吃瓜不打烊

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our cat season kickoff webinar. My name is Leah. I’m a director of product marketing here at 吃瓜不打烊, and we’re here today to kick off cat season and learn from some of some of the best in the industry. We’ve got Tom Maguire from Lard’s Loss Mastery. I’ll give them a chance to introduce themselves really, really soon. We’ve got Doug from Rare Restoration and Roofing, and we’ve got TJ Wiberley from Patriot Restoration. So welcome, guys. Really excited to have you here. Okay. Just a quick overview of the of the agenda, and then I’m gonna turn it over to the guys to introduce themselves and get rolling. So the first part, what to expect during a CAT, what resources you need, preplanning, strategic alliances, getting to the heart of the operation, what you should do, don’t do during, during that response, daily project documentation. Obviously, here at 吃瓜不打烊, we’re particularly passionate about documentation. So, we’ll be paying close attention during that part as well as invoicing. And then we’ll wrap up with a q and a at the end. We hope to have at least twenty to thirty minutes at the end for q and a. We hope to be wrapped up in about two hours. And that is it for me. No. It’s not. One second. Before I hand it over, I am just going to launch one quick poll because we wanna know who’s here. We’ve got several hundred people who’ve joined the webinar today, which is amazing. And the panelists would really like to know what your cat experience is so they can tailor the conversation to, to the level of experience that is needed or that you’ve got today. So, guys, it is I’ll I’ll share the poll shortly, but it’s looking like we’ve got a mix of about over half sixty percent have done a little bit of cat work. Thirteen percent never never done any cat work, and about thirty percent are are pros industry or veterans and do it all the time. Alright. Looks like I’ll just end the poll there. The board. Yeah. So we’ve got a a mixed bag, but mostly people who’ve dabbled and done it a little. And so I think there’s lots to learn from some veterans like yourselves. So we’re gonna end the poll there, and we’ll close that. So I’ll just share that quickly. So, yeah, we’ve got fifteen percent have never done it, fifty six done a little, and twenty nine percent do it all the time. Very good. Alright. So that’s it for me. Tom If I was a was a politician if I was a politician, I’d take those I’d take those polls. Perfect. Alright, Tom. I’m gonna throw it over to you. I’m gonna go off camera. I’ll mute myself. I’ll monitor the q and a, monitor the chat, and take it away. Introduce yourself and and the guys you brought with you today. Thank you, Leah. Thank you, everyone. We’re gonna start out with some quick introductions, and we’ll start with TJ. Tj, introduce yourself. Who who the heck are you? What do you what do you do? I have turned my phone off over here. Yeah. My name is TJ Wiberley. I’m the president of Patriot Restoration. We’re a disaster recovery firm located in Knoxville, Tennessee. Very good. Very good. Dougie? Hey, guys. I’m Doug Weatherman. I’m the chief operating officer and partner in a firm in Colorado called Rare Restoration and Roofing. Done a ton of disaster work over the years. A lot of you guys know me from seeing me out there. Definitely happy to be here today. Thanks to 吃瓜不打烊 for putting this on, Tom, for having me out. No. Very absolute pleasure to have you guys here, and and and thank you. My name is Tom McGuire for those who don’t know me. My first hurricane was hurricane Andrew back in nineteen ninety two, and a lot has changed over over that time. But the the same question remains. To Kat or not to Kat? That is the question. And first of all, I wanna thank everybody that’s joining us today for spending your time with us because your time is valuable. This webinar is for you, and thank you for 吃瓜不打烊 for for putting it on and asking us to to come on to this panel. It’s an honor to be here with you guys today, and, hopefully, we’ll we’ll, get to everybody’s questions here at the end. We’re kinda working as we go. So, plug in your questions, and we’ll try and get them in at the end of at the end of everything. But I’m honored to be here with my my two friends, TJ and Doug. I have a tremendous amount of respect for these two gentlemen. They have, they’re the younger generation. I’m the older generation. And these guys are go getters and incredible knowledge in in our industry. And so reach out to them if you have any questions or myself. And so don’t don’t be afraid. And for those of you who know me, you know I love to talk. We love this industry, and both these guys are very, passionate passionate about our our industry and our businesses. And so we tend to talk. We’re not we’re not really shy about talking, so I’ve got I’ve got a timer over here. And for those of you who know me, that’s the biggest pressure that I have