From Corporate Tech To Water Damage Restoration In Asheville with Rob Franks

0:00Rob Franks:Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

1:02Rob Franks:Good day, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Rob Franks with Secure Restoration. Rob, how are you doing today? Thanks for being here. Well, thank you for inviting me, Cliff. I'm doing really good. Good, good, good. Yeah, we're really excited to have you on here. Looking forward to a good story. So let's go ahead and jump right in. So for those of you who may not know it yet, who is Rob Franks and what is Secure Restoration?

1:38Epic Entrepreneurs Host:Well, Rob Franks moved to Asheville about three years ago when I bought this business. And before that, I worked in technology, in corporate America, and did a lot of different things. And I felt like what I really wanted to do was live in a place I wanted to live and do work that I could do for the rest of my life if I wanted to and not have to worry about a corporation deciding to let me go. So I took some of the money I had, invested it, and bought the business. And 10 months after I bought it, we had Hurricane Helene, which changed a lot of things. Secure Restoration has been around for quite a while.

2:25Epic Entrepreneurs Host:Started in Florida, moved into North Carolina about 12 years ago. When I bought it, It was primarily focused on water, fire, and mold remediation, helping people recover after damage happens to their homes or their businesses from unpredictable disasters like a water line breaking, a hurricane, a fire. And we've expanded quite significantly into construction post-Hellene. So we're doing a lot of construction work, rebuilding and repair work for homes that were damaged in Helene. So secure restoration, it was a 24-7 response, water, fire, mold, and then we'll do the repairs.

3:11Rob Franks:Nice, nice. So, you know, you said you started off in Florida and all that. So why Western North Carolina? I know you said you recently moved out here. And where'd you move from?

3:20Epic Entrepreneurs Host:I was in Ohio for quite a while. I was in the military. When I got out of the military, I took a job at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. And I ended up spending a very long time living in Cincinnati, even though I didn't spend a lot of time working at Procter & Gamble. I was there about three years. And in the course of that time, I was involved and wrote the recommendations to launch Febreze. So I had an interesting corporate career where I always ended up in these groups of people who were trying to be entrepreneurial. Eventually I got into startups and technology and was part of a lot of startups that we were trying to build, you know, technology-based solutions for different industries.

4:06Epic Entrepreneurs Host:And it was, it was difficult and always had, you know, investors who you had to keep happy. And if the investors weren't happy and they didn't give you more money, you know, the businesses would shut down. And then one of the businesses I was involved with, we got bought by private equity. I ended up spending three years in private equity. And it just, all that taught me that I just didn't want to live that life. I wanted to, you know, do something different. And I've always loved the mountains. I love, I love the Rockies. I love the West coast. I love Canadian Rockies, but that area is a little far.

4:42Epic Entrepreneurs Host:And, you know, I've been coming to Asheville for quite a while and really fell in love with it and decided this is where I wanted to kind of make my stand. And part of it was, you know, finding a business that's worth buying. You know, you don't have a whole lot of businesses to choose from that are really good. And I spent about two years searching. So I had created this kind of matrix of places I want to live, businesses I would consider buying. And I'd gone through a lot of LOIs, letters of intent, you know, trying to buy businesses. I had lots of conversations, finally found a business, you know, with the right structure, the right price and a place I really liked.

5:21Epic Entrepreneurs Host:So here I am in Western North Carolina and I, and I love it. Yeah.

5:26Rob Franks:Yeah. No, I love it as well. Same thing as you, you know, it's West coast is great, but I've got a lot of family myself in Florida and, uh, you know, plane ride from, from Florida to the Rockies is probably right. Like three, maybe four hours. Right. And, uh, instead of Asheville, you know, yeah, the mountains may not be as high, but it's only an hour, hour and a half plane ride to go see my family in Florida. So I definitely, definitely relate to you on that. So take us back to the very beginning, you know, what made you say, you know, yep, I'm doing this. I'm starting this business. I know you said you bought it from someone else, but what made you, what made you do that?

6:01Epic Entrepreneurs Host:I, I'd spent a lot of time in corporate America and then startup world and then private equity world and I was always working for somebody else. And I, I saw what would happen. I was involved in conversations where, you know, there were just arbitrary things that would happen. Somebody would change their mind about making an investment, you know, and, and you were at the mercy of other people. So, so I had this desire for a very long time to, to, to run my own thing and thinking about, you know, what kinds of things, you know, to, to run, you know, I didn't have a lot of experience in, in home services, but I found it very interesting because it's not a market that's going to be destroyed by advances in AI.

6:49Epic Entrepreneurs Host:You're not going to automate this job away. You've got to have people, you know, fixing, cleaning up mold, you know, removing damaged materials. it's it's it's a job that's going to be necessary for a long time and i thought about you know what kinds of what kinds of industries are interesting to me and there's the ones that have some barrier to entry and that aren't really dependent on discretionary spending so so that narrows down you know quite a bit like like a painting business or a flooring business they're a lot easier to start than a plumbing business because you need plumbers with the right licenses, the right certifications.

