Ep 176 - "Start With The Future In Mind, With Sadiq Isu"

0:00 What's up, man? How's it going? You saw what I was doing. I can see you watching the camera because you're like, I'm going to be the first one to say what's up. Okay, so dude, I have a note. Here's self-confession. I'm going to show it to you. You see that note right there? No, I can't. I can't read. I don't have my glasses on. What does that say? Intro with Chris. Shorty shorts. The camera can't see it. You guys can't see this right now, but Chris is fully taking advantage of the virtual world that we operate in. And homie has got the shortest shorts on right now. Oh, they're not that short. They're five inchers. Bro. It's comfy, man. Okay. We're getting into summer. It's comfy. Just cracking me up. We're in virtual mode here in Corvallis, Oregon.

0:41 I don't need to have, I don't even need to have pants on right now. That's right. I just love it. So funny, really quick, funny story. So we had our men's group last night. Oh yeah. So those of you who've been following us for a while, I started this little men's group. It's called Cuss and Discuss. And it's just, it's a good old boys club where we hang out and, and it's actually more anyway, whatever. I can talk more about that some other time, but I had this ad showing up on my Facebook feed for this company called Shinesty. They are not, by the way, a paying sponsor. But Shinesty, if you want to sponsor us, you can. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Shinesty.com. Okay. And they're just kind of this cheeky underwear. They make suits with all these funky patterns. You can go there for like a Halloween costume, but then they also make underwear.

1:24 And they make these Speedo swimsuits. Like Speedo style swimsuits that are really fun. Oh my gosh, dude. And so I bought this Speedo. that like type, you know, swimsuit that has an elephant on. It's like an elephant pattern. Oh, did we even take this? So I, so I showed up, I brought my new swimsuit that I got from shyness D and I showed up and surprised all my boys. We went to go get in the sauna. Like I walk out of the bathroom, change it into this. And it's like all eyes on Nordike and then immediate laughter. So how did I get on that? Anyway, but, Well, you were commenting on my shorts. I have no idea. And my point was you ain't seen nothing yet, bro.

2:05 You haven't seen the elephant Speedos. I'm going to definitely treat you to those at some point. Yeah. Wow. Can't wait. Next campfire hangout. We know that's on record now. At La Casa Reese. You're going to see me roll out this summer with the elephant Speedo. Gosh. Do you use that for your cold plunge too? The elephant Speedo? Frankly, it's just becoming my go-to for all sauna sessions. Trump gets a little shorter during the cold. Okay. Anyway, let's get back on track. Do we have a show today or what? We do. We do. By the way, I'm just, I'm sorry, Sadiq. I just like, I took it there. Yeah. Well, I think listeners are used to this at this point. Okay. So who do we have today? We're going to be talking to Sadiq and I hope I get this right, Sadiq.

2:48 I'm sorry. Sue. Okay. Pure clean owner, serial entrepreneur, owns a company called All Talents, which we get into to a certain extent during our chat. Real estate developer. Real estate developer. He owns an investment company in Nigeria. I mean, this guy is a prolific entrepreneur. Incredible. And you guys, what you're going to see and hear, I think, from this episode is it's this big picture mindset. There's something powerful that happens. when an entrepreneur has the ability to consistently lean in and prioritize looking out on the future and then using that to create the plan, the context for day-to-day business decisions.

3:28 And we just kind of dig in a bit to his journey. We dig in and ask him questions to kind of uncover, I think, some of the mindset that he's leveraging in the favor of his success and his business partners and team. Just, I mean, the guy's totally missionable. You can hear it. I mean, we definitely get into it towards the end when he talks about some of the things he's doing for his employee base. This is an admirable man doing really remarkable things as a business leader. And I just think there's so much here for us to learn from. Absolutely. And I got to say too, man, If this is any, like if Sadiq is any indication of sort of the caliber of owners that Pure Clean is attracting. Yeah.

4:09 I mean, certainly we had Mark Davis on in that Building an Empire episode that we did with Mark Davis. I mean, you and I were just so enamored with the story and how he shows up. It potentially says a lot about the direction of Pure Clean and what I think the industry can expect to see from them. I just had a call with another Pure Clean operator. That's a big, fast growing, again, blown away by just the caliber of people that I'm meeting in that organization. So anyway, this is a great conversation. There are lots and lots and lots of good nuggets. I mean, Brandon and I were taking notes during it. Beyond the shorty shorts. Beyond the shorty shorts. I was taking some other notes. too. That's right. Oh, by the way, Mr. Davis, Mark Davis, sir, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to remind you, my friend, I owe your dad a bit of HHB swag.

4:55 So Mr. Davis, dad, if you're listening, I need some contact information, my friend, so I can send you a shirt. And Mr. Davis, Mark, if you're listening, can you please get that to me so that I can honor your dad and his dedicated listening that he's doing with the HHB show? That was a riot to hear So remark on that. All right, you guys, let's get into this. There we go. 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.

5:37 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. Welcome to the show, Sadiq. It's so great to have you here. It's fun to finally come to this moment here. We were introduced by Mark Davis, which obviously we're a huge fan of, and with you being part of the PuroClean system and such. And then I had a chance to meet you at a recent conference, you and a couple of your business partners, and I've been really looking forward to the show. So it's great to have you here on Head, Heart & Boots, man. Thank you. And I really appreciate the invite as well.

6:22 Because you have become a prolific entrepreneur. You're a restorer, but you're a lot of other things. And you have a variety of investments that you and your business partners have engaged in. And you have a lot of vision from our conversation at the conference we met at. Lots of vision moving forward. But I'd like to go back. Like, go way back, right? Talk about your origin story a little bit and kind of leading up to where you're at today. And we'll probably stop you and ask questions along the way as well. Yeah, like a million questions. All right. All right. So Wayback is going to be rather interesting. So I think I'm one of those people that never gives up. I think that's where I would like to start from. I started with the intention of I really wanted to be a medical doctor growing up.

7:05 You said way back. So analysis is so I'm originally from Nigeria and in Nigeria, parents, in fact, they are heavily involved in your career growth and your career path and what they would like you to be in future. The biggest boost elements for African parents is their son is either a medical doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Every other thing else, you know, it's not part of any kind of career growth or career move. And if you watch a lot of Nigerian movies, you would actually get to hear that kind of story. So but for me, I really, really wanted to be a medical doctor. When I got to college, it didn't work. It was obvious that, you know, that wasn't what I wanted to do. So I changed strategy and I said, you know what?

7:47 I need to figure out something else to do. But in between, I've always been a business person. I've always been involved in little things. You know how here in the U.S. you would have somebody have like a lemonade stand. You know, they might be a very young person. For me, it wasn't a lemonade stand. I had like a vegetable stand where, you know, I take vegetable to the market and try to sell and all. And my mom would not is not supposed to be aware of some of these things that I was doing. But it wasn't just enough because I grew up and it came from a very, very poor background, very, very poor background. So my mom really, really wanted education more than anything else. So all the side hustles and side businesses that I was doing, I couldn't really take that to her.

8:31 I graduated college sometimes in, so I did my first one in 2002, then finished the second one in 2010. Then I started my career working with a couple of organizations, then started working with Nokia, Nokia, the mobile phone manufacturer, those days in West Africa. And I did marketing for Nokia and I fell in love with marketing and business development. Worked with Nokia till 2014, relocated from Nigeria, then came to the U.S. in 2014. So got to the US and started as a salesperson. So I was always out there selling. Now, while I was in Nigeria, while I was in college, I had a dry cleaning service where I was dry cleaning clothes for students, you know, so it was an opportunity for me to make money while I was there.

9:17 And while I was in Nokia, I still had my dry cleaning service. I had a logistics company where I had dump trucks that was delivering sand here and there. And I had a boutique for my wife. So I've always, always been involved in business. When I relocated to the U.S., I went back to the sales field and I started selling at a furniture store. And from there, I went back to work at Cardinal Health, where I did marketing and business development and ended up in Kroger. This brings to the story of how I decided to move over from working in the corporate world to owning my own business. Now, while we were doing this, my wife had always been saying, you've always owned businesses back home in Nigeria. Why are you not going back to owning business?