today is I got a timer over here that I have to keep an eye on. And so, let’s go ahead and get started. We’re gonna get started with our first segment. We have six segments that we’re gonna work on, and we’re gonna spend about twenty, you know, we have about twenty minutes on each. And, the first one is expectations. You know, what should you expect out of out of CAT? Well, number one, you can expect the unexpected. And what I’ll tell you is come prepared for every in inevitability as you can because the chances are it’s going to to happen. So, number one, you’re gonna work a lot. So if you’re a couch potato, this probably isn’t gonna work for you. It’s gonna be you’re gonna be twelve to eighteen hours a day. There might be some days where you’re twenty four, pull a twenty four just to just to get get things started. There’s just it’s just nature of the beast. There might be the first two weeks that you’re there, you might only get four or five hours of sleep a night. That and some some beef jerky, water, peanuts. And so you have to be ready for for all of that. We’re gonna go down through all of these deals, but you can expect limited services in everything that we’re gonna talk about. And so I’m just gonna breeze through them here real quick. Labor availability, and then we’re gonna come back and open up for the guys. Labor availability, cell coverage, food services, fuel and gas availability, power services, local services for supplies and materials, housing availability, local transportation, and you can I’m guaranteeing that you’re gonna have slow payment on getting paid. It’s just part of the nature. So bring we gotta make sure we’re gonna get into resources here in in the next segment, and that’s probably the most important thing because restoration is restoration. And, you know, I started in the in the eighties, and we’re still doing the same thing. We’re drying, cleaning, demoing, mold remediation, whatever it may be. It’s still the same. It hasn’t changed. And so we have to gather together and and always remember that it’s not rocket science. Let’s don’t make it more difficult than it really is. And so mobilization, you can count on it being at a minimum fifty to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to mobilize. And so you wanna make sure that you know what you’re you have a reason to go before you mobilize. So I wanna open it up to the guys. And about these particular subjects, every single one of these is gonna be very important. Number one, labor labor availability. If you if you don’t bring If you don’t have labor, don’t If you don’t have labor, don’t go. If you don’t have your labor situated ahead of time, don’t go. If your plan is to get there and see what labor companies are there, don’t go. I mean, there’s just there’s a lot of reasons why labor is a very important thing. Your teams if you send in ten guys or whatever their first weekend, they’re gonna be burnt out after that if they’ve had to pull off every single thing that you’re supposed to have done in that same amount of time. That’s that’s the biggest concern. If you don’t have a labor outlet, you’re you probably don’t have any business in the zone because it’s gonna be a short and sweet journey for you. Yes. And and the same with you know, we gotta come with power. You you have to be ready. Cell coverage, of course, everybody knows if you’ve ever been through any type of storm, cell coverage can be spotty. During in hurricanes in particular, you might have shoot, it might be a week before you have a good connection, good cell connection. I always say limited resources and maximum chaos. You can expect to not have anything that you used to have at home. Your operations are gonna be a lot harder. Cell service comes back a little bit faster now through zones. Starlink does a pretty good job at getting cell service back. But from the first couple of days, you know, the the to the first week, it can be real difficult for even the satellite phones to work depending on geographical location and things like that too. There’s a lot of a lot of things that can get in the way of of everything working perfectly. There’s curfews that shut down food services. Restaurants don’t open for a few days except for the Waffle House. Boy, you can count on the Waffle House. Other than that, I mean, these vending machines, you know, you can you can get stuck in some pretty, rough situations, and it does it does take tough guys to get through a lot of this stuff because you you can’t communicate through the phone. And if you didn’t bring radios, then it’s very hard to talk across the job site. There’s just things like that that, you know, a lot of a lot of folks have to consider when you’re getting ready to mobilize. Housing is another big thing too. That’s always a huge concern when you’re moving in a bunch of guys to a place where they don’t live. Where are they all gonna stay? Are you gonna set up a man camp? Is it