Welcome to Head Heart & Boots!
April 27, 2024

Ep 124 - "Unlocking Industry Secrets: KnowHow LIVE At RIA"

Ep 124 - "Unlocking Industry Secrets: KnowHow LIVE At RIA"
Ep 124 - "Unlocking Industry Secrets: KnowHow LIVE At RIA"
Head Heart & Boots
Ep 124 - "Unlocking Industry Secrets: KnowHow LIVE At RIA"

Dive into the game-changing world of restoration with Chris, Brandon, and industry guru Leighton on the latest "Head, Heart, and Boots" episode. They're slicing through the big issues with the "Cost of Doing Business" survey and revealing how data is the secret ingredient to professionalizing the industry.

What You'll Discover:

  • Tackling Industry Hurdles: Get the lowdown on the economic challenges shaking up the restoration scene and how unity is our secret weapon.
  • Game-Changing Tools: Zoom in on the "Cost of Doing Business" survey led by Leighton and the Restoration Industry Association, setting the financial pace for everyone.
  • Data-Driven Success: See how smart data use is improving businesses and securing futures.
  • Peek into the Future: Explore how private equity and insurance tweaks could transform the industry landscape.

Don't miss out! Tune in, turn up the volume, and transform the way you think about restoration. Check out the episode, spread the word, and let's make waves together! For more juicy details, visit floodlightgrp.com/audit and costofrestoration.com.

#HeadHeartBoots #Entrepreneurship #CostOfDoingBusiness

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C&R Magazine is the industry’s oldest and longest running media outlet. The team brings restorers all the current news, developments, education and resources that impact our business and the teams we lead. From print media to podcasts, C&R ensures the industry news you need is accessible from anywhere.

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0:00 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. Hey, y'all. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so. And ultimately share, right? The coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members.

0:43 Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five-star reviews help Right on. And listen, if you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlight's Business Opportunity Audit. It's free. We provide it at no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's a 110-point assessment for your business. And we've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity audit at floodlightgrp.com. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now.

1:25 And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out, floodlightgrp.com forward slash audit and take the BOA. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business. What's up, gang? Hey, hey, hey. Layton, RA 2024. That's right. Yeah. I feel like sometimes when we make that announcement, I can't tell if we've started a Super Bowl commercials or if we're just actually at RA. Yep, yep. Layton, you've been a busy man. You've literally been all over everywhere. Yeah. How many breakouts? How many meetings? Have you lost count? Yeah, I have someone that tells me where to go. Yeah. It's helpful, right? He just texts me and says, you're late.

2:07 All day long. I say, what room am I supposed to be in? And then someone just injects me with something. But you know what? Hey, I just tell my team, we worked really hard for these problems and these opportunities. And so it's good, you know, and I hope that we're solving meaningful problems. At the end of the day, it's a lot of hard work if the problem is not meaningful. And I think it's meaningful. So we have a compelling vision of the future that includes a workforce dynamic that's very different than it is today. It's like the fuel at hour 12. Yeah. That's the one that fires back in for another one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So another thing that we're doing that we announced yesterday with our partner at the RIA is a new study that I think is long overdue is the cost of doing business in business.

2:55 property restoration. I was chatting with the two big brands, like big independents last night, and they might've been a few wine glasses then, but they, I don't know if they needed a confessional booth, but I was the confessional booth and they said, hey, we don't make money. And we know that all the chest beating and all the Bravos and all that, there's not a lot of people here making money or making, when you consider the input and you consider the outputs, it's not working. And I think of Mark Driscoll's words, I think it was yesterday where he said, hey, if we don't band together and make some changes, the economics of this model, and I'm paraphrasing, they won't work. And this industry will collapse as we know it in 10 years.