9:59 Unfortunately, unfortunately, we just bought a house. We bought the house and we moved in. We decided to go spend some time with my brother. So my wife left the house, went to my brother's place. Then I went to work. Then I was working in Cincinnati and I live in Columbus, which is like a three hours drive. So I would stay in Cincinnati Mondays through Fridays. And then I come back home over the weekend. And while I was away in Cincinnati, I got a call from the fire department. My neighbor called and said, so what are coming out from my window? Please bear in mind, we just bought that house three months prior. We bought the house. You know, when you buy a house and you go all out, it was over budget. And so we went all out. Apparently, there is no money for anything else.

10:40 Right. So now we got a story that our house is being flooded and, you know, the fire department is out there and they were asking if they should break in if we are OK. I said, well, I'm in Cincinnati. My wife is not at home. Go ahead, break into the house. And so I started driving back and I called my insurance company. I explained all the situation to them and they said, we will send somebody to your house to come evaluate and take care of it. They sent a puro clean. to my house. So the Pure Clean person came to my house and it took them 13 days to dry off the entire house and everything was done. Unfortunately, it took about four months to get the repairs of my house back in place. $76,000 only in repairs just to be able to restore the property back.

11:21 In that moment, I wasn't even living in the house. But because it was a bad period where there were lots of damages, general contractors were busy. So I became the general contractor And so when we finished after all the repairs and all, it was a nightmare getting paid by the insurance company because I literally just put everything on my credit card to fix it so we can get back home. But getting paid was a nightmare. So I decided that I was going to go into this with the opportunity to be able to help people that are going to be experiencing the same thing that I experienced when I had the water damage. And so I started doing my research, checking up on Pure Clean, checking up on other restoration companies. And eventually I made up my mind that it was Pure Clean.

12:03 And nine months after that disaster, no, two years after the disaster, I opened my own restoration company or I bought into my own Pure Clean franchise. And that is the entire story to get to where we are today. Wow. So 2014 is when you came to the U.S. That is correct. Yeah. So people don't know this yet. Obviously, outside of your inner circle, we're going to start identifying all the things that you're actively doing and not just pursuing, but actively winning at already. And it's been 11 years. I think that just I didn't have that context either in our several conversations. So I'm planting a seed there that it's not only are what you're doing impressive and effective, but this has all been happening at quite a pace, which is ridiculous.

12:46 Yeah, but you kind of made it sound like you had sort of stopped your entrepreneurship, but you also in the same breath kind of described you had a dry cleaning service for students in your market and your wife had a boutique that you guys owned that presumably selling clothes or things or whatever. And there was another thing you mentioned. Yeah, logistics, right? All being fully employed with another entity, right? Okay. Yeah. That's incredible. So just for the curious minds, what did you ended up closing down those companies or did you sell them? I sold them. So I sold all the companies. Yes, yes. These are all in Nigeria. So I sold them and then relocated over to the U.S. So in that interim of coming to the U.S. from 2014 of coming to the U.S. to 2019, I did not do any other business.

13:32 I was just focused on being employed until 2019 when I started my PuroClean. Okay. Well, and I think what's interesting about what we're learning about you so far, Sadiq, is that you are a critical thinker. There tends to be this default posture of yours where you see something and then you begin analyzing what can be done with it, how it can be more efficient, how it can be done better. Clearly that leads to a lot of successful modifications and moderation in your business. First year, give me first 12 to 24 months as a pure, clean owner and a new entrepreneur in the disaster restoration. What happened? Yeah.

14:12 Did you do everything right and made gazillions of dollars that first year? How did it all go? Yeah. Millions of dollars first year, yes. Do everything right, absolutely not. So I remember when I was at a PuroClean meeting, final training before you actually become a PuroClean owner. And I did not actually remember I said that until I was reminded recently. I said that, my goal was to be Rookie of the Year within my class. So Rookie of the Year would be everybody that joined Pure Oclaim within that one year. They put everybody's numbers together and, you know, the things they're doing right. And they come up with a decision to say, you know what, this is the best person that came in, the rookie of that year. And so I started my Pure Oclaim. And my goal was this. My goal is to be the crumb eater.

14:55 I was just getting into the organization and the analysis is simple. I cannot compete with the bigger guys. They already have their client base, but any job they cannot take, I will take. That was my decision. Good, bad, ugly. I will do it. Right. So I became the crumb eater and just focused on the little rubbish and garbage that they would decide not to do. I remember one of my first days or the earlier days, I got a call from a customer who said, oh, you know, do you guys get rid of pianos? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. I do that all day long. And then she called me in and then I got there and realized it was a grand piano. And I looked at that monster and I was thinking, how on earth can I get rid of this?

15:36 Because she asked me, she said, what's the cost to get rid of it? And I said, $200. I was there for six hours breaking down that thing. And I still had to take it to the dumpster to be able to dump it. I didn't tell her now I'm going to have to increase my fare. I took it, sucked it in, and I did the job. And I did it very, very well. So where I'm going with my conversation is this. Anytime I talk to anybody that wants to buy into their franchise or learning the model of the things that I do differently, I set that clear expectation. You cannot go out there with the intention to compete with the bigger guys. Now, let's be clear. In the restoration industry, I don't think that we have the capacity to satisfy everything for now. I don't think that we have enough restoration companies to take care of the nature or the number or volume of losses that are still available in the restoration industry.

16:25 However, the bigger guys would go after the bigger losses. But somebody still needs to take care of the $1,000 loss. Somebody still needs to take care of the $500 loss. Somebody still needs to take care of those losses. And then you create a name for yourself within the industry. And a year after all of that, we became rookie of the year. And I think after 2019, if you remember, COVID-19 started 2019. And then we got into 2020, where was the height of COVID-19? But we didn't stop. We didn't relent. We kept on going all through the COVID period because that was period for other people to go out of business. But we couldn't go out of business because guess what? That precious house that I was telling you about, that was the house that I used as a collateral for the loan that I got to start my own Pure Clean business.

17:07 So there was no going back at that point. The inevitable leveraging everything you can get your hands on to step out and give it a try. I'm curious, man. So like this mentality of the crumb eater, I just, I think even the phrase is really rad. Like I'm, I'm almost thinking t-shirt brand, right? For the crumb eater here. Like what instills that? Because I mean, essentially kind of everything that you've shared with us so far is that that was in the DNA already. What set the stage for that? What at a younger age were you seeing, experiencing that told you that sometimes you just got to suck it up and grind through it in order for you to see or experience what you really want? What was happening? What set that stage?

17:48 So for me, you know, like I said at the beginning, you know, I grew up in a very, very poor home. So to me, it was the worst thing to me than that is actually going back to being poor, right? Or going back to being homeless and That kind of life is not the kind of life that I would like to live anymore. And so, therefore, whatever it is that I have to do to move to the next level, I want to do it. Right. And that was my focus as I then to say, you know what? I can't be the crumb eaters. If you give me the bad job, I'll take it. If you give me the good job, I'll take it. If you give me the ugly job, I'll take it. It still did not stop me from becoming the rookie of the year as that when I finished. because even though we're going after the crumbs, we had the opportunity to continue to grow from that point.

18:29 And right now, I also set a clear expectation. We're no longer crumb eaters. There are people that are now going to be crumb eaters. Let them eat the crumb because it's avenue for them to grow. This is not a matter of pride. It's a matter of dignity. It's a matter of status. And it's a matter of positioning. So we're no longer positioned as an organization to eat crumbs. We are positioned as an organization to help the commercial, help the residential, even the smaller residential. We still do all of that. But you call us and then we go out there. But we don't chase after those crumbs as we used to anymore because the tides has changed. And it's now an opportunity for other people to be able to get into that area as well.

19:10 Do you feel like in that, let's call it the first 12 months, did you know all of what you've just explained to me? Or were you just living kind of one step at a time? Or have you always been able to approach it and say, where do I want to be and what actions do I need to take to get there? You understand what I mean? Like that nuance between that? Yeah, I've always been a strategic thinker, right? So I've always, every organization where I've worked, when I was working in marketing or business development, all I've done was to create strategy for those organizations where I worked. So if it's an opportunity to develop different strategies, that was my strength. However, this was an industry that I am not familiar with. Please note, I came from Nigeria.

19:51 The beauty materials in Nigeria is completely different from the beauty materials here in the U.S., right? My coming to the U.S. was my first time of hearing drywall. My coming into the U.S. was the first time of getting into a crawl space. So it wasn't something, it wasn't a terrain that I was familiar with. I've always been in the blue collar world, in the white collar world where I was working prior. Now, moving from white collar into the blue collar wasn't something that was easy for me to do. So I did a lot of winging and learning as I go. two years after I started my PuroClean, I got my general contractor's license and I've been using the general contractor's license ever since then. I'm building houses from scratch up now, even though I never had that experience before.