that type of a thing, or is it something where Airbnbs and hotels are gonna cover it? Whatever you guys are gonna do. Housing and labor, and then your vendors on on-site. Those are the things that you really gotta have lined up before you’re you’re ready to go. You need resources across whatever storm zones you’re gonna be working in. And these are relationships that start early on in the year. These aren’t things that you wanna be forming, you know, after the storm hits because they’re already dealing with the people they have a relationship with. And you’re on a list, but by the time you get there, you you know, the list may be a hundred and fifty people long by the time that you pull up and are able to start doing stuff. You wanna make sure that you’re being proactive. If you’re gonna be doing disaster work, it doesn’t just start the day of the storm. It doesn’t start, you know, during during hurricane season. It starts all year long reforming your relationships, getting your vendors out, making sure that everybody knows that you’re a guy who really does this, not just a guy who wanted a vendor package so that you can have my insurance in case I need you. Exactly. You know, getting ready for cat starts, you know, in November of the year prior to. You’re still wrapping up on the cat from for the cat season from from this year, you’ll be planning for next year. Yeah. And you have have a no. There’s never a result anywhere. Yep. And and the thing too with your housing and all of that, make sure and early on, make sure we’re we’re documenting everything that we do. We’re gonna get into this when we get into the invoicing part. Because when it comes to your invoice, you need to know where everybody was staying. And so you have to have documentation about who was staying in what air Airbnb, who was staying at what hotel, when they were staying there. You have to have that. It’s all tracked so that it supports your invoice at the end. The same with the same with anything else that you’re doing, any any other services. Make sure we’re tracking from the very beginning of the project so we don’t have any issues, when we get to the end and we get into our invoice. TJ, you got I think the the the major thing for me here is my you know, in my company, we’re so reliant on technology like 吃瓜不打烊, and all that gets thrown out the window when you don’t have cell service, you know, limited power. So it’s having documented processes in place the old school way and doing this all on paper that you don’t have issues trying to access any of this stuff. Yep. Yep. Knowing how to use the offline mode and what does and does not, especially with, like, programs like 吃瓜不打烊 and things like that too. Knowing what you can and can’t get through in the on the offline mode, making sure you got backups for the super important assets like TJ was just talking about. For sure. Yeah. Mobilization fees are crazy too. I mean, anybody who mobilized to LA for the fires can tell you the mobilization fees for that were nuts. Even Airbnbs out there were ten thousand dollars a week. I mean, it was it was crazy. I mean, the the mobilization fees can fluctuate vastly determined on but based on location. Yeah. The mobilization fee that we show here at one, fifty to one fifty, you know, that’s that’s that’s, you know, on the low side. And and you don’t you don’t wanna mobilize to a to a cat if you don’t have a reason to go. And I always tell people, if you don’t have a reason to go, don’t go to cat. You’ll sit in a hotel waiting for waiting for work, and you’ll be that lonely company that is still sitting at the hotel. And you’ll see them, you know, see them when you’re coming back. You’ll see them sitting in the lobby. They don’t have anything yet, and they’re sitting there, the clock is just ticking. You know, they got their sales team out there. They’re trying to find work, but they’re sitting there, they and they’re and you can just every day, the depression is you can see it written on their face. And so don’t be that company. Make sure you have some a reason to go, a project, an anchor project that is going to secure, and pay for your cost of of of going to the cat. It it can be very costly. Yeah. And I’ll be there for sightseeing. This isn’t a tourism time. You know what I mean? It’s it’s, if you’re there to do the work, great. We we definitely everybody out there loves the help. Everybody that’s ever been affected by a disaster in any area ever can tell you that, you know, they they love the help when it comes in. But if you’re in the way, that’s exactly what you look like to them. That’s exactly what you look like to us. That’s exactly what you look like to the city, the national guard, and everybody else you’re gonna encounter throughout, you know, doing your doing your work. There’s lots of ways to gain anchor jobs. This is a huge thing for me. I don’t I don’t go anywhere unless we’ve got something that’s gonna pay