We Built Restopros To Stop Bad Cleanup From Hurting Families with Ryan & Bob Parrish, Restopros of Catawba Valley

21:54Bob Parrish:And, of course, I keep him updated. Hey, I'm going to try this. And he's like, okay, if you have this many days to show something, and if it doesn't work within that many days, then we kind of drop it and go to the next idea that we have together. there is a lot of late night conversations about, Hey, where can, where can this go? What, what are you, what are we thinking about trying to get into what, what all, what all can we do? Is there what, what kind of on the operation side, how can we handle if we add this or all that kind of stuff? Okay.

22:36Ryan Parrish:Now what mistake or hard lesson has made you all better owners and operators? Would you say that?

22:43Bob Parrish:Ah, biggest mistake. Biggest mistakes. There's so many. The right personnel in the right place. That's huge. We went for a little bit with the wrong personnel in the wrong places and ended up cost us quite a bit of money. We figured it out, made changes, rearranged some things, adjusted schedules, moved it right out. I'm an operations guy. It doesn't matter if it's running a warehouse, running a yard at a distribution center, or running a water mitigation company. operations is all about getting the customer. In some old terms, I had a Six Sigma experience, and it's the delighters. What makes a customer go from being happy to, wow, that was awesome.

23:52Bob Parrish:Yeah, best case scenario, I got ahold of you guys. What is the process to get them to that? And we hit and miss. Every customer is different. And so we hit and miss on some things. We've got a lot of things that we do that actually makes a lot of customers happy. And, of course, you can't make everybody happy. But we do the best we can.

24:21Ryan Parrish:now how you know let's kind of get into this a little bit more kind of hypothetical but let's say if you could wave a magic wand right if you could make a wave a magic wand and fix one part of your franchise business what would it be and why oh wow brian do you have any thoughts on that yeah we have a we have a pretty large subset of of people you know that listen to the podcast every week that are small entrepreneurs So this is what they really want to hear.

24:51Bob Parrish:Honestly, I would say if we could wave a magic wand. Oh, my goodness. I wish there was a magic wand. I would say, honestly, focusing on the back half of business. So for that, I would say not that it's an issue, but just how long our estimates take because of how detailed and thorough So the guys are getting those out faster to the insurance company because they want them. We pick up the equipment on Thursday. They want it by Friday. If we can get those out faster, that is 100 % where I would 100 % wave that magic wand because as we have grown and gotten bigger, I have kind of helped dad with the estimates.

25:41Bob Parrish:and sometimes it does take a little bit longer than what we would like and what the insurance company likes, but that is the honest truth in my opinion. Dad, do you have anything? Yeah, on my side of it, if I could go back and wave that magic wand and undo some things, the biggest thing I would look at is everybody wants to talk about internet marketing. Yes, it's important. Yes, you got to have a Google page. Yes, you got to have all this. There's a right way and a wrong way. I did not know a lot of what I know now. I wish I had – one of my son-in-laws, he is an IT manager at Western Carolina University.

26:30I wish I had more conversations with him prior to reaching out to some of these places.

26:39Ryan Parrish:So how many hours are each of you working in a typical week in and on the business right now?

26:44Bob Parrish:Typically. So I work. Oh, my gosh. For the sales side. So sales is typically done by about, I would say, four or five o 'clock. And then I'm working on estimates till about seven or eight. So I'm probably doing at least 60 hours a week. I know dads are doing more than that. I don't know how long. Yeah, I get a lot of long work days and short weekends. Okay.

27:16Ryan Parrish:Now, Ryan, what would Bob say is your strongest leadership quality? And, Bob, what would Ryan say is yours?

27:25Bob Parrish:I said Ryan's strongest leadership quality is the fact that he is – he's been on the boots on the ground teams, working in the water, working in other areas. So he can empathize with those guys as they're overworked and we get a call at 15 minutes to five and I send everybody home at 4.30 and calling them back, hey, we just got another call. We got to go out and get it. But so Ryan being able to empathize with those people and being able to say, hey, I'm going to meet you out there and we're going to do this. It's not just going to be you guys going out there. I'm going to meet you out there and we're going to work this together.