3:37 And I think a part of that is that the stores need to be able to have a benchmark study to be able to share in their own advocacy efforts, in their collective advocacy efforts, to be able to share. No, no, no. This is what it costs to run this business. And so the cost of doing business with work is something that we think is very important. So that registration opened yesterday, costofrestoration.com. And then the ability to participate in the survey opens on Monday, and then there'll be an intake period. So we're hoping that accounting and finance leaders of independent and franchise brand restoration companies across North America will invest an hour, complete that survey. It's completely anonymous. It's very secure. I think we do a very good job of that.

4:18 And then the data that's ingested will be anonymized, but ultimately it will produce a report that we hope will be an annual cadence that allows companies. We've scheduled the release just on the heels of the fall when a lot of companies go into budgetary season. Yeah. And so the idea would be that they can plan to receive that report and then to be able to prepare where they stick, they'll close their books that year against industry trends and hopefully it will improve the quality of decision making. I love that. I think part of what I feel like we struggle with a little bit is it's a big industry full of opinions and perceptions. And I think some of the value that you guys and your team is brought is you're actually gathering data that in some cases affirms.

4:59 what many of us are thinking or experiencing at a gut level or in day-to-day business. But I think also it creates a common understanding so that even our extended partners and stakeholders in the industry, carrier side, right, service partners, we can say the same things and agree to it because it's data-backed. And so I think there's some pretty massive opportunity for this. From your perspective, like what would be, I'm a restorer and you're saying, hey, please follow the link, which by the way, in the show notes below, we'll have the link for this to participate. But what is the value to them? And I know that may seem like a silly question, but when we're running and gunning, we often don't connect the dots. Right. So why? Why should I participate in this thing that you guys are putting out?

5:42 I mean, the number one thing is because you're in this to make money. Like, this is a very expensive hobby. Yeah. Yeah. Very stressful hobby. And unfortunately, a lot of people, at least if you ask their spouse, they're like, looks like a hobby because the economics aren't really adding up. So I think number one is because this is an industry, I think, that does meaningful work. I think this work has a very fulfilling, I think there's a lot of dignity in the work. And I think that this should be an industry that's very profitable. And I think that if it's not, you suck the incentives out of a contractor's world. especially when you hand the baton over to the next generation. I mean, that's something you guys are very passionate about. I'm very passionate about is thinking what the next generation restores. And I think there's a lot of individuals that say, hey, you know, dad, hey, mom, maybe this builds you up emotionally and it really fired you up and it got your adrenal glands pumping.

6:30 But I want to make money. And I know what it's like to grow up in an industry that wasn't actually that profitable. And I don't know if I want to continue. So I think the continuation, I think the generational continuation of this industry is based on there has to be a strong economics case. And for a lot of restoration companies, they live in a kind of in an understandable vacuum where they probably have never seen the P&L of another company in their industry. Yeah, for sure. And so they really don't have, I would say, anything to compare their financials to and just say, how are we doing? And I think that when you compare notes with other individuals in your industry, I think it allows you to be able to know when you're doing a good job. Sometimes accounting teams don't know if they're doing a good job. And sometimes it allows you to say, hey, you know what?

7:13 What we've become accustomed to is actually a really distressing number that is not reflective of the industry. And we should probably do something about it. And I think too, you also just have the ego dynamics that all of us are subject to. We want to come across as being successful. We want to be seen as a competent person. And so even in these like little tabletop conversations like are happening all over right now, there's such a strong tendency to round off the corners of what our EBITDA is. Especially when we hear somebody who has a stronger EBITDA than us, we tend to fudge upwards. We might be inclined to do that. I think the data that you guys are going to be collecting and sharing with us can be really valuable because it's going to be clean.

7:53 It's going to be stripped of the ego stories that we often bundle in those conversations when we gather at events like this. Can you parse out, though, a little bit? What's some of the data specifically that's going to come out of this that you're anticipating that will be actionable and strategic intel that companies can use? There'll be 30 questions. There'll be questions where we've decided really in this function, in this kind of this rhythm, it'll be very percentage driven. So, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of I think what people are after is rather than just getting dollars and cents where you spent $5,000 on respirators. Like that's less interesting than, you know, what percentage of your spend was on, say, training and development, right?