20:33 So I don't even only stop at water mitigation, fire damage and all the rest of it. I also build custom homes because I've been able to grow myself or my niche out of that area because of all the learning opportunities that I gathered when I started. Did I? The thing that just hits me when I hear this journey is it seems very confident the whole time. You just have an innate confidence that you're going to figure it out, that it's going to get better, that you're going to be able to execute on that strategy. Where does that come from? Is it just because you've put in enough reps and you trust yourself or what supports that? So I was never able to put a grasp on it until recently.

21:16 I had another podcast. I think it was two weeks ago. And I was talking to someone. His name is Nick. He's actually the city of Puroklin. And he said in that meeting, he said that you can fix a problem. So if you try and it fails, you can fix it. But you cannot fix lack of trying. So you're not making an attempt means that there is nothing to fix. The chance of failing is 100%. You're making an attempt without data. The chance of failing is 50%. Now, data might actually skew it plus or minus, but without data, your chance of failing is 50%.

21:57 So why not just take that risk first and then you fix it later? This is what I say. You know, I was talking to my wife recently and I said, if I die... And I go to the, and they take me to the hospital and they come back and say, Sadiq died of a heart attack. I said, don't believe them. Somebody poisoned me. I said, the reason is I don't dwell on the problem. Tell me a problem. I don't want to deal with it. Don't spend time explaining the problem to me. Let's start thinking about the solution to that problem because there's always going to be problems. And anytime there is a problem, there's always also going to be a solution. So why not let's dwell on the solution? So if you don't try, you would not know if you would fail or succeed. So why not try anyway? And then if you fail, you fail. And you make sure you write that down so you don't fail again the next time.

22:38 And then apply a different method. And hopefully the second method would actually take you to where you need to get to. One, that's just a huge reminder for all of us. And I think that at the end of the day, that whole saying, you fail every shot you don't take, is essentially what you've just reminded us of. The other thing that I heard you just say is a focus on immediately beginning to identify potential solutions. And I'm kind of a Dan Martell fan. And one of the things that reading one of his books, like Get Your Time Back or something, I don't know. Anyways, he talks about the 1-3-1 method. And it's this idea of teaching our teams, right, to get good at identifying what the one red, you know, known problem is, the big issue in front of them. bring three potential solutions and then identify the one from your experience and perspective you believe will be the best, right?

23:26 And if we can teach this into our organizations where we constantly have people not afraid to identify a problem, but instead of approaching us with fear and angst and anxiety, they approach and say, hey boss, here's the problem that I think we're struggling with. Here are three ways that I've kind of considered how we could potentially solve that. And here's the one I believe will work the best. To me, that's a way to frame this mentality that you bring to your organizations, right? Or at least what I heard you communicate. And that's this idea of don't be hesitant to identify the problem. We can do change when we know what the issue is, right? But then it's this immediate posture of, we're going to create solutions. Not only is this not a negative thing, it's great that you've identified it, and now we get to create a solution to solve the problem.

24:10 And so that 1-3-1 is like a methodology of how to actually make this happen inside your organization, whereas for you, it sounds like it's much more a natural instinct or natural wiring element to what you bring to the team. I have not read that book, but it sounds very interesting. The reason why I said it sounds interesting is this. When you're sick and you go to the hospital, what's the first thing that is being done? It's diagnosis. Assessment. Yeah. Right? They just want to know. They take your vital. They want to know what the problem is. See, until you're able to identify the problem, every solution that you throw out the problem is a waste of time. Mm-hmm. Right. So first thing first, and I tell my team this, see, don't be scared to fail. If you fail, we failed and we'll pick up from there and we start again.

24:55 If you are too scared to fail, then you do not try. First thing first is identify the problem. What is the problem? Once we know what the problem is, then it's easy. All we just need to do is figure out what the solution to that problem is. You know, it's like the saying that everything that has an advantage has its disadvantages. It's the same thing that everything that has a problem has a solution. The solution might not be the perfect solution to the problem, but it's a better way to start to eliminating what that problem is. And so the most important thing is let's identify the problem and then let's figure out what we can use to provide a solution to that problem. It's the same way I think and it's the same way I've been able to pass that information down to the member of my team on how to think a little bit differently differently.

25:36 I was talking to someone recently. I always take my stories back to people that I talk to. I was talking to someone at the Pure Oakland Conference recently. And the person's question is, Sadiq, you know, I hired someone, but I don't know if I can trust that person to deliver on the services or what I hired that person to do. And I said, why did you hire the person? Did you hire the person because the person is your friend, relative, brother? Why? He said, oh, I hired the person because I feel the person can do this. But now I don't know if the trust is there. I said, never hire anybody that you cannot trust. It's easy for me because I meet you the first time and I trust you. Then unlike other people that you have to earn your trust. But then if you lose that trust, it takes you like forever to earn it back for me.

26:17 So because of that, I'm only hiring people that I can trust. Once you come into my office, I'm not babysitting you. You do your thing. You fail, we fail together. You succeed, we succeed together. Let's just keep pushing. We're not going to dwell on it for too long. So the advice is I hire you because I trust you and I trust you will deliver. Okay. Okay, I want to get into this pocket a little bit because one of the things that you and I talked about prior was what motivated you to begin developing all talents. This is one of your multiple companies that you're currently winning with. And so going back to the problem, right, you guys as a team have built a culture where you're good at identifying a problem and trying to create a solution.

27:01 So how, like, give me the timetable. You've been now in, you got rookie of the year, you're building your Puro cleanup, and something you begin to experience is telling you, you have a problem to solve, and now it's time to go to work to create this solution. this out of the box solution with all talents. Can you bring us up to speed on what was going on there? Okay, so this is what I realized. The insurance or the restoration company originally had always been a blue collar world environment. Now, because you have a lot of documentation and you're dealing directly with the insurance, unfortunately puts you in a situation whereby you need the combination of blue and white in order for you to be able to figure out all the documentation that you need.

27:45 So your business is now separated into two zones, right? So you have the technicians and some part of the project management that deals with the blue collar side. Then on the white collar side, you have the rest of the project management and you also have the administrative people and, you know, everybody that ensure that all your documentations are right in order for you to get paid. Now, identifying that brought two zones. The first zone is this. There are very smart business owners that have always been in the blue collar world. And navigating the white collar world had been a difficult challenge for them. That's number one. Number two, when COVID hits, we all saw a lot of things that happened. The restoration industry and the small businesses took big hits a lot.

28:26 You know, not just small businesses. I mean, generally in the U.S., there was so much big hits. And even till today, I mean, if you step out of my office and walk to the next door, you will see we are hiring out there. I mean, everybody's hiring. So if my technician is not happy, they can walk out of this place and walk next door. And there is possibly an opportunity, right? They're waiting for them, right? So the competition was steep. Now, in my office, we were growing so fast and we needed to now bring in estimators to be able to write our estimates and to be able to run project management. And during that period, we started looking out. We were fortunate enough because one of the biggest insurance carriers let some of the adjusters go.

29:07 So we hired one of the adjusters to come work in our office. And so he came into our office, very smart guy. His estimate is always on point. But the problem is he still treated the losses as if he's an adjuster. So if he receives an email from the customer, it takes him 48 hours to 72 hours to respond to an email. At times, if an adjuster calls him and say, oh, I need you to change this line item, change this line item, he tell them, you can't tell me what to do. You know, I used to be an adjuster. This is the line item that we use. And this is the line item that I would submit. It wasn't working. And we couldn't hire. I mean, then you put up a job post after I spent, we were spending about $3,000 every single month on different job boards just to be able to fill a role.

29:52 every month. I mean, what a small business, $3,000 is a lot of money for a small business to be putting into just hiring. Out of that $3,000, you probably will only have five applicants, six applicants. And by the time you interview them, maybe it's only two of them that even have the knowledge to use the restoration softwares that we always use. So it became a difficult challenge. And so I decided that I'm going to hire people in Nigeria and train them on how to do restoration and see if it would work. So we started with three people. I hired three people, brought the three of them into my office. I trained them for two weeks. I trained them on how to use Xactimate, how to use mobile claims. I trained them on how to use QuickBooks and how to use the restoration tools.