28:14Bob Parrish:That's his strongest belief.

28:19Bob Parrish:For dad, it'd honestly just be his faith because he 100 % believes that our guys are the best there is. He puts 100 % faith in every single one of our guys to go in there and do the job and get it done correctly in a timely manner, take care of the homeowner, and just be the amazing guys that they are. And honestly, we wouldn't be where we're at without the guys that we have. They are amazing. And honestly, Dad just puts a lot of faith in them. and that right there just, it shows the guys just how much we care about, he cares about them. So we take care of them, they take care of us.

29:05Ryan Parrish:Okay, okay, I like that. Now, you know, let's look at the opposite end of that. This is going to be a good one here. So, yeah, we're going to look at the opposite end of that. What is one business or leadership skill each of you still needs to improve on?

29:19Bob Parrish:On me, it's procrastination. I get so busy with, I said, some of the estimates, they'll take four or five hours just to do one estimate. So by the time you're done with that, you're spent. And it's like, I'll just read the email tomorrow. I'll go through my emails tomorrow. And then tomorrow something else comes up. Well, we've got to do this. Well, I'll get to this later. It just seems there's the procrastination side of it. If I just get in there and do it while I'm there, I know it's going to take another 15 minutes, but I'm exhausted. Let's just go ahead and get it done now. I need to work on more of that than the, well, I'll get it tomorrow kind of thing.

30:06Bob Parrish:I would piggyback on that because my biggest issue is procrastination, but I would also say delegation as well. I like to do everything. I like to try to do everything myself. And I know I need, I know that I need help doing it. And that's, that's my biggest issue is making that phone call to dad at four o 'clock in the afternoon. Hey, I need your help doing this estimate. I got to get it in, but I need your help doing it. And it's hard for me just to make that phone call because I want to be able to do it myself. Okay.

30:49Ryan Parrish:I like that. Now, I know a 24-7 restoration business cannot predict when the next loss will happen. So what systems kind of keep dispatch documentation, equipment, and customer communication under control, even when you guys are sleeping at night? So I'll just be honest, and Dad hasn't touched on it yet,

31:11Bob Parrish:but Dad was in the Navy for a while. He can wake up to just about any sound. So if it's past our quote-unquote normal hours, all phone calls get directed to him, and he can wake up at the drop of a hat. So say you call us at midnight. You call Dad directly, and he will answer the phone, and our guys are great. I know I touched on that a little bit, but the guys we can call are lead tech and he'll answer the phone. He'll be here in 15 minutes and you guys will just take off. Ryan is right about that. I sleep with one ear open, so to speak. I can hear the phone ring. I can hear a car pull up in the driveway, and it'll wake me up.

32:07Bob Parrish:So the phone rings. It'll wake me up. I go in the other room, answer the phone call. I can be dressed out the door in 15 minutes and to wherever I need to go in an emergency. I can call any of the guys, and they will come and join me. So it's one of those situations where I've got a good crew. I got a good team. And it's a 24-7 business. So somebody's got to do it.

32:36Ryan Parrish:Now, where do your best jobs come from right now? Is it from kind of plumbers, insurance agents, Google, referrals? I mean, it's something I'm not listing here. Where are your jobs coming from right now?

32:49Bob Parrish:We get a lot of internet traffic. Plumbers call us. We've got three or four good plumbing companies that use us specifically, and we pass work back and forth with them. So it's a give and take. It's not just a one-way deal for us. We've got insurance adjusters that trust us. We've got insurance agents that trust us, and we go out. We help them. They understand that we're out there trying to help the people in the – I mean, we're not trying to take advantage of the insurance company, but we're out to help the people get back into a healthy spot. And just because of that, we get a lot of phone calls.

33:29We get some from, you know, the truck has the phone number on the side of it.