8:33 You know, what training and development spend did you put in? Yeah. So a lot of it will reveal, I think, how the pie graph that is, how operational costs are stacked up across the industry. I think that will be very illuminated. I think as well, there'll be a lot of clarity brought to topics like 10 and 10, topics like WIPP, topics like, you know, I think that people will have a lot more clarity. Some of the other studies that we do with, say, our partner at CNR, that really gives us some illumination on themes, sentiment, trends, buying patterns, backgrounds. adding behaviors. We're not really going into that. We're really just camping out in the accounting and finance department. And we're trying to essentially create an appropriate template of kind of what their P&L looks like.

9:16 And obviously anonymized, but being able to then allow an accounting leader to sit across from their business leader, their ops team, and just be able to pull up their results and pull up the industry results and just be able to just correlate the two and say, scorecard model. I don't understand how we're going to stay competitive on wages. And obviously, we're so materials heavy. Or I know that you're super fired up about getting all the new stuff. But how are we going to close the gap? How are we going to compete with an industry that doesn't have this level of, say, I don't know. It's like, obviously, our cost of capital is out of control. So you guys get a rare behind-the-scenes view of companies.

9:58 But most companies, it's a solo effort. Yeah, 100%. And I think that that's... Chris and I have said it a lot. It's like sometimes the superpower ultimately is we just get to see what's actually happening. And so we can talk to people more collectively on what's happening or not happening. They're not alone. You're not in a silo. I think one of the interesting things I'm really curious to see is going to come out of this is the spend. Like you had mentioned this one specifically on training. And I just think there's this common conversation with a lot of influencers. Like I'm just thinking yesterday, like hearing the AGA talk specifically about some of the things they're doing to represent us as contractors is we want to be seen more professionally. Because we do hard work in hard environments and unrealistic timeframes most of the time.

10:42 Very complex, yeah. It's very complex, yet we don't get recognized like journeyman plumbers and journeyman electricians as a professional trade. And I think there's a lot of things that need to happen there for us, right? That are positive. But I think this points back to it will be interesting to hear data that we can be more honest around. Like how much are we investing in training? And maybe part of that equation is like, well, in order for us to be more and more so recognized as a professional industry, we're going to have to look at how we're equipping our people. And is it really just on the job training, throw them in the cab and see what happens? Or is there an intentional investment, right?

11:22 I think this will illuminate that for us potentially. And we'll be able to think about what that means. And then I think another byproduct... And please, Leighton, if I'm like going off the rails... These are directly in line. I'm glad that you got the speaker nose before I showed up. No, no, no. Good. Yeah. This is why we're doing this. Yeah. Well, just one more thought here is I wonder too if what it'll allow us to do is when we start seeing where these spends are more visually, more blown out and kind of stepping back and looking at it. Will it also tell us where some of these walls are in our business that we keep beating our head against it? We're not necessarily seeing a different result. Yeah. And maybe then it'll give us more, maybe something we can take more decisive action on.

12:03 Let's stop doing in this category because we clearly see it's not helping. And then can we shove that or funnel that spend into a different area of the business that may give us a different result, right? Yeah, I'm confident that in five to 10 years, I mean, we believe that a big part of KnowHow's contribution to the industry will be to create, we call it like a seatbelt moment, like a seatbelt moment, which is like, you know, we want in five years for participants in this industry to look in the whites of the eyes of the old guard and say, that's how he used to do it. That's crazy. Like, how did you not, like, that's crazy. And say like, you know, and I look at my parents, I say, you know, I'm harnessing my children into these houses. Yeah.