30:36 And then as at that period, I had about $1,080,000 in account receivables. And for a small business, that is a lot of money that you need to collect. So when I brought in these three people, I took two of them and I put them on the account receivables and I made one person the estimator. And I just trained them and did that. Within the first two months, they were able to drop the account receivables from $1,080,000 to about $520,000 in the first two months. apparently this is working. So all I just need to do is improve on it. So we started improving on it. From there, we hired another five people. We trained them. We assigned them to different offices, different puro clean offices that showed interest. And then we hired 10 and we trained them and then we assigned them.

31:20 Then we started getting feedback from our customers that were not very happy with some of the employees because we don't think that they have enough training. But the communication to the business owners is we would provide two weeks training and then we assign them to you and then you train them. But the feedback we're getting is I don't have time. I don't want to have to do the training. They are supposed to help me transition the white collar space. So why am I now teaching somebody how to do that part when I'm not even good at it? So we took that training and we extended the training to three months. So we would hire 50 people and put them in a room. And we train them everything restoration. We train them water. We train them fire. We train them how to write estimate. We train them mode. Train them biohazard.

32:00 Every single training in the trade. Exactimate, exact analysis, pure logic, every single thing. And then as soon as they are trained, we take them and then we assign them to work in an organization. And we started doing that. So three years from when we started All Talent to today, we have almost 400 employees and over 150 different clients that we provide services to. And all specifically in the disaster restoration. All specific. Now we have different categories for the non-restoration space because we started creating verticals in medical billing, creating verticals in the IT space, creating verticals. So we have several verticals, but only in the restoration industry. We have almost 400 employees providing service to restoration companies.

32:42 In three years. In three years. Wow. So unbelievable. It's funny because Chris and I have, in the client book under Floodlight, there's a pretty broad mix in terms of perspective, I would say, on what is it like to use offshore team members. We've got teams that have fully engaged and they're all in on trying to identify the best fit for that resource and how to partner well with them. all the way to just the thought of bringing up the idea that someone not in the US is going to address, let's say AP, AR, estimating, whatever. It's a stretch for them to be willing to explore that. You had zero hesitation. What are we stuck on?

33:23 If I'm a US-based restorer, I didn't grow up in Nigeria. I've only grown up here. What is this mental block that I'm wrestling with that I can't equip or use somebody in an offshore relationship to do some of the things that we're trying to accomplish? What do you think that mind block is? Number one is change. We really, really, humans really, really don't like change. I mean, change is hard for a lot of people to be able to adjust to. So first thing first is in the restoration industry, majority of the time, people always assume that an estimator always needs to go out there and estimate the loss and then come back and with all the photos and all the reports and say, this loss has been estimated and this is what we have.

34:06 It has changed. Now think about it. I don't know how long you guys have been in the industry. In Xactimate, A-Mover has been $25 for the past 30 years. When I started my Pure Clean, entry-level technician was about $14 an hour for entry-level technician. Right now, at $20, $22 an hour for an entry-level technician, they would tell you no. In fact, having a driver's license is a bigger plus now than it used to be before. Because in the technician space, in the blue-collar space, you're looking for people and people come in and this one say, oh, I don't have a driver's license. I have a driver's license. I have a clean record. That gives you, that earns you an additional $2 immediately just by having that clean record and knowing how to drive. Everything in the industry had increased in rates very drastically, except for the pricing that was seen in the restoration space.

34:54 Now, it's not just there. Before now, you get direct calls and you're able to deal with them. Now we all, majority of us depends on TPAs. So TPAs takes that. And then there is so much SLA that is associated with it. ICRC on the standard of cleaning used to be very high up there. Now, SLEs are taking over because going based on ICRC standard, which is the basics of cleaning, now it's SLEs. SLE says that, you know, clean this, but we're not going to pay for this. You signed it, you agreed on it, and so therefore profit margin in the restoration space is shrinking. I can tell you this because I do AR for several restoration companies. I know of a restoration, not even I know, I know of several restoration offices that their profit margin is 1% to 2% in the organization.

35:42 Bottom. Just be a bottom. And the funny thing is you look at their revenue, they are grossing in about $3 million, $4 million in revenue. But profit margin is 1%, 2%. And so you're asking questions of what's going on. And for each time you ask about services and resources that they need to deliver, you would see that when you look at their books, every single thing sits in place. And the thing is, salaries have gone up. Labor in the restoration industry should typically not be more than 21%. Currently, you see people labor at 40%. By the time you add other expenses back into it, it's next to zero in terms of what profitability looks like.

36:25 So you have an organization and you want to stay profitable. There are ways you can do it. One is cost cutting in terms of if I can hire someone to do AR because I cannot either afford an AR person and dealing with it on my own, it's not a strength that I have. Why not hire someone and outsource it? you're going to save nothing less than 75 to 80 percent on outsourcing that particular role. And whatever company or country that you're outsourcing it to, you're not punishing them by paying them. You're actually helping them by paying them. So it's an opportunity for your business to grow. It's also an opportunity for someone somewhere else to also be able to benefit from some of the opportunities that you have.

37:07 Now, I say this all the time. If you can hire a full-time estimator in the U.S. to go out and estimate losses and you pay them as an estimator, go ahead and do it. But what about if you need it, but you just can't afford it? Now, in my office, I'm very clear. My U.S.-based project managers are not to write estimates. Your time is too expensive to be writing estimates. I don't want you writing an estimate. Now, this is the analysis behind it. The office manager gets calls and then dispatches the project managers to go inspect the losses. The project managers go out there to inspect the loss. They probably have four inspections or five inspections by the end of the day.

37:48 They come back to the offices 4 p.m. They're like, let me quickly write this estimate and submit this estimate to the customer. They write one estimate, it's already 5 p.m. or two estimates, it's already 5 p.m. They submit it to the customer and they're like, yeah, I'm just gonna come in tomorrow morning and then finish my estimate. You get to the office tomorrow morning, the office manager already have another four to five inspections for you. You go there now, unfortunately, the customer is not getting the estimate fast enough. So instead, do not write estimate. Go inspect the job, sell the job, send it to an estimator who is in Nigeria, let that estimator write the estimate You review the estimate. It's not going to take you more than five to 10 minutes to review the estimate. Review the estimate, give it a go, talk to the customer, close that sale, and let's move on.

38:31 Two things is what it's done. It's made my guys here more efficient because they don't have to spend their time doing things that they are not supposed to be doing. And it also created that level of affordability for the organization and the opportunity for the people in Nigeria to be able to write the estimate. Every single employee at All Talent are all college degree holders. And we train you, teach you how to build a house from scratch up in the U.S. And not just that, all the materials we use in the U.S. I took drywall to Nigeria. I took insulation to Nigeria. I took all of the building materials to Nigeria. So you can feel it, you can touch it, you can know it, you can recognize it.

39:12 So anytime you see it, you're well trained enough to understand the kind of building materials that we use and apply them accordingly. So these trainings and these teachings has equipped them enough to know the difference between what they need and what they don't. and use it adequately. And that is why it's very valuable that if you cannot afford it, have a rethink of giving someone else the opportunity to be able to fill that gap. And then you have, like I said, 75 to 80% cost savings in filling that role with somebody who can actually do the job and work remotely. And AnswerForce. We tend not to give the attention to our call intake that I think we really ought to have as restorers.

39:53 And of course, one of the biggest challenges we have with our call intake, whether it's an in-house receptionist or a service like AnswerForce, is what do you do when your receptionist goes out to lunch? Well, AnswerForce makes that very easy to solve for, right? They're 24-7. You have a receptionist or a call intake person that's out for maternity leave, out on vacation, etc., etc. AnswerForce has a solution to all of those things. And I think, too, it also solves for us having a very consistent, repeatable call intake process. We all know how important that is. 100%. And the cool thing is actually we just hung out with these guys and they let us know, let us in on some big feature updates that have recently been pushed through the system. So first, verified contacts, right? So verified contacts, basically it allows the system to understand that this is a repeat caller.

40:38 And then it allows them to auto capture and fill those details as part of the intake process. So smoother, more professional intake. Much easier to kind of give that client that impression that, hey, this isn't the first time you've called, right? Yeah, and we'll listen to the rest of these sets because I think they're super applicable to our commercial opportunities. So specialized scripting, okay? This is great because this is everything from holiday shifts, after-hour shifts. I mean, you name it. There's different reasons, right? Or different layers of the cake, if you will, just based on what's going on in terms of call volume, what's going on time of day. And so with specialized scripting, the script then will match that. And so it's shifting live, if you will, along with that kind of richer context of what's actually happening in the business.

