my family. My dad's one of seven kids, right? And at one point in time, my uncles and my dad sold cars, right? And if you ask a car salesman what sales is, they're going to say, how many cars did you sell, right? And so it was really weird getting into this business because in our industry, for whatever reason, we call sales basically business development.

38:17 So relationship building, making the phone ring, right? But even if you make the phone ring, it doesn't mean you sold anything. Right. So we're a little bit weird in that we call sale. Anything that makes the phone ring is marketing to us. Right. Whether it's web, whether it's relationships, whether it's whatever, whatever creates a lead. Right. Is marketing to us. And then whatever closes on that lead. So. pricing it effectively, structuring it appropriately, communicating it to all materially interested parties. That, to us, is a sale. Kind of like a car salesman filling out an order form while you're describing the car that you want to buy, right?

39:01 That's a terminology thing that I run into all the time when we're talking. I'm assuming you're talking about business development, right? Well, yes and no. I love how you're talking about this, actually. We tend to think, like in our whole floodlight, our consulting company is, there's field sales. So we're one of those people, we call the marketing sales. We want people out there doing discovery with clients. And of course, we're pretty heavily oriented around commercial stuff, right? And then we think of job side sales or operational selling. And those are the folks that actually collect the work authorization, get the construction agreement signed, et cetera. They're, quote, closing the deal in the traditional sense.

39:42 And it sounds like you guys have a similar model. You've just chosen to anchor the field sales as marketers. They're making the phone ring, lead gen. Yes. Yeah, so Jim Stanahar ran his business development team for a long time. And that was also, I would say, I'm glad I had him. We'll just put that. Because he taught me a lot about developing, because operationally, from the operational sales of field sales, as you called it, production, billing, collections, I have all that down. So he taught me a lot in that it was really about listening to their problems, right?

40:22 And then proactively coming up with a solution. Yeah. And everyone has different problems from different perspectives. And so I think what he did was focus people on a specific vertical. Like, for example, Rod Meyer in our company, he's actually now our GM, but Rod Meyer in our company, one of his niches was insurance agents. And for the longest time, we thought insurance agents were a dud. We'd have pen droppers go down to insurance agents and no one gave us any lead. But he actually came up, Rod and Jim, through a collaboration, came up with an idea of becoming a certified CE instructor to give insurance agents their CEs.

41:04 So now it would be kind of annoying when a registration company would drop by. insurance agency because they'd be trying to do their work or whatever and they would take the pen and they'd say thanks and then move on with their day. But now they were inviting Rod in because Rod would do basically a lunch and learn. So they didn't even have to leave their office anymore to go get their CE credits. He would go give them their CE credits on their timeframe so that they could still get worked on throughout the day. And so he was being invited in to that agency to do that. And I was like, okay, this makes sense to me. One, you're providing an incredible – I have to pay him.

41:45 to go see these people anyway, right? So, but at this point, his effectiveness just went off the charts because he established that these insurance agents needed these CE credits in order to kind of connect, right? He went out and just offered, it didn't cost the company anything either to become the CE instructor. I mean, a little bit of time, a little bit of money, but nothing extraordinary. And it was just effort that he was willing to put in. And so he got to know his customer base. And then, wouldn't you know it, we would get calls from agents referring us all the time. Because he became a reliable resource for that vertical, you know. And so I think that's kind of a thing, a philosophy we adopted and ran with, is that if we could find a person that could identify, say, with the medical field or the...

42:35 industrial field or the manufacturing field or what have you, that that would ultimately, you know, get us into, we would have an awareness of their problems. We'd be prepared for their problems and we'd be able to serve them better. So they became, they came to rely on us more. One of the sort of universal problems with scaling a restoration company, and Brandon and I have experienced this at different scales, is you expand your sales team, And inevitably, you run into issues where the operations team can't quite deliver, right? You get a big influx. Some jobs go sideways. Your salespeople are embarrassed, right?

43:17 Because they've been out there making promises to get the first job in and it doesn't quite go perfectly. And so your sales reps discouraged. You know, Brandon, I talk a lot about this, how there's this dance between sales and ops. where sales is going out there putting their name on the line, and then inevitably things are going to go wrong. How have you guys experienced that? And how over time have you tightened up this kind of dance between sales and ops? Both the communication, but also how have you had to shore up maybe your operations delivery as you've grown up? Talk to us about that, because it's been a massive growth. You guys have been hockey stick growth the last five, six years, right? So I imagine you've experienced a lot of internal turmoil.

44:01 That still exists. I kind of want it that way. I call it a friendly tension in the room, because it challenges each other to get a little bit better, right? But at the same token, I do think a lot of it is also foundational training, which goes back to the school. Like, for example, everyone in the company, The dispatchers, the job thought coordinators, the priority responders, the salesmen, they're all WRT certified. And the reason why is because they need to know what the right thing is, right? The problem with most of the communication between sales and production is that sales has never done production. So then, like, we've all been in that mechanic shop one time when they said, yeah, you have a unicorn stuck in your muffler, so I have to pull it out, right?