13:03 And obviously, I'm here to prove that it worked. But I do believe that there'll be opportunities like that. I mean, all you have to do is look at, I think, another industry like, I don't know, take for example, Blockbuster. I mean, it's probably not a perfect example. But when someone looked at the economics of distributing cassettes and DVDs and Blu-rays and all these things, that was a business model where everybody just lived with a fixed mindset that that model requires a physical brick and mortar distribution model. Fantastic. And then you see Reed Hastings and his team come along and actually completely uproot that market. So I'm hopeful that there are things in this industry that people think are immovable load-bearing walls. And all of a sudden, they get moved and you recognize that actually they weren't load-bearing.

13:46 They were just taking up space. That's a really great way to think about that, honestly. Yeah. Awesome. I mean, you guys, you get deep down and personal with these companies you work with. What would be the value in having a, let's call it a third party source of data that you can point to, to try to help them to see the need to change? Yeah. Is that... Oh, I think it's incredibly valuable. Well, I think one of the data points I'm very interested in is cost of sales, right? Sales motion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think the industry is so oriented right now on the impact of TPAs. I think many companies that embrace TPAs are starting to think more critically about diversifying their income streams.

14:29 Sure. Right? We have a number of companies in our industry that live and die off of plumber relationships. What happens as that market starts to get upset? And so there's X percentage of sales that they're spending out to get those leads from plumbers. Right. versus say a direct salesperson, right? And the salary costs and commission costs of that. I think sales is one of the bigger black boxes in our business because for so long, it's just come in and we had the whole agent candy and smiles approach for a while that was very static. You hire a fresh face to kind of college kid with some enthusiasm, pay him 40,000 bucks, fill the trunk of their rig with swag and items like that. And it was a pretty static business model for a long time. Long time. hire somebody for 40K, give them 3% of whatever jobs they get in.

15:12 And it was very black and white and very easy to repeat. And of course, that market has changed a lot. And so because of that, people have started shifting their attention to plumber relationships. And of course, that is the wild, wild west in terms of you got some people paying $200 flat commissions to plumbers, and you got some that are paying $1,500. You've got some, we were just talking to a customer that they pay 15% of whatever job a plumber sends to them. And we heard that. That's a commitment. Wow. Yeah. And I think there's an attitude amongst our stores, or there's not even an attitude. I just think we don't have a very good grip on some of these expense ratios and what we should be targeting. And so it's kind of like there's this opportunity mindset. It's just like, yeah, I'll give up 10%.

15:54 Sure, I'll do 50%. Yeah, you send me a really sweet job. I'll give you 15% of that without necessarily having the experience to understand the kind of downstream effects. Yeah, the tail. Right. And like, who was it? Rod, Rod Cruz, right? He was talking about this idea of monopoly money and how effective it is sometimes to bring out a stack of monopoly money. Yeah. Yeah. And with a business owner, divvy out, okay, well, here's your cost of sales. Here's the stack that's left over. Let's talk about your SG&A, right? And what falls under that? Okay, well, let's peel that off the top, right? And getting people this visual representation of how much is left after you've taken all of the cost of operations out, right? It's just, I think our industry just is now kind of coming into a phase of professionalizing ourselves to the point where we understand how to work off percentages.

16:43 Yeah, I think one of the things that a possible outcome too is it man if we can establish so like thinking about like housing markets median and if we can go through the steps of teaching people hey, here's averages, here's medium prices, like, where do you want to be? What is it that you're looking to do? But then I think too, when we get into these engagements with carriers and we're negotiating with adjusters, and I'm not poo-pooing on anybody, but when we're in that, instead of feeling this weird pressure coming from them telling them, well, that's cost of doing business or that's in the line item, all these things, we're more aggressive, not in a bad way, but professionally saying, no, it's not true. I understand what my P&L looks like. I know I'm not going on Bahama vacations every time we complete a job.

17:27 And no, it's not in the line item. It is not in the cost of business. Or better yet, I heard someone say this yesterday. You're right. It is a cost of doing business. That's why I'm charging for it. Right? But I just think this is... It makes us more confident when I'm not trying to give a rebuttal or support my decision making in a silo. Yeah. Yeah. I can say, hey, this is, I'm saying this, and this is something I'm confident in because restorers are saying this. Our industry is supporting this decision or this, right? Yeah. I think that's where the value comes that our industry up till now is just, we don't have that unification to support each other as much. So that's it. I see the same thing. You know, there's a few things that come to mind and I wonder what you guys think about them.