41:21 Then this other thing, I thought this was super cool, is dedicated phone numbers. So going back to that repeat client or that key client or customer, we now can associate a specific phone number to them. And so what happens is they get received very uniquely, right? So I can imagine creating a custom script for that client. We now can recognize a repeat caller and autofill and speed up their intake. And then on top of that, There's a specialized number that's dedicated to them. So you really get to marry up that professional service offering, right? That we're promising, if you will, during the prospect. And right from the jump, if you've got a commercial client with specific needs or specific expectations, build that into the script at call intake.

42:03 Yeah, it's super powerful, super powerful. Yeah. Another one is just access to information wherever you are. So I don't know how many of you are already currently using AnswerForce. You should take it seriously in terms of getting a demo and checking them out. But if and when you shift over to them as a partner, the cool thing is now is that you've got access to all this data, all this information on the go from anywhere on your mobile device. And so you can literally check inbound, outbound calls. You can listen to recordings. actively coach the team kind of like midstream, right? And so again, just a ton of efficiency, a ton of automation, and just higher levels of customization coming out of AnswerForce. And it is so stinking affordable.

42:44 This isn't just for big multi-million dollar companies. This is for you that's still working out of your home shop, your garage. And it's also for you that are running a $25 million operation with four locations. It's just, it's pretty extraordinary. They work with some of the biggest companies in our industry and many of the smallest ones as well. So, okay. Actionable. So guys, we have talked about our friendship and relationship to these guys for a long time. Many of you know, in the recent probably year and over the last several months, just this hyper focus on the efficiency and quality Thank you.

43:45 that you've really taken into full account all the individual elements and line items associated with this element of the scope that you're trying to accomplish. And I'm not going to highlight any specific teams, but we have heard robust numbers from teams using this. We're hearing anything from 5%, 6%, even 8% top line growth, specifically from the quality of their estimates increasingly. I remember when they rolled this out to you that one of the use cases or part of the value that they were trying to hit on is the ability for us to bring up a new estimator quickly up to the standard and competency and the results ultimately of the more experienced estimators on the team, right?

44:25 So this is an incredible onboarding and training tool to get somebody up to where they're very, very competent and producing quality estimates just that much faster. Way faster. And just one last thing I kind of want to hyperindex on is they have just an absolute boatload of white papers and F9 supporting notes. And so this is something that you could participate in being a member with Actionable Insights. But guys, we all know that getting our estimates approved in that negotiation phase is hard right now. It just feels like every carrier is significantly understaffed. They're fighting for error. We're fighting for error. And anything we can do to reduce that friction is better. And so the better we are at providing really good support for what we're calling out in our scope and why we're calling for it, the better.

45:09 And so these white papers, these F9 support notes are super powerful. Man, it's been a little while, but we've been kind of refueling the relationship with CNR quite a bit lately. And that's been good, man. I think both teams got so dang busy. We had a tough time kind of locking in and getting some face time together. But the team over at CNR has been great for our industry, you guys. You know, we've often referred to Michelle as a friend of the industry. She really is keyed in on giving us what we need in terms of tools, communication, intel on the industry. Yeah. And so we just continue to encourage you guys, participate, make sure that you're receiving your quarterly copies and that you're getting all the online content that just comes in boatloads from their team.

45:52 So CNR Magazine, guys, pay attention, make sure that you're participating and getting your intel from that team as well. Liftify, bro. Yeah. Liftify, you know, it's interesting. Yesterday, I was just seeing one of our clients was getting awarded their 750 Google Review trophy. And they were already talking about hitting 1,000. 1,000. That's right. Which somebody has done. Yes. One of our clients has done it. It's remarkable. And I think the most remarkable thing that people are discovering, and we're seeing this every single day with our clients, is that when you start upping the volume of Google reviews you're getting consistently week after week, the recency, when you're getting the recency dialed in and just meaning every week you're adding Google reviews to your profile, dramatic jumps in organic results.

46:39 phone calls in lead gen. And of course, who doesn't want that? Every single one of us, including Floodlight, we want that. And that's why we've indexed on, we use Liftify to build up our Google reviews. So it's a simple turnkey service. They've really created a process for capturing the most quality Google reviews from the jobs that you're already getting. So if you want to get more work... grow your revenue just off of the existing work you're already getting. Liftify is a big part of how to do that. And it's simple. It's very, very cost effective. From our experience with Liftify and what we've seen with our clients, significantly better value and better results than many of the other platforms that some of you might already be trying.

47:19 So if you're not happy with the number of Google reviews you're getting, you need to reach out to Liftify. And I think as a point of reference, it's worth us saying. Liftify expects 20% to 25% conversion. So think about that within your own numbers. If you're doing 1,000 jobs a year, you should be adding 200 to 250 Google reviews to your profile every single year. If you're performing under that, You owe it to yourself to reach out to liftify.com forward slash floodlight. You know, one last thing to add to that as part of their kind of more recent integration of AI or advancing that integration of AI. One of the big focuses for their team is gathering more live project data and analytics for you guys. And so really what this is focused on is equipping all of us to create better customer experiences.

48:05 So not only are they keyed in and driving Google reviews for us, but now they've actually turned the corner and began developing toolkits for us that use Liftify to actually be getting information that can help us modify our service delivery to create better client experiences. Super powerful. Midstream. We're talking mid-job. Yeah. Wow. Super powerful. All right. Liftify.com. All right, guys. Thanks for hanging out with us. Let's get back to the show. I think what's really interesting about what you just said, I think a lot about things in terms of opportunity cost. And if we just, again, take some of these roles, let's hyper-focus on an estimator as an example.

48:48 If there's a way to realistically save 70% or 80% on the cost associated with that one job title inside our organization, what kind of opportunity do we then have to, let's say, take a portion of that savings and invest it in the training and time that would be required to equip that person? Now, obviously, a little bit of a cheat code, right? Like if you're listening to this episode and you're hearing about Sadiq and his team for the first time, besides being a top tier Puro Clean operator, he runs All Talents. And All Talents is this offshore talent pool that he's talking about wins in the industry.

49:29 But outside of that, the principle of this is, I think if I just were to try to equip us as listeners, how do we approach solving some of these problems that all of us have felt and been complaining about for a long time? And it's that gap that's widening between what real costs are and what it is that are, I'm going to say, estimating platforms in general are struggling to do is close that gap. And so point being, if you can legitimately save that much per role, well then we can spend a portion of it to do what it would be necessary to equip that person to successfully be in that position. And maybe estimator is not the first one you take a bite out of. I love this kind of concept where you said it's this magic of blending both the blue collar and the white collar expertise to create this win.

50:17 What kind of roles in AP, AR, coordinators, administrative positions where we can create create a blueprint, a step-by-step process, a box check, a checklist. Here's the things that we have to do. We can make it black and white, tangible and concrete, and then pay 80% less and not have the same recruiting battles or people that don't want to show up to work because folks in an offshore environment are often like, you said, college educated, and for them, they're already elevated into a top earning percentage. Well, you're going to show up pretty damn determined to deliver when that's your experience versus me being the kid that I could choose between McDonald's or getting into your crawl space for the same 15 bucks, right?

51:00 So I think part of what I'm hearing you outline is a commitment to stay in the problem long enough to come up with a way to solve it and stop buying these kind of pre-existing assumptions that we've used to try to solve that problem. problem before. Because if any of those assumptions were working, we wouldn't all be complaining about how hard it is to find good people and how expensive labor is. Like, let's try a different approach, right? The way I see it, so in Nigeria, there is currently 43% unemployment rate amongst college degree holders. Okay. Now, out of the almost 400 employees that we have, we've only lost three employees that quitted in the organization. Three. They quit where they were placed.

51:42 They quit. They quitted and said, oh, yeah, we found another opportunity somewhere else. So we're going to take that. Three out of almost 400. Out of my 29 people in my Pure Clean office just this year alone, we've had almost 10 people quit. We replace it this fast because it's the opportunities out there when there is 3% unemployment rates in a place. The opportunities out there compared to 43% unemployment rate. Now, we're not taking advantage of the fact that it is unemployment. To me, it's an opportunity for someone who is intelligent enough to come work. Now, let's draw this analysis. Put up a post for a business development manager.