33:35Bob Parrish:And every once in a while, hey, I saw your truck over at my neighbor's house. I got this issue. Can you come over and take a look at it? We get calls from insurance agents, or not, excuse me, not insurance agents, But real estate agents who call and they've got a customer that's trying to buy a house and they just need to find out if the black spots on the wall are mold or if they're dirt. We don't do the testing for it because it's a conflict of interest to do the testing and the cleanup. But we go in there with some antimicrobial. We do a light treatment. if it cleans and goes away or foams up, then we can tell them this is at least clean.

34:24Bob Parrish:It's not fixed. I can't tell you for sure it's dirt or if it's mold, but it's clean. And there's nothing going to be growing on that spot for a while.

34:38Ryan Parrish:Now, how closely are you kind of tracking lead source and estimates?

34:42Bob Parrish:Yeah, RCRM. Is it tracking that pretty good? Whenever we're filling everything out, it tells us – or there's a line item that we have to put in there for where the lead came from and make sure that it's documented and the outcome and all that stuff. So it's all tracked on our programs. I would say, though, our best jobs are honestly coming from our plumbers a lot of times. because they're in it. They know the ones that we work very heavily with. They know exactly what we're looking for, and they give us a call, and they'll say, say if they call me, they go, hey, Ryan, I got you one. I need you here today.

35:31Bob Parrish:Can you get here in 15 minutes? Sure, I'll be there. Send me the address. And we get out there, And that's honestly where our best leads are coming from. Okay.

35:44Ryan Parrish:Now, I want to get into your competition a little bit here. Let's say if I'm speaking to another restoration place across town, I'm speaking to Carlos here, I'm speaking to John over here. Why do customers and referral partners choose Catawba Valley team instead of another restoration team? So that's kind of a double-edged sword.

36:05Bob Parrish:Ryan touched on it a little bit earlier. We do it. Our guys work the best. In my mind, they are the best priests out there. They handle the customers. They deal with the customers. We deal with all the insurance stuff. And we do it in a manner that the customer is educated as we're working through it and not just sold. And, yeah, I mean, other companies do the same thing. We handle our billing a little bit different than some of the other guys do. I don't want to give away too many trade secrets, but we're not out trying to gouge anybody, whether it be the customer or the insurance company at the same time.

36:50Bob Parrish:If there's a – and I can give you this for instance. We had a job not too long ago. Get a call. It was a Saturday morning. I go out there just to do the inspection on it. And as I'm standing there with a plumber, we force open a basement door and sewage comes rolling out. Somewhere in the sewer line for the city, they had a block and the blockage closed her backflow valve, keeps things from flowing from the city side to her side. But at the same time, with that valve closed, nothing from her side can get out. So not sure how long it had been going on, but the basement had about an inch deep of water that came through the toilet, whether it be it came from washing machine and dishwasher and washing dishes and using the restroom, take showers, all that stuff.

37:57Bob Parrish:It all back flowed into her fully finished, fully furnished basement.

38:05Bob Parrish:and we get we go out there first thing we do i call the guys they show up they they start getting all the pictures obviously there's no reason for some of the moisture readings because it was all wet you could see it was all wet water was you know coming up top of your shoes they took pictures of everything documented everything cleaned everything up and i go upstairs talk to the lady and talk to her about her insurance and i was just gonna file the claim and all that and try to walk her through it, find out she's got a cap on her policy, which means insurance companies are only going to pay X amount of dollars on that policy for the damage that we're cleaning up.

38:47Bob Parrish:And just in the couple hours we were there, we exceeded that amount. The insurance adjuster met with me the next day after we had everything cleaned up and we had all the equipment running. Everything cleaned up, pulled out, ripped out, thrown away, dealt with the way it was supposed to be dealt with. And he looks at me and goes, so now what are you going to do? And I was like, I don't understand the question. He goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, about what? He goes, the customer, her husband had passed away a couple of months prior to that. and she's on a walker and she's in medical bed in her dining room because it's closest to the bathroom and the kitchen where she doesn't have to run the length of the house.