18:10 So I'll just like, I'll lay out three things on the table and then you guys are great thought integrators. So I wonder what you think about it. So the first one is, I think that there is an interesting cocktail of people in this industry who are extremely resilient, meaning that they will go through walls. They're super adrenalized, which is another way of saying they have the memory of goldfish. Right? You know, they're in fight or flight mode. Yeah. Like your prefrontal cortex is shut down when you're in a heavily adrenalized fight or flight mode. Yep. So and then this is an industry that I don't think is opportunity restrained, meaning the work is coming in. Yeah. So meaning that here's an industry where I'll go through walls, there'll always be another job. And yes, we didn't make the margin on that last job.

18:51 But you know what, water under the bridge, let's get on to the next job. And I think when you compound effect that over a 12-month annual just motion as a company, I think there are a lot of people in this industry that get to the end of the year and they look at their balance sheet. Heck, they probably just look at their bank account. Yeah. Like, I feel like I should have made money. Yeah. So that's kind of number one. Number two is a lot of private equity coming in. Yeah. And I wonder what's going to happen when this report lands on private equity. Is it going to cool or is it going to accelerate? Mm-hmm. Yeah, interesting. And then I just came from a meeting and the discussion was a lot of heated discussion about how insurance carriers were not paying in a timely manner.

19:31 And then they shared with the carriers, did you know that this was a Canadian discussion? Did you know that these provinces are regulated? Like it is the law of the land that you have to pay us within 30 days. And 201, every carrier is like, well, I didn't know that. So it's like, well, so they changed all of their policies and now all these carriers are getting on board and they're changing. And so just leveraging a lot, I just wonder for an insurance carrier when if they're that receptive to pivot, like something as critical as when we pay you based on objective information, private equity, and for stores who I think are almost wired to just keep calm and carry on. I just wonder what the interplay of those dynamics will be of a report like this.

20:12 You know, if we can stick the landing in producing good resources. Liftify.com forward slash bloodlight. You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe you even heard our episode with Zach Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25% conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding right now, 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year. If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify.com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is.

20:55 I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify.com forward slash bloodlight. You know, we spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like AnswerForce.com is we can systemize that. We can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help, right? Somebody goes on vacation. Somebody's out sick. Yeah. We get a storm surge. We get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team.

21:37 And so AnswerForce.com can support you, be a bolt-on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So AnswerForce.com forward slash answerforce.com. bloodbite. Sounds great. CNR Magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully? She's got that. Great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. CNR is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry.

22:20 It is the water cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine.com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us. If you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine.com. You guys, many of you have already heard about actionable insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the actionable insights profile for Xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered.

23:01 All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. And it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. And it also helps the grizzled vets add back that few percent that we've just forgot over time. So actionable insights, get insights.org forward slash floodlight and take a look at what the actionable insights exactimate profile could be doing for you and your team. I think the implications are huge. I think that part of the value of know-how, as an example, is I think you've made this comment, but trying to find a place that we can have a universal truth, right?

23:43 Like this is, you use that term, I think, internally, right? Like us as players, if we use the know-how platform, we can create our own internal truth. So it's not tribal knowledge. It's not communication can, or brain farting, whatever the hell that means. Message shifts, right, between bodies. Well, and I point towards actionable insight. Right. And what they've done as a team is this, we're trying to create language that we can all agree to because it's mutually beneficial for all the stakeholders. And I think there's potential that this data will do that. I think it will illuminate on areas that maybe different parties have different assumptions based on their perception and the angle of the table they're sitting at. And I think, again, this is a way for teams like yours...