52:25 Here, salary starting at $70,000. In three months, we only had 14 applicants. I put up a job post in Nigeria and I had 4,000 applicants in two weeks. 4,000 applicants. Now, it is now more of a responsibility on me and my hiring team to narrow down from $4,000 to only 50 people that we need to fill in that role. So how do we get to fill that role? Number one, you have to write a personality test, a behavioral test, and an IQ test. It means that we're going for the best of the best. Now, once we bring you in, then you go through an interview where we have a team of three people interview one person.

53:12 So you're the candidate. You will be interviewed by three people. That three people records each of their score and we take the average of the highest score. So we interview five people to bring in one. So we bring in 250 people out of the 4,000 applicants. And then after they pass, maybe it narrows it down from 4,000 to 500 people. And out of that 500 people, we bring in 250 people to an interview and we interview five to pick one to narrow it down to 50 people that we bring into a class. And we train those 50 people for three full months before we assign them to you. We are giving you nothing but the best.

53:53 Now, it doesn't mean nothing. that some people will not fall through the crack, but we have 98% retention rates. So most of the clients that is sticking on our employees are more than satisfied. That's why they are retaining those employees to continually to work with them. So a Again, I'm giving this analysis and maybe this is more of like a trade secret on our selection is being made, but I'm giving this analysis for people to actually see the intentionality behind what we do in order for us to give you the best candidates to work in your organization. I'm intrigued by your example of the business development rep or business development manager. Because I think a lot of folks in the US would say, oh, there's just too many cultural differences.

54:37 That would be difficult for somebody in a different country to sell, perform that sales function simply because of cultural differences and nuance of language. Just like the operating business language with talking to a chief engineer at a hotel or a... an insurance agent, or even speaking to an adjuster here at Stateside, that that's too big of a hurdle for somebody to overcome and to be able to be effective in that. I'm curious what your thoughts are. Because of course, there's other real like heavy customer facing kind of roles as well. And I think that would be people's biggest objection. How do you guys overcome that? So good question. So we overcome it two ways. So number one is that we also do accent training.

55:17 Now, I know you're like, well, Sadiq, your accent has not changed. So who trained you? Well, nobody trained me. I'm a business owner, so deal with it. But let's analyze it a little bit differently. So for the employees, we would provide accent training. Of course, we were colonized by the British or Nigeria was colonized by the British. So a lingua franca is English language, right? But then there is also going to be the accent or the variations of accents that you would hear in that context. This is what I say to a lot of people. When I was working in the corporate world, there was a point where I did strategic planning for multicultural marketing, right? So it was my responsibility to be able to help different culture and markets to each of these cultures.

56:00 So I would... market to African-Americans, Hispanic, Latinos, Africans, the Jewish customers, and this was. So it was my path to develop the strategy for that organization for what I was doing. And based on the data that we have there, by the year 2050, the most populated race in the U.S. or the most populated people in the U.S. are going to be the Hispanic people, right? By 2050. The reason is the Caucasian community is not growing as rapid as it used to grow before. The African-American community is not catching up to the growth of the Hispanic community. So that community is growing. And sooner rather than later, the adjustment within the country is going to be so diverse that it's going to be so multifaceted in terms of cultural differences.

56:50 You either join it now or not. The opportunity is still there. You might not be aware there is something that is actually called the U.S. visa lottery. Some selected countries are given opportunity to bring in a certain number of people into the U.S. every single year. That is not going to stop. That opportunity is still going to be there. The American dream is still there for a lot of people that are going to be coming in. So you either join the bandwagon in the sense that the cultural difference is always going to be there or not. Take your phone and call your airline. Call your bank. Call someone. Somebody in India is answering that call. The U.S. exported.

57:31 So the U.S. looked at it and said, the technicians, think about the technicians. They do a lot of work for the restoration companies, right? Who are you going to pay more, the technician or the estimator? Estimator. The estimator. By default, for sure. Why? The only difference is that the estimator is working on the computer and is using the brain rather than the hands, right? We started outsourcing hands outside of the country because it's not worth the value of money you get when you use brains. So we said, now what? We want to keep brains and export hands. So we took hands and exported hands to China. And then we're like, well, even as part of the brains, there are some brain work that I don't want to deal with. Customer service, for example, I don't want to deal with it.

58:13 Then we took that and we outsourced it to India and the Philippines. And so we kept the brain, which has the most money. And we're like, yeah, we're going to keep the brain because it has the most money. What we're doing differently is that small business owners like Pure Clean or the Restoration are not as big as Amazon, for example, that can just decide to go to India, open up a huge warehouse, put employees in there and call them customer service. But our talents is bridging that gap of saying, you are a small business. You only need one employee. We got you. We already have our office. We've already trained them. We give them laptop computers. We give them headset. We give them mouse. We give them all these things. Now, don't even worry about data security because we are ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified.

58:54 So our data security is on point in order for us to get the highest level of certification that you can think of. So take this employee and let this employee work with you. And that's what we're pushing for. That's it. you either join that opportunity to say it's either they have a different accent. The only reason why we're having this conversation is because we're talking about smaller organizations. If we're talking about bigger organizations, it's more of cost savings than anything else. That's why we would outsource all of these roles. Yeah, you would expect it, right? Like when we talk about larger entities, this shift already came and went. Like everybody just expects when they pick up the phone that they're going to hear an accent related to the person that they're having a conversation with. So I think what you're saying is very real, right?

59:37 Like that it's our small business space that we haven't began to think about this or make some of the shift. I think the other thing though, Sadiq, that you're talking about that I don't want to kind of lose track of is it's more like this mental approach that you take. I think what I want our listeners to hear and part of your story is, yeah, not only is AllTalents doing some really freaking great stuff, just for sake of clarity, you guys know we try not to make this show about pitching products and services, but I I will tell you, there is a reason why Sadiq is on this show today, and it is because what they're doing with AllTalents is absolutely crazy. And it is effective, and it's very effective.

1:00:19 And not only is it effective, but it's developing the roles that for most of us, we would be slow to assume someone offshore can do and do well. And I think you can hear by him validating their vetting process, their training process, that they've approached this with a very specific mindset. And therefore, they're producing a result that you guys can partner with and bank on. But, okay, all that to say. It's the model that I hear you using to solve these problems that I'm most interested in. And here's what I mean by that, Sadiq, is as a restore. And again, I know some of this is just mental bandwidth and space that we have in our working day. Like how much can we actively get done or put our hands on?

1:01:03 But when I hear you try to solve a problem, it's like you're good at identifying where the hurdles are, where the gap is, and then you don't get stuck on all the solutions that can't work. You don't get hyper fixated on, that's gonna be hard or require time, or we may have to increase the amount of spend or training that we're investing into this particular opportunity. It's more like, what is the problem? We've identified it. Is it worth enough to solve? And if it is, let's do whatever it takes then to solve that problem. Because the gap that you just very quickly brushed over, that you filled in terms of training people now off-site for three months at a time, importing materials so that you can give them a real exposure to what they would be dealing with and estimate here, these are big problems to solve.

1:01:52 But your mental approach is what's powerful. And I think it makes it universally applicable, I guess, is where I'm going with that is... If we can listen to what Sadiq is using to solve problems and how he frames his approach, what problems in your business right now are we not solving because we get high-centered on what it's going to take to solve it? Instead of just committing, this is worth solving. I'm going to figure it the fuck out. Sorry for the French, right? So I think it's that thing, right? Like, yes, all talents is insane what you guys are doing right now and why you're here. But man, your approach, like the way that you solve problems, your commitment to solving the tough problems, and then the result it's creating inside your business is crazy.

1:02:36 So anyways, I know I'm kind of beating a dead horse a little bit here, but I think that's the thing I want people to pay attention to is it's not even the details of what he did. It's what Sadiq thinks about a problem and how he approaches it that makes him absurdly successful. Is it okay if I take a little bit of a tangent here? Because I'm really curious about something you said earlier. You made reference to the fact that now you're actually building custom homes. And the reason why I ask about this, and it's really more kind of like a macro question about your decision-making process and how you think as a business owner. Because one of the things that Brandon and I see a lot in the restoration space, I'm sure this is true of all the home services industries, is that owners tend to have shiny object syndrome.

1:03:17 Yeah. They see opportunity everywhere and their inclination is to chase every opportunity, but not really critically thinking about that opportunity and inevitably chasing after a distraction that ends up harming their core business that even gave them the ability to chase that opportunity. It's like the cash flowing business that's supporting them chasing the shiny object, right? Is the thing funding it and it ultimately is just a distraction and then it erodes the success of their core business. Right. And so when I heard you say custom homes, custom homes happens to be something that many restorers listening have done or think they want to do, but there's as many that have tried it and they're like, oh, crud, you know, I can't get the margin out of this kind of work.