7:31Epic Entrepreneurs Host:So I was trying to find some moderately high barriers to entry, home services with potential for scale and not a lot of dependency on discretionary. People are going to build decks probably when they have money to build decks, but if they need to, you know, replace the wet moldy flooring after a flood, you know, that they're going to hire somebody to do that. And, and there's probably going to be an insurance payment that makes that realistic for them to do right away. So I like, I like the restoration industry among other industries that I looked at where I, I see that, you know, potential barrier to entry.

8:15So, so once you build up your, you know, your, your marketing, your,

8:21Epic Entrepreneurs Host:your image, your reputation to the point where people are referring you, where, you know, I've got good recognition in, in places like Google ads and Google SEO, it's not hard to get business. There's actually a lot of need out there. So that's, so this made that business make sense to me. Okay.

8:42Rob Franks:Okay. So, and this is all hypothetical, obviously, but if you had to start again from absolute scratch, you know, let's say you had no brand, no clients, no safety net, what would you do differently the second time around?

8:56Epic Entrepreneurs Host:If I had to start over, what would I do differently? Buying a business has some advantages and disadvantages. You know, you're buying, someone else's baggage when you buy a business. And what I would do differently, I know a lot more about what to look for than I knew when I bought this business. I think I didn't spend enough time really understanding market position and reputation. I looked at it purely from a financial standpoint. When I was in private equity, I was involved in like 18 different acquisitions. They were mostly software companies. So I felt like I had this expertise that I could apply to buying a home services business.

9:42Epic Entrepreneurs Host:And a lot of what we were buying when we were buying software companies was contracts. You have a recurring contract, people need your maintenance, whatever it is, they couldn't just dump you. So that was kind of a different animal than home services. So if I was going to do it over again, I would either build from scratch, focusing on building a good reputation through Google reviews and SEO to be a number that pops up on people's phones when they, when they type in, I've got water leaking in the middle of the night. If I was going to buy a business, I think I would look at the business criteria differently.

10:24Epic Entrepreneurs Host:I would look at who dominates search, you know, who, who really has built the domain authority into their website and has a huge number of, of great, you know, Google reviews that we could, you know, basically build off of who has a great referral network. So I think I looked more at the operational and financial side. And I think if I did it differently, I would focus a lot more on market position and reputation and find somebody who's undervalued those areas. And, you know, so what I've been doing the past three years is really working on improving those areas because they weren't where they needed to be in the business that I bought.

11:10Rob Franks:So what would you say is a lesson you learned the hard way as a business owner that no one really prepares you for? Oh, boy.

11:17Epic Entrepreneurs Host:You know, there's – something humbling happens just about every day, you know, that you don't realize, you know, just a tiny – a tiny speck of an issue can snowball into, you know, reputational damage, potential lawsuits. You know, so, so really the, the, the hardest lesson I've learned is the ability to, you know, hire the right people that you can delegate things to and know that they're going to be done properly. I had, I had, you know, the ability in corporate America and startup world to hire very capable people at very high salaries in the home services businesses. You can't do that and stay alive.

12:14Epic Entrepreneurs Host:You know, there's, there's a market rate that you have to, that you have to stick to. So finding people who are good, who you can trust is a lot more difficult than you think it is. You know, when people talk about buying a business, I don't know how much we think about the quality of the current staff, the retention that we desire, how the market sits as far as available talent with the right experience. And when you're the new guy coming in, you know, the most experienced people aren't necessarily excited about potentially working with you. So for the past three years, the hardest job and the most humbling part of the job has been hiring.

12:59Epic Entrepreneurs Host:I've made a lot of mistakes that have been costly and painful. And now I'm starting to, I think, do a lot better, be a little bit more choosy, have a lot more of a probationary mindset. When somebody comes in with a great resume, I want to see how they do. And I think it's beginning to pay off. Okay.

13:25Rob Franks:So what would you say is a common myth people believe about running a business that makes you laugh now when you hear it?

13:31Epic Entrepreneurs Host:Oh, common myth. I think that people believe we make a lot more money than we do. you know it's it's interesting when when i when i send out a estimate where i'm using this system that the insurance companies use which is you know called it's called zactimate but it's got a price list it's made by this company called verisk so i'm using average pricing for everything and i'm putting it into an estimate i'm measuring you know we're gonna we're gonna fix this wall We're going to clean out the mold in this basement, in this crawl space. And I send out an estimate and people go, whoa, that's incredibly expensive.