39:40Bob Parrish:She's obviously on a fixed income. What are you going to do? I know what your bill is. I know what her cap is. What are you going to do? And I said, I've already sent her my bill. And as soon as you pay her what you're going to pay her, then my bill will be settled. And he goes, you're not going to chase her for the money? No, there's no point in beating a woman to death who doesn't have the ability to pay and she's got her own health issues and she's got dealing with the loss of her husband just a few months before. I'm not going to add to this woman's pain by by chasing her for the leftover money.

40:22Bob Parrish:She paid what the insurance paid her. We had an agreement. If the city pays her some more, it'll add to that payment. But if they don't, then they don't. And everything's marked bill paid. So that's what makes us different. We work with the customer. We help the customer. We do everything we possibly can to get the customer in a better place. And if I can do anything to make that process better, make that process easier, then we do it. Okay.

40:57Ryan Parrish:Now, what does the team look like today? I know you talked about your guys. How many people? Well, I've got three crews.

41:08Bob Parrish:They vary in experience and scope of work. that they can do. And I've got, you know, like I said, they're interchangeable. So, if I've got a sewage leak in a crawl space, which happens a lot, I know there's a couple of guys that I can call on and say, hey, you guys are working together today and go tackle this problem. And they get it taken care of. If it's, you know, if cabinets have got to come out and, you know, we're trying to protect a stone top because stone tops are expensive and most people really like their stone tops. We, I've got a couple of guys that are really good at, at removing them without breaking them.

41:56Bob Parrish:And we, we, we store them and put them, set them up in a position where they're, they're not going to break or they're not going to be in the way or, or whatever. And, and those guys are suited for that. So there's multiple different ways that things shake out and I can mix and match any of the guys to do what needs to be done and they get out there and take care of it. Okay.

42:25Ryan Parrish:Now, what is the hardest part about recruiting and developing technicians who can handle technical restoration work and also communicate with distressed homeowners? Is that tougher than you see? because I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs on here, obviously, and I've heard a lot of things about it's easy to put a tech into place, but it's hard to find good employees who give a damn about their work. What have you seen?

42:47Bob Parrish:Oh, my gosh. It's very difficult. Not only do you have to deal with the homeowner being very – whenever we walk in, unfortunately, it's one of the worst days of their lives. we're telling them everything we have to rip out we're telling them all the all bad news but finding that guy that can deliver the really bad news and still be able to put a smile on their face after they tell them all this terrible news is they're a dime a dozen and not to also put on top of that they've got to be able to deal with the smell of the raw sewage they've got to be able to be smart enough to, how to dismantle something without absolutely tearing it up and tearing up the customer's house, floors, anything.

43:43Bob Parrish:It's very difficult. Honestly, the way we do it is trial by fire, honestly. we set them with one of our we set them with our lead tech and who's been with us now for almost since we opened who can do just about anything we set them with him and by the end of the day we ask him all right how do you do and he tells us he'll be good or he's going to need a lot of work and that's kind of how good and saying yeah you can find somebody that can deal with handle the customer and work with them, or you can find somebody that can do really well with the cleanup and take care of that portion of it. It's really difficult to find somebody that can take care of both sides of it at the same time.

44:34And my guys, if you're to the customer and you can't get in there and do what needs to be done, then there's some training involved.

44:49Bob Parrish:But we do the best we can with getting everybody on board.

44:55Ryan Parrish:Totally agree. Now, do you think it's a generational thing? I mean, what do you think is happening?

45:01Bob Parrish:Yeah, honestly, it is a generational thing. The younger guys, and not all of them, because my lead tech, he's still one of the younger guys, but he doesn't handle any of the customers. But the really younger guys that we have, they get tongue-tied real easy. They don't talk to the customer well. They don't handle the situation as gracefully as they should. The older guys, they're better at handling the customers and making sure everything's taken care of.