1:04:00 And so they end up steering away from it. I'm curious, my question to you is, how do you as a serial entrepreneur, somebody who has many irons in the fire and no doubt you see opportunity everywhere and things that you plan to do in the future, what's your calculus? Like what's your decision-making process to help you identify, is this an opportunity that makes sense to chase right now? Or is this a distraction that's going to take us away from the other valuable work that we're already engaged in? How do you think about that? So the good thing is, see, in every organization, you need to have, if you all are strategic thinkers in that organization, there's going to be a problem. So while somebody is thinking about strategy, someone else is thinking about executing that strategy, how easy and how difficult it's going to be to execute that strategy.

1:04:46 And someone else is thinking about the financial implication of what would happen to that strategy. You either execute it now, execute it tomorrow or not execute it at all or execute it and fail in it. How is it going to come back to hit your business or hit your post or hit your wallet as the case may be? You're right. The restoration industry has opportunities for you to expand, to grow and to probably just own that niche and do well in that niche. This is what I see. I think I have people and team that can help me calm that strategic personality. One. Two, I have enough resource to look at it and say, let's look at it from a forward thinking perspective.

1:05:27 If you go into this right now, it is going to affect one, two, three, four. Now we've identified there is a problem. Going back is not the express way to deal with it. Figuring out the solution to that problem is the express way to deal with it. First, when I started All Talents, I decided I will personally not go out to inspect any job anymore, except if it's a commercial loss that is valued at $300,000 for one trade only. That's the only time that I would go out. I've also seen organizations, I actually also know someone personally who would not go out until that job is about $5 million.

1:06:07 I know people like that. Because of that, I understood the value of time. And I say, someone is going to go look at that job. It's just not going to be me. It doesn't mean that that person is not competent. It's that person's responsibility. We hire that person and put that person in place. Example, we always do family nights in my house because that's the only time we get to spend time with the children. And it's usually on Friday nights, no matter where I am in the world. On Friday night, I want to be back home because I want to do family night with my kids. And so one of those days, my wife said, oh, you know, let's go pick up pizza. I'm like, I'm not going to go pick up pizza. And she's like, why won't you go pick up pizza? I said, because that pizza is going to be the most expensive pizza to ever buy.

1:06:48 And she said, why? I said, because it's the value of time. It's going to take me 15 minutes to drive to the pizza place. It's going to take me 15 minutes to drive back. And it's going to take me maybe another 15 minutes to wait to pick up the pizza. Now, let's say, for example, I am worth $100 an hour. I've used 45 minutes there. It means that I have spent $75 on just transportation alone. Now I'm picking up a $20, $30 or $40 pizza. By the time you had that in there, that is now too expensive. Let's give it to someone whose the value of time is not as expensive as my value of time. That's the difference. So instead, I would go online and order for pizza. I'm going to give a $10 to $20 tip.

1:07:30 And then the logistic to bring that pizza in is still not as expensive as the $150 to $125 pizza that I'm buying. That is why I also don't book my air ticket. That is why I don't look for hotel because I'm going to look for a cheap ticket. I'm going to look for a cheap hotel. I'm going to look for this. It's going to take my time. So now it's now more expensive to look for that ticket to buy. So my personal assistant can look for it and buy my ticket. And please, let's be clear. My personal assistant is based in Nigeria. She has my information. So she has the capacity to book my ticket. So there are things that I cannot do. Where I'm going to with my conversation is this. If I can find somebody that can fill in those four gaps, that would be the problem in the future.

1:08:13 Why not let me put that person there? So I can focus on something else. Focusing on something else doesn't mean that this is less valuable. It means that I'm only looking at this from on top of the line. I have not gone out to any inspection in over a year now. The only time I go out is if there is an irate customer and I just want to make sure that my customer is happy. Then I go out and if the general manager of that location, because we have four locations, so in each of our locations, we have the GMs. So if the GM of that location is not able to put a stop to that issue, I go out there and I'm able to quell or quench whatever that issue is. And then I come back. But other than that, I do not have to be out there.

1:08:54 Someone else can do that. So that had given me opportunity to look for. Again, I only bring in people that I trust. So it has given me the opportunity to say, you know what? I have identified another thing right here in this area. Can we try it? And then I talk to the finance team. And then we have the devil's advocate that also pokes holes into all of those strategic thinking and say, it's going to be a problem here. It's going to be a problem here. Can we fix it? Should we walk away from it? And there is nothing wrong in walking away from it. And we actually also do in my office, we actually also have what is called business prioritization meetings. It happens every six months. I'm a strategic thinker. I would have come to that meeting with 10 different strategies.

1:09:36 And then in that business prioritization meeting, we could say, this is a good business idea. We can do this in the next five years. We can do this in the next three years. We can do this now. This is easy to start. Let's start this now. But you see these other businesses, this is not the best time to start it. And then we move all of those. We're not throwing them away. We're just canning them for the next opportunity that comes in. So that is how I approach it. But if you are a one man person and you're running your restoration company and now you think, oh, I'm very interested in going into custom building and you move from restoration and you move into custom building, that's a completely different animal on its own. And now you get stuck there, you get stuck here, it becomes a big problem.

1:10:19 Now you've lost the opportunity for your business to continue to grow. But if someone is managing this while you're doing this, but still overseeing this with every little opportunity you have, then it works. In every of our businesses, we always have meetings in the mornings. We just, I don't want to dwell on the problem. Just let's pinpoint areas. Where do I need to get involved? If this is where I need to get involved, let me get involved there so I can move on to other things. And that has helped us be able to grow in our organization. Now, please don't get me wrong. We're not a multi-billion dollars organization to say, oh, you know, you guys know what you're doing. We learn in that way. But also, if it's too expensive for my time, then I shouldn't be the one doing it.

1:11:00 If it is too cheap, if it's too expensive, I should be the one doing it. But if it is not up to my time or valued enough for my time, then someone else should be doing that. Okay, so here's what I feel like I'm hearing some questions already popping up, right? Is, okay, great, Sadiq. You've got how many locations? How many Pure Clean locations? I have four Pure Clean locations. I'm buying the fifth one. And you're buying the fifth. And multiple licenses within those locations, right? So it's a very robust entity, to say the least. I'm $3 million restorer, right? I'm $4 million a year restorer. This idea that I can delegate to everyone... and only spend my time doing the most meaningful and high value things sounds really awesome on paper.

1:11:41 Let's go back. Pure O'Clean, year one through three. You obviously were already thinking strategically, which is where you're ahead of a lot of us, right? Is that we're looking in the rear view mirror and saying, we could have been more strategic. You start there. What did you do in the first three years to actively pull yourself into higher and higher value for time spend ratios? Does that make sense? Yes, it does. So first thing first is for every of my businesses, I would always have five year strategic plan. So every year that strategic plan is updated. OK, so first year into our business, we developed our five year strategic initiative for PuroClean.

1:12:22 So we had a glimpse of where we were headed. We assumed possible roadblocks and we had plans for what the solution would be to each of those roadblocks. Now, we go back every year and then we review that strategic initiative to say, where are we now? Are we where we should be? If not, what roadblock did we hit that didn't take us to where we need to get to? How can we redefine each of these roadblocks? The other people that I know would put in project managers in different locations while they are in the main location. I need someone's responsibility, someone to be responsible for that location.

1:13:03 Say, it's my responsibility. You have a target. This is your target. Your target is not to bring down the world. Your target is not to be the best restoration company out there. Your target is this goal, this XYZ amount of money. Can you bring this in in a year? Yes, let's talk about it. Now tell me what you need to achieve your goal. And then we dwell on that and we talk about it. So every week we talk about it. Have we strayed away from that goal? What did we miss? What can we include? What can we bring back? And we talk about it. Now, please note, the opportunity is also there for me because of our talent. Right. So we have our talent. So the cost in terms of bringing in your support system, it's not killing.

1:13:49 Right. Part of our talent will provide digital marketing support. So first thing that I think you need as that location is you need business to come in. So digital marketing is going to help you with that business opportunity to come in. Second thing that I think you need is that you need a truck and you need two technicians. Let's start with that. So I give you two technicians, I give you one truck, right? And we know that that particular truck should bring in XYZ amount of money at the end of the year. So if I'm already supplying you business... And I'm already giving you the truck and the tools you need to be able to run that. It's now up to you to be able to grow that area to get to where you need to get to. And then we do check ins to know, are you getting there yet? Are you not there yet?