14:13Epic Entrepreneurs Host:And I know how these projects work. I know what the economics look like. I know how many hours we're going to have to spend, how much material we're going to buy. You know, I know how much my workers' compensation insurance is going to be. When you do mold work on a regular basis, you pay a lot of workers' compensation insurance. I'm paying for liability insurance. I'm paying for a building. I'm paying for a website. All these things mean that I'm not making a huge amount of money on that estimate. But there's a guy out there in a truck who doesn't have any overhead, doesn't pay for workers' compensation insurance, who comes in and bids something a lot lower and gives people the perception that, well, you're outrageous.

14:59Epic Entrepreneurs Host:You're just making these unbelievable profits off this work. And then I think, no, I'm not. You know, I've got managers. I've got people answering the phones 24-7. I've got insurance. I've got, you know, everything that – vehicles, maintenance. I'm spending, you know,$9 ,000,$10 ,000 a month on protective gear on, you know, the white suits that my guys wear and HEPA filters for their gas masks so they don't breathe mold spores in. All these things are expensive. So at the end of the day, I try to make a reasonable profit, but people think we're making ridiculous money when we're not. Mold remediation and water mitigation done properly is expensive.

15:46Epic Entrepreneurs Host:There's no doubt about it. But that money's not coming to me.

15:53Rob Franks:So how do you personally handle stepping away from the business? you know, like taking a vacation. Is that even a thing?

16:00Epic Entrepreneurs Host:It's hard to do. It's hard to really disconnect. And, you know, it all comes down to the people that you hire and your ability to delegate, you know, processes, tools. I have some good people that have taken a long time to find. And the first good people you're going to find are probably going to be people that like to do things independently, that have a lot of knowledge and experience, but they kind of do things their way. In order to scale, you have to go to a different level where it's not just knowledgeable guys going to watch the business while I'm gone. It's knowledgeable guys going to use the processes and systems that we've put in place to be able to manage a lot more of the business while I'm gone.

16:51Epic Entrepreneurs Host:You can't just be shooting from the hip. So, you know, fighting, fighting fires. If you, if all you want to do is, is, you know, fight fires all day, don't build systems. Don't, don't use software that, that helps you manage your jobs. So when I'm able to relax most is when everybody's using the systems, when they're putting updates in to the management software we use. We use a restoration management software tool. We use a photo tracking tool called CompanyCam. So when I can open up my computer or look at my phone and I can see that the jobs are progressing and no big fires have popped up, and I can relax, I can disconnect.

17:39Epic Entrepreneurs Host:When I don't know what's going on and I'm somewhere else, it's very hard not to reach out and call people, what's going on with this? Where's this at? So I think my ability to relax increases proportionally as we get more comfortable with systems. And as the people that I've hired who are doing a great job can adapt and grow into a model where we use the systems because they help us, you know, scale, they help us maintain quality. They help minimize the fires. So, so systems are really the key for me to, to, you know, just to be able to go, I got a phone call from somebody who's complaining about something and I can look at the notes and know that the notes have been kept up to date, know that the invoices have been done properly, know that the, you know, everything's been done right.

18:30Epic Entrepreneurs Host:I can relax. If not, it's kind of like you're, you're, you're walking on eggshells in a minefield waiting for the next, you know, when am I going to hear the little click that I've not got to be fired or fight. Yep.

18:45Rob Franks:So how do you personally handle stepping away from the business? Like, you know, unplugging in the evening, or do you have a certain cutoff time or are you working pretty much around the clock seven days a week?

18:55Epic Entrepreneurs Host:I, I have, I have an unplug, you know, mode that I go into probably around dinner time where I'll just, you know, watch some streaming series and disconnect. And if I hear my phone vibrate, you know, like somebody needs me, I might take a look at it. We do 24-7. So there are times when I have the duty. We have managers. Every manager takes a week of answering calls at night. So we have an answering service that screens the calls. And if it's an emergency call, it'll get forwarded to us. So when I'm on duty, I'm on 24 seven. When I'm not on duty, I can shut down pretty well around dinner time. And then I'll get up early, spend a little bit of time drinking my coffee, walking my dog, and then dive in and start looking.

19:42Epic Entrepreneurs Host:And the first thing I do is look at notes in our restoration management system. How'd it go yesterday on the jobs? What's coming up today? And if I can see that there's no big fires, then I can relax and I can get into systems and and marketing and things like that.

19:58Rob Franks:Okay. Okay. So looking back, what would you attribute most of your growth to in your business so far? Helene. Helene.

20:08Epic Entrepreneurs Host:We grew 80 % last year.

20:10Rob Franks:Wow.

20:11Epic Entrepreneurs Host:From the prior year. Helene did create a lot of work for restoration companies in, in Asheville. But I think I've also been able to really get a handle on the marketing tools that are out there and understanding how people find businesses like mine and being better positioned to be visible and credible to people who are in that, you know, that moment of truth when they've walked into their, you know, vacation home and they see water gushing, you know, out the door. or somebody has a fire, you know, they're going to spend a couple minutes searching and they're going to make a decision on who to call for emergency services.