45:35Ryan Parrish:Okay. Now, let's see here. How do I ask this? Which growth lever is kind of strongest right now? Is it more referral partners? Is it commercial work, more technicians, reconstruction, geographic reach, or simply more awareness?

45:51Bob Parrish:Right now, our biggest thing is we want the recognition of the brand. Yeah, we're trying to break into some commercial stuff, and we get commercial calls here and there. We're trying to break into some other areas that we haven't been in before with certifications and things that we're working on. But the biggest thing is the brand awareness. I think the rest of it will come if they know that they can call us for multiple different things, not just, hey, you know, my water heater blew up. I need somebody to clean up the water.

46:30Ryan Parrish:okay okay now if we had you back let's say in two years from now right let's say by let's say 2029 right what would what would need to be true for both of you to say the business has become

46:44Bob Parrish:what you envisioned when you started uh on my side i've said from the beginning i've got a i've got a 10-year plan and and currently we're about two and a half years into it so we're on track from what I'm seeing right now with what I want to have happen. So in order for me to say we're successful is that 10-year plan is actually still two years closer than what it is now when you have us on. So yeah, that would be a success for me. For me to say it's a success, I would say landing a very large contract with a very national brand property manager that we get to manage. Well, not manage, but be their primary water mitigation experts.

47:41They call us for anything and everything from a sales standpoint. That'd be awesome. All right.

47:49Ryan Parrish:Perfect. And now let's look short term. Now, if there were one meaningful thing, you know, you guys could change in the next 90 days, you know, we're recording this around Labor Day. So that would put us right right at the start of Christmas kickoff season. So if you could change one meaningful thing in the business in the next 90 days, what would it be and why would that matter personally to you?

48:06Bob Parrish:That's a very good question. Like, one meaningful thing for me would be if we could continue to build our brand, continue to build the market, and basically 90 days from now, be able to look back and say, this one point in time was the beginning of it. not specifically this, but something that occurs somewhere in the next few weeks that we can actually see it in 90 days, that was the turning point to get us to that next level, to get us those extra jobs, to get us that contract, whatever the case may be. I would, well, I just, I agree with that 100%. He hit on every, all the points that I also have.

48:57Yeah, okay.

48:58Ryan Parrish:All right, perfect. Well, guys, Ryan and Bob, yeah, thank you so much for joining us and sharing for what it takes to build RestorPros of Catawba Valley and serve people in some of the most stressful moments a property owner can face. So, yeah, real quick before we go in and sign off, is there any last things you'd like to give the listening audience before we go to sign off? Yeah, there's a lot of water mitigation companies out there.

49:21Bob Parrish:Do your homework. If you have an issue, don't just call the first one that pops up online. They may not be the best. Just do your homework, look at them, talk to them, and realize that it is a stressful time. And a lot of times people don't have a lot of patience at that point. They're in a hurry to get it done. But the wrong company out can do more damage than good. I'm going to go a different way. And I'm going to say to your listeners, smile through the good times and smile through the bad times as well, because no matter what, it will get better. Keep on the grind. Being an entrepreneur is not easy.

50:06Bob Parrish:It's not it is not for everyone. But if you have if you can if you can make it through the rough times, you can make it through anything.

50:17Ryan Parrish:Yeah, definitely agree with that. So, all right. I appreciate the guys. So to everyone listening, connect with Ryan and Bob and follow Epic Entrepreneurs on all of our social medias. It will be in the description box. And with everybody, you know, with people building businesses and communities every day. This is Cliff McRae with Actually Coast Business Growth Partners. Thank you, Cliff. See you next time. Thanks, gentlemen. Thank you.

50:40Bob Parrish:Hey, thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast. Here's three things that you can do. Number one, remember to subscribe to the podcast. It takes very little effort on your part. It's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs. Plus, you guys know how it works. The more subscribers we get, the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly.

51:28Bob Parrish:Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.