1:14:30 I think the biggest thing for restoration owners is it's hard to hand off. Yeah. Because the risk is too high. You're really thinking about the risk. But once you're doing your check-ins and you're weighing those options out, then it's easier for you to figure out, maybe I think this would work. Without those check-ins, you would always be scared. You would always be worried. Like you said, it's $3 million business. This is already a good business. Why kids and do something else. So the fear of what is going to happen if it crashes is always going to be there. But like I said earlier, if you don't try, you wouldn't know if it works or not.

1:15:10 And if you try and it's a bad try, let's do it again next time. But please hold forth what you have now because you don't want anything to happen to that one while you're trying to divest or get into other areas. Yeah, a big part of what I'm hearing you say is, first, you got to look out far enough in the future to accurately judge the value of your time, right? Like, I know that we run into this a lot with Restores. I face this in our own company. It's really easy for me to talk to other business owners about the things they got to keep their eye on. And then inevitably you get, I don't know what it is, you get owner-itis when you look at your own business, right? But there's just this reality of we're often making decisions based on this year's P&L.

1:15:53 But had we zoomed out and asked ourselves where we want to be in five years, I'm probably going to make a different decision today. Like that P&L, I may be willing to take some hits on this year's P&L. Because I know I'm looking where I want to be in five years. And I think one of the things our teams were talking about this morning is how hard of a mental shift that actually is. And I don't know if this is really unique to our industry. I've pretty much only done work within the communication, kind of construction, disaster restoration arenas. So I've always been around blue-collar business owners. And I just see, it seems like statistically, many of us in that more blue collar home service kind of environment really struggle to look out far enough into the future.

1:16:41 And for whatever reason, it's like built into your DNA. And so it's like everything that you're approaching, you're always looking out far enough on the horizon to make sure your decision making is being done in the correct context. And I think that's just a challenge for us. And if you're listening to this and you're in that position where it's like your number one goal every year is to grow, but you don't actually physically have a plan of what you're growing towards in the next five years, maybe a takeaway from today is take Sadiq's advice and stop and slow down for a minute and look out five years on the horizon and ask yourself what you want to build because chances are you're going to make a different decision today than you would if you don't. Is that fair? Sure. Absolutely.

1:17:22 So why do you have to do it? Because it is actually time consuming and it's also money. There needs to be a dedicated team that will be working with you on that. First question is, why do you think the big organizations, why do you think they grow and why do you think they plan for that growth? You need to be able to develop strategic plans. When I said it earlier that at All Talent, we hire 50 people, put them in a room and train them. A lot of people, please note, it's paid training. So we pay them to train them for three months. We buy 50 pieces of laptop computers to train them. It cost us $200,000 every quarter to train 50 people.

1:18:06 Buy your laptop computers, buy your headset, buy your mouse, pay your salaries, feed them during the boot camp period while they are undergoing training. That is expensive. Why would I want to spend $200,000 every quarter just to provide training to people and put them in a room? We did our analysis and we saw that our footprint, our traction, and based on that data, typically by the end of that third month, every person in that bootcamp is assigned, every of the 50. Now, at times we might lose five during the bootcamp. It's not, I mean, we realize that during the bootcamp, you're not culturally fit.

1:18:46 You know, we don't think we're getting the best from you. Unfortunately, we still have to let you go. And then we go in and we start this same process all over again. And then we buy all the laptop computers, the headsets, the mouse and all the training room and the food and the salaries. And we continue. And the only reason why we can do that is because we're checking our track records and we're planning for it. It's part of our five years strategic plan or strategic initiative. So we use that initiative to drive what our goal looks like in the next five years. So if mega organizations are doing it, why would smaller organizations not adopt the kind of strategy or ideas these organizations are bringing in and adopt the same thing in their own smaller organization and run with it?

1:19:36 And that's my take is that if somebody is already doing it, I don't have to relearn it. I just have to take what that person had done before, look into it critically, see if it would work for me. If it will work for me, then I take it and do it. I love it. I love it. In fact, I think that's probably a good place. Sadiq to land the plane with our time together. So we probably should have opened with this. Give us a current snapshot. So let us know the entities, the companies that you currently are running as a CEO and a founder, and then let people know where they go to find out more about AllTalents. And for listeners, obviously, this is going to be in the show notes. If you're going out to any of the remaining events that are in front of us for the rest of this calendar year, there's a strong chance you're going to run into Sadiq's team They're with all talents.

1:20:23 But what's the current status, Sadiq? What businesses are in motion for you right now? Several, unfortunately. It feels like we have legs in multiple baskets. But I think when we're able to find a problem, again, we identify if it's a good time to find a solution to that problem and what that solution would be. So we started with Pure Clean and then we developed Pure Clean and we feel like it got to a good place to continue to be self-sustainable. And then we've moved into developing our talent and we started growing our talent. But then we also have a real estate company as well that is into only commercial real estate. So we just buy commercial real estate and then, you know, we rent it out to people that are willing to to rent the real estate.

1:21:05 We went into commercial because residential is hard, you know, so. So commercial real estate makes it much easier. So we started doing that. And then we also have a financial technology institution actually in Nigeria. We're trying to develop, you know, savings method and skills and make bill payments and all the rest easy for people in Nigeria. So we created, you know, a financial technology institution in Nigeria. It's called SaveWise. And then in addition to that, in the U.S., when we came to the U.S., I realized that it is actually something called retirement benefit. So you work for an organization for a long time, they set a certain amount of money into a certain account and call it retirement benefit.

1:21:48 In Nigeria, we have pension funds that is managed by the government. But at the end of the day, you work out for, you work, you know, you retire at 65 and you try to access your pension only to realize that, you know, what you're getting, it's not worth it. So we created one for our employees and, That is a retirement benefit and it's called the restore capital. So we created the restore capital. It's a combination of venture capital as well as opportunity for our employees. So every single month, once we receive that money, we pay our employees a certain amount. We take a certain amount and put it into that retirement benefit. You cannot access that money until after three years of you being in the organization.

1:22:31 Now we have a team of investors that takes that money and reinvest that money. And we take the proceeds of that money and put it back in there. So our employees can actually see the traction and see their money grow. So we created a tool, a software for it, where the employees can go in and log in into the account and they see the amount of money that they have in that account that is sitting there. And they know that they can access that money at any point. So that's the retirement benefit that we created for them. And that retirement benefit also now went into a root fund where if you have a business idea, you can bring your business idea into that. And we'll bring a team to help you support that business idea in addition to financial support to help you grow that business as part of a venture capital.

1:23:15 And we started doing that right now. And I think last year we invested in 16 different companies in the U.S. from AI to machine learning to different organizations that, And we've actually seen those organizations actually grow within that area as well. So that's it. And yes, of course, to reach out to All Talents is www.alltalents with a Z at the end. Alltalents with a Z at the end.com. And it's info at alltalents.com to reach out to anyone. We'll be more than glad to anytime we get a request from someone and we jump into a meeting. One of the first things that you'll see on our slide is, what challenge are you facing and how can we help? Man, I love it. Sadiq, you are a unique bird.

1:23:57 I remember I was in an exchange with Mark Davis and Mark Davis goes, hey, do you know Sadiq yet? And I said, no. And he goes, well, a couple minutes in conversation with him and my gut says the two of you will remain connected. And he was absolutely right. I mean, from the moment that we had an exchange with you, it was pretty obvious that That you're busting down walls and doing some really great stuff. And a lot of it is things that our industry can take advantage of and leverage in their favor. So man, unbelievable, dude. It was really cool to hang out with you and hear more about what you're conquering on the day to day. Yeah, thanks so much for your time. We know how the premium that your time is worth. So thank you. That's right.

1:24:37 It is my pleasure. And sincerely, thank you guys for doing this. We need a lot of this in the restoration industry. We really, really need a lot of guidance. And, you know, with you guys coming up with different stories and having different owners come into the spotlight to talk about the challenges that they face in businesses, I think it's going to give a lot of us opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes, and hopefully not to make such mistakes when we're growing out of the bandwidth of our comfort zone. So thank you so much. Really appreciate your time as well. That's awesome. Thank you, my friend. Great. 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.

1:25:27 Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.