44:48 And you're like, I don't remember having a unicorn in that muffler. But that and that's what some to be honest with you, that's that's the trade problem is that some contractors do try to pull one over with technical speak. But I think what I try to ground people in is this is the right thing to do. Right. This is this is not a matter of opinion here, but this is the right thing to do. They're just trying to do what's right. If you could figure out, like if the customer or someone else presents, we also invite collaboration. So if someone can present me a different vantage point that also solves the problem, we're willing to hear it out.

45:28 So I think increasing collaboration is great. Increasing understanding with education is great. I'm all for that. But then lastly, just team bonding. I think the hardest thing, and I learned this this last year because I had a relatively new leadership team. And that's getting to know the heart of people is one of the most challenging things when you're making the soup, right? What are your intentions? Is what you're telling me the truth? Do you understand that it's that important, right? Those are the intangibles that it's the hardest thing to control, right? Because you can hear someone tell you, what you want to hear all the time. And then for whatever reason, it's not clicking, right?

46:10 The traction doesn't seem to be there. And so you want to have trust. You want to make sure you give them the benefit of the doubt and the same token, have they earned that yet, right? Those are the hard things in developing leaders where I've literally been a yo-yo with that. I've gone in and I've checked the operation around when I felt like something was wrong. But then I've also been too far back where I should have stepped in sooner. Right. And so I think that to me was the challenge of raising a leadership team to kind of help me cross those bridges. Right. Are they actually active in that collaboration or are they just kind of.

46:50 Hands off. Right? So that's a hard job. Leadership, you know, say whatever you want, but I think I can have the perfect ops manager, but I may not have the perfect ops leader. Right? I don't know that I ever will. So... That is an interesting comment. I think you've said several things, honestly, Andrew, that I'm kind of just chewing on personally as a leader. But that comment, like I might have the right operations manager, but I may not have the right operations leader. Boy, that's actually chock full of something worth processing. And it's probably something that shows up at just about every layer in the business. As you're kind of talking through this, Obviously, you're a linear thinker, you're a problem solver, some of that comes naturally to you.

47:40 But now you've got this very large business. I mean, you start talking about 250 plus personnel, it doesn't take much for that ship to get off track by a couple degrees and then you overshoot your target. For you personally, what has been the, I would say, the hardest thing that you've had to develop or really prioritize to take on the leadership of this organization that's starting to grow exponentially over the last several years? What's the one thing, if you had to boil it down, that's been the most difficult thing for you to manage or develop? I would say, how about this? I'll tell you a challenge that I ran into.

48:22 And it was a philosophy that I developed that I ended up being wrong on. So I think this is a lesson that I just learned that I can give you guys input on. So I would say I started trying to hire leadership, like hire leaders to be leaders. Right. And I think I made one mistake in that I thought leadership can come from anywhere. Right. And I don't mean that not everyone can be a leader. What I'm saying is in order to be a leader, a good leader, especially in this business, you have to have understanding. Right. The reason why I'm so adamant, why I believe that I can act as a leader so well is because.

49:08 I've had a customer curse me out at the front door because I didn't present myself right. So I can talk with a certain level of authenticity to my technicians, to my crew chiefs, to my PMs about the right way to approach a project. What I did not, and I hired a couple of high-level managers, people who had come from lean manufacturing, And I think the challenge was, even my thought process was, okay, I'm the technical guru. These guys are professional managers. Therefore, they'll help me lead, right? And the problem was, is they didn't buy in, right?

49:48 They would tell me they were buying in, right? And then they would turn around and lead a different direction, right? And so I had gone back and forth about why would they do, why? Cause don't they know? And once again, this is me being dumb again, right? This, I said this to the customer a long time ago. Don't, don't they know that I'm tired? Don't they know that I've been doing this for three months? Right. And I said to myself, I remember saying to myself, I was like literally rocking in my chair, right? And I'm like, don't they know that I'm an industry expert? Don't they know that I'm an IIS CRC instructor? Don't they know that I'm OSHA certified, I'm EPA certified, all these certifications and all these things?

50:30 And the answer was, they don't. They had no understanding of, and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying certifications are everything, but they don't have an understanding of the depth of knowledge that it takes or the depth of knowledge that, you know, you need in the level of empathy or the level of struggle that those employees go through that makes you wake up at six o'clock in the morning and get in two hours early to reorganize things for them so that they get off to their day well, right? Because you know that if you get them past the first three hours of their day, if you're really intentional for that first three hours of the day, the rest of their day goes smooth because they have everything they need to get the job done, right?

51:11 That to me was the hardest part. I think I misunderstood. What's this? What's the word? I was unconsciously competent, right? I didn't know what I knew, right? And so I was not able to take into consideration the gaps in their knowledge base to be proper leaders in the positions that they were. So that was my learning lesson, I would say, over the last year. Good people, right? I wouldn't say that they were bad people. They were good people. The reason why I hired them was because they were extremely professional. It was just I miscalculated on the knowledge gap that they needed to overcome. Yeah, it's huge.