24:26 to continue to create a unified language, a universal truth, that then when we're negotiating or making decisions, it's like, I don't have to create an argument for the why. The why is understood. And we can just talk about the data, the detail. Is this something in the scope? Yes or no. Is this a decision we have to make? Yes or no. And try to remove some of the opinions and some of the emotion. out of those negotiations or other elements. So I think most certainly we'll see that. Boy, that PE thing would be interesting. What do you think? Yeah. Do you think it'll cool it or it'll accelerate it? Well, I think there's... I was just talking with a client about this. I think there's two kinds of PE firms. There's ones that are seeing the opportunity from the outside and they're drawn to it. They're drawn to the economy-resistant nature of our industry, but they don't have a ton of domain expertise.

25:11 So they're coming in a little bit cowboy-friendly. trying to grab the opportunity, but they don't have an understanding of the market, I think they will react differently, perhaps, to the data than the PE firms that are more heavily entrenched in the business that have been at it maybe in this space for the last three to five years. I think there's probably going to be different reactions based on different levels of bravado. I think people that are in the business, they've had some sobering moments over the last few years. They understand some of the yin and yang of the industry. And I think these outside PE firms that are still continuing to come in, I think there's probably, they're bringing a level of optimism that isn't yet balanced with the realities of... But I just, I'm excited about this report because I think one of the themes we've been talking about is just the professionalization of the industry.

25:56 Yeah. This is one of those things where us collectively knowing the data of our business. Yeah. On like the wisdom of the crowd. Yep. You know, there's a lot of best practices that for the last 25 years have been exchanged at conferences like this, but we've been pretty light on the data. Yeah. I mean, frankly, I think it's objectively so until NoHell came around. I mean, some of the past research and data you guys have provided, I think that started to illuminate the numbers of the business in a way that we haven't had access to previously. Yeah. I mean, I think that's fair to say. I think it's totally fair. I think maybe one other kind of just brief concept here is for folks is I think it's empowering for the restorers. Because if I'm valuing my business, valuating that, I can't do that from a sense of, I don't know what I don't know.

26:42 And so I might be thinking that my company's worth X. And really, if I look at my financial data in context with all the others in the industry, I think it empowers me then to think about my business and say, okay, well, someday I'm going to have an exit. I want all my options on the table as part of that exit. And I want to know what my company's worth. Well, if I can look at this data and I can say, hey, if I tweet... these things, it's going to put me in a position where my financials are middle of the pack, top of the pack. Well, that's going to have a direct impact on your multiple when it comes time to potentially exit or do something different versus just the rise and grind. And so I think there's a ton of that that we will see over time. You know? Yeah.

27:22 I mean, you think about, so to get to a place in due diligence where a capital provider or a private equity fund or a consolidating purchaser actually gets their hands on a company's P&L. So, you know, the NDA is in place, the LIO is in place, the LOI story. I mean, there are some gates that a potential acquirer has to go to see the financial. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of work that they've got to go through to see the financials. Yeah. And so I think it'd be interesting just for a restorer to be able to say very quickly, like, pay you before you even look at my numbers I'm middle of the pack or before you before you look at my financials I can tell you right now I'm top of the pack or I beat the market yes you know and I just I think it is hopefully just efficiencies right yeah I agree I don't know if this is a fair example but can you imagine like how different would let's pick a popular sport what's your sport football soccer soccer soccer oh no yeah but that's That's like football, right?

28:15 Yeah. Yeah. Well, apparently. Yes. Original football, maybe? Yeah. That's the soccer. Okay. So I would assume that soccer has a lot of the same data as, say, football, hockey, baseball. It's probably fantasy soccer. Sure. Oh, yeah. I just think about how different the game would be if like nobody kept score during the game. Like fans could not monitor the stats of the participants. You never knew the ultimate results unless you had a way of tracking it of how good an athlete was. And you could never support a system like a fantasy sport. Like it just, it would be, I think it would really just, it would kill so much sport. Yeah. And so I wonder if in a couple of years, after you do this report a couple of times and we've comparative data, I just wonder what it will be like.

