Rick McGuigan asked Larry Braun to join his company for ten years. Larry kept saying "you can't afford me." They finally settled it on a napkin. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Rick McGuigan and Larry Braun of Pine Ridge Cleaning and Restoration in Cleveland, Ohio. Rick bought a small carpet cleaning business in 2003 and grew it to $3.5M largely on his own. Larry came out of 30 years in steel. Together they've taken Pine Ridge into mitigation, reconstruction, and contents. ...
Sep 11
36 min
Malik Stevens believed what everyone says about TPAs. Then he ran five fire claims in six weeks, and the first one billed almost $60,000. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Bobby Thomas, CEO of Extreme Services, and Malik Stevens, a Louisiana owner converting his independent company into an Extreme franchise. Bobby came up from carpet cleaning to technician to owner and runs corporately across five states. Malik covers Lafayette, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge. You'll walk away ...
Sep 4
33 min
Most restorers think contents is easy. Put stuff in a box. Kristen Stein says the box was never the hard part. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Kristen Stein, owner of Blue Kangaroo Packouts in Randolph, New Jersey. Kristen came out of international trade, bought a restoration franchise three years ago, and now runs 20,000 square feet of storage serving New Jersey, New York, and parts of Pennsylvania. You'll walk away with: Why contents is an owner-operator business, not a p...
Aug 28
45 min
Michael Harrison told his insurance agent he'd do $250,000 his first year in business. He finished at $1.6 million. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Michael Harrison, owner of Mid-South Restoration Services and 1-Tom-Plumber Memphis. Michael started in the trade at 14 as his brother's helper and spent 20 years learning it at franchises and independents before two phone calls on one drive home pushed him to go out on his own. You'll walk away with: How he built a 100% referra...
Aug 21
41 min
Most restoration business owners only show you the highlight reel. Not this episode. Raul Gonzalez of WonderBuilt Restoration and Construction gets real with Clinton James about the two times his business almost didn't make it — bad hires, a cash crunch, a lawsuit that blocked his SBA funding, and high-interest loans just to cover payroll. He shares exactly what it felt like, what he got wrong, and how he turned it around by finally asking for help instead of trying to do it all himself. If y...
Aug 7
33 min
Tunde and Moji Adefolaju opened their SERVPRO one week before COVID shut everything down. Six years later they're running six territories and 15 service vehicles in Northern California. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with the husband-and-wife team behind SERVPRO of East Concord / Brentwood. Neither came from restoration — Tunde managed construction projects, Moji came out of banking and oil and gas. One 40-minute phone call with a franchisee they'd never met sent them into the...
Jul 31
37 min
Nine months into business, Dwayne West landed a $100,000 job off his second lead. In this episode, he tells host Clinton James how he did it. Dwayne owns Firehawk Restoration in Jasper, Georgia. He's a Navy veteran who grew up working construction with his dad, then built a career flipping houses and running a general contracting business before jumping into restoration. You'll walk away with: How a $875 pay-per-lead buy turned into a six-figure mitigation and rebuild jobWhy Dwayne skipped th...
Jul 24
23 min
Running your restoration company on gut feeling and bank balances is a quiet way to stay stuck. Real growth comes from installing hard numbers and accountability into every job. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Larry Braun, VP and Co-owner of Pine Ridge Restoration in Cleveland, Ohio, and a featured speaker at the Restore Scale Dominate Summit in San Diego. Larry spent 30 years running an industrial steel plant before joining the restoration business just two and a half year...
Jul 17
34 min
Most episodes of this show feature a single guest sharing their unique path through the industry, but today we are completely flipping the script. In this special roundtable edition of Restoration Pros Unplugged, host Clinton James brings together two of the sharpest tactical minds in the home services space: Chris Nordyke of Floodlight Consulting Group and Nikole Mackenzie of Momentum Accounting. If you are a restoration business owner generating anywhere from two million to ten milli...
Jun 29
30 min
Most restoration owners have a crazy story about how they got into the business, but very few have survived a first job so brutal it almost drove them out of the industry forever. In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, host Clinton James sits down with Andrew Rickabaugh, co-owner of Rick and Ball Restoration and a One Tom Plumber franchise in Huntsville, Alabama. Andrew pulls back the curtain on his non-linear path to entrepreneurship, spanning roles as a paramedic, firefighter, Hunts...
Jun 12
34 min
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