51:52 Yeah, it's huge. I think a lot of owners will relate to that and are probably confronting the same issue. Like right now. Yeah, like right now. Yeah. Brandon's saying it was good for him to hear is what he's saying, that's funny listen dude, I'm telling you we're still dealing with people here and you know, you can have all the best intentions in the world and you can give all the best training in the world but we're still making we're still making soup and sometimes you go to the store and you're thinking turkey's close enough, right? because that's what you're saying So I guess I'm not making chicken soup. I guess I'm making turkey soup or ham soup, right? Whatever they happen to you know. That's right. That's right.

52:32 As we approach the top of the hour here, kind of landing the plane, why don't you dive into this new venture that you've launched and this training school that you've referenced a few times, kind of what's the scope of offerings that you guys have? And then, of course, you know, how do people reach you or find out more information about that, right? Yeah, so I opened up a school, which has been a longstanding dream of mine, certified restoration training. And the things that I kind of did at Serve Protein Dobson, I'm just starting to package and put out there. And I know some of my competitors are like, why are you just putting this stuff out there? Because at the end of the day, no one wins with an upset customer. And no one wins with an upside employee.

53:13 If I had it my way, all my competitors would provide the same quality service that we would provide. And I mean that authentically, right? Because I do want the customer to have a good, no one wants the customer to have a bad experience. If you, if the customer called you because they trusted you, right? Then I want you to be able to follow through. And so even though you are my competition, and I put that in quotes, like I said, no one loses with an upset customer. So what I started doing is I started taking a lot of the technological processes, some of the process training that we've developed at Serpro Team Dobson. And I'm starting to kind of repackage them, redo them, enhance them.

53:57 I've been spending a lot more time at refining them, kind of making them more polished. And then, for example, I have this macro set for water damage. And the purpose of that water damage macro set, it's called the pro water damage macro set, is that it builds IIS, CRC, EPA, and OSHA guidelines into the line item so that as you estimate it pre-explains why you're doing what you're doing. Right? Wow. And so not having to memorize, you know, page 16, paragraph four is the category three water damage. Right? Sad that I do, but I know that, but it's sad. But anyway, that comes with that, right? So now there's pre-programmed notes that basically vocalize that, and it reduces friction.

54:40 Because everyone in my organization knows the industry standards. But when they get pushback on it, it almost becomes my opinion versus your opinion. And I'm like, no, no, no, just let the standards speak for itself. And so I developed that process because I wanted to minimize friction. And when the customer sees all those standard references and the adjuster sees all those standard references, they're like, okay. Like, I'm good, right? There's nothing else that needs to be said. But anyway, so then it goes into, I still provide the WRT, the FSRT certifications. I'm going to be doing OSHA training, so OSHA 30, OSHA 10.

55:21 All those things are going to be coming soon to my website. And I'm dedicated to building professionals and making masters, right? Because I just want the customer service end to be as good as it possibly can be. That's awesome, dude. Yeah, I think that is difficult for leaders to commit to. I think principally a lot of us agree that abundant mindedness is an awesome trait to live out. And sometimes our fear and some of the other things, our ego is getting in the way of us living it out. So good job to you for actually stepping into the gap and following through on that commitment with action. I think it's admirable. I think it's awesome. Thank you. How do people get in touch to find out more information about those offerings?

56:03 Maybe get there. Yeah, you can go on our website, www.certified-restoration-training.com. You can also email me at andrew at certified-restoration-training.com. And yeah, so those are the best two resources. Awesome, man. As we wrap, any books, podcasts, podcasts, that have been particularly powerful or provocative or led to change for you that you'd recommend to our audience? You know, there was this one podcast I listened to. It was called Head, Hearts, and Boots. It pretty much taught me everything that I need to know about the restoration business.

56:43 I wouldn't be where I am without them. Check it out. I do a lot of faith and theology podcasting too. So I'm a huge Dave Ramsey guy. I hate debt. I hate borrowing. I hate credit cards. They're unnecessary sometimes, but I hate them. So I do like Dave Ramsey. And Reasonable Faith is an apologetics podcast that I follow pretty good too. It's fantastic by William Lane Craig. He has a whole spiel of theological stuff that I follow. But other than that, just, yeah, just reading. So yeah, right on. Love it. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for taking time with us, man.

57:24 There's just so many gold nuggets in here. I'm going to re-listen to the show as well when it comes out. But yeah, really awesome to have you on. We've wanted to for a while and I'm sure it won't be our last. We're going to have to check in with you. Yeah. I'd like to run a 500 person company because I'm sure that's in your house. Listen, man, every once in a while, I always still feel like a young guy, like you said earlier. Just you saying that scared me a little bit. That might be telling me something that maybe I need to go punch T-ball instead or something. Well, it's good to have backup plans, right?

58:05 Well, thank you again, man. I really appreciate your time. Have a good rest of Q1, man. All right, thanks. Thanks, Andrew. 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.