29:01 And we'll just say, it was like we were playing this sport we call property restoration where like no one turned on the scoreboard. Yeah. You know what I mean? It was fun. It was like, maybe we're living in like pickup restoration right now. You know what I mean? We're going to move into the professional restoration league in the near future. I just think we assume so much. We see the people that seem to be succeeding at scale, and we make a lot of assumptions. And that's been one of the interesting experiences at Floodlight is, as we get behind the curtain with a lot of companies, many times the actual financials match the external bravado of that team and the culture of the team and the results and performance and so forth. And there are a lot of scenarios where you get behind the curtain...

29:45 And you start to break down a person's overhead costs and ultimately the EBITDA that they're taking home, that they're keeping. And it does not at all match the external picture that that business has put out there. And of course, I think probably many companies have a phase at least to the time where... Where the internals don't match the externals, right? It's just part of the journey of business. But yeah, I think we don't have great objective measures like many other industries do in terms of really obvious benchmarks that all of us can be working off of. Yeah. And Leighton, you're always so humble about this. Maybe we can kind of use this to begin wrapping it up a little bit. But Chris's statement about know-how, and that's legit.

30:25 Like if we're honest about who the data presence is right now in our industry... I would have a real tough time arguing that there's anyone else doing it at the level that you guys are doing it. And I think that's part of the affinity that's beginning to develop around you and the know-how team is you guys were forward facing heavily with value creation. Before there's a real ask in terms of, does the know-how platform make sense for you to adopt in your organization? We're getting a lot of value from the know-how team that's global in nature from our industry. I think it's very respected. I know it's our attraction to working with and around your team is that. It's like you're doing a ton to professionalize and help us get a lift as restorers.

31:10 So I don't think people can miss that. But for some reason, if you've been a little bit underdeveloped, of rock and you're not paying attention to that, all the ebooks, these studies that you guys have presented, all have provided very concrete value that can educate ourselves and help us be better restorers and make way better decisions. I'm assuming this will do nothing less than that. As we close up though, I kind of went on a preach sesh there. Again, one more time. What is it? What's the link? Where are we going? What are we doing? And then again, we'll have that in the show notes as well. Absolutely. So today, we are officially launching the Cost of Doing Business Survey with the Restoration Industry Association.

31:50 So the study will produce the Cost of Doing Business report, and it will be an annual cadence that is put on by RIA and KnowHow. And it's a study that you can participate in by filling out a survey, having a financial or accounting leader in your company fill out a study. It's going to take you about 60 minutes, completely confidential. And you go to costofrestoration.com, costofrestoration.com, and And it's going to take you through 30 questions that were heavily, heavily vetted. Emphasis on the heavy. There was some serious vetting, but we got there. And the results will go through a period of analysis. And then we'll produce what we hope to be a very detailed and a very well presented report that will be free. Love it.

32:30 Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So costofrestoration.com. Costofrestoration.com. Is there another, for those people that maybe they missed the announcements previously, the other reports and resources you guys, is there a place just apart from like your main website, is there a place we can send them to get some of the other industry reports that you guys have previously done? I mean, definitely our website, there's a resources page that I think it's... All the bounty that we bring to the market is there. It's all free. But you can find most of our stuff on your favorite podcast or your streaming site. And then most of our studies and our books, if you need a physical copy, they're on Amazon. But I think deep copies are great. But the website is kind of the mouth of the river. And all those resources that we provide, there's no cost to them.

33:13 Awesome. Love it. And your main website is TryKnowHow? TryKnowHow.com. Yeah. TryKnowHow.com. And you click on the resource button and you go right down there and studies, podcasts, books. It's all there. Okay. Love it. TryKnowHow.com and CostOfRestoration.com. Contribute. Let's do it. All right. Thanks, man, for hanging out with us. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. 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.

33:54 Thanks for listening.