for the mobilization already, like, already on the line. Like, it’s not something we’re gonna go out there and close. Like, it’s already closed, then we go. The anchor jobs are are very important. You can gain a lot of work by partnering up with local firms, even franchise to franchise. Lot of lot of guys in this group are bound to be, you know, franchise groups and things like that. Talk to other owners, man. Your other owners are gonna get a time when their phones are ringing off the hook, and they’d rather call their fellow franchise owners than anybody else. But even independent guys, man, out there too, there there there’s a relationship building that you can make with larger companies to get yourself into the zone and get these anchor jobs. You get ten or twelve residential houses that they don’t really wanna deal with anyway because they’re in a surge event in their own market right now, and they’re trying to handle their own clients and everything else. So they’ve got a ton of extra stuff. Reach out to them. See what they wanna charge you for doing that work in their area. You can get these anchor jobs a lot of ways. Just make sure that you’re forming these relationships before the storm. That’s that’s another key thing right there is that you have to be talking to these people before. Don’t go to North Carolina and start finding North Carolina restoration companies to partner up with. Know them before you left there. You know what I mean? That way, they know you. They know the quality of the work that they’re putting their customers who are calling them and their reputation. They’re not calling your reputation. They’re calling their reputation when they’re when you’re in their market. You know? You’ve gotta if they know your quality of work is high, there’s a lot of folks out there that would love to partner with quality firms, and they’ll create those anchor jobs for you. And so that’s a great segue into our next segment, which is gonna be our our resources. And so what you need and so what you need is you need to do all of this way before the event. So if you’re if you’re sitting there today and you’re looking to get into the the cat season, which is we’re about ready to ramp up into our our busy season here in August and September and October, you should already have all of this done. But here’s and I’m just gonna touch on them again, just preview them, and then we’ll come back with the guys here. But the resources that you’re going to need are gonna be finances. Can you support the job? Knowledge and experience. Do you know what you’re doing? That’s the that’s the question I always ask people. It doesn’t matter how many certificates you have or anything. There’s only one question that you have to answer, and that is, do you know what you are doing? Equipment, bring as much as you can. Be prepared to rely on your suppliers. Make sure you have them lined up. Make sure you don’t wait until last minute because equipment is gone. Supplies and materials, bring as much as you can with you, and then make sure you know where your refill, where you’re going to what who you’re going to use to to resupply. Strategic partners and alliances for fuel, labor, generators, and equipment. Absolutely imperative. If you don’t have these built for, like, for a cat situate situations, you might have them at home, but make sure that you have them for on the road. And so it’s very important. You don’t wanna get out there and get a big job and you can’t find fuel. And those those are big things. So and then the performance. You know, make sure you have the ability to do the job right and on budget. That’s the number one thing. And because you’re going to get always remember that you’re gonna get audited. It’s kinda like we we live in this world now where we’re always on camera. Well, in the restoration world, you’re just plan on. You’re always gonna get audited. And so make sure you have everything in order and that we’re on budget, we’re on time, and we’re we’re doing a great job. And so, guys, I’ll open this up to you guys. What do you what’s on here that you see the most important for you? Do you know what you’re doing? That’s the most important thing, man. I mean, if you don’t know what you guys are doing, like, there’s a lot of differences between handling water heater and plumbing floods and handling disaster floods. There’s a lot of differences between handling stove fires and wildfires. There’s a lot of differences that you have to know. You have to know how to treat each case on on its own merits. Right? And there’s so many different things that come into play. But if you haven’t achieved the correct amount of training and you’re not at the right level, just stay away and keep learning, man. The your time will come for you to be out here in the field, but the the the time for inexperience and people who are unknowledgeable is not after a disaster, man. That’s when that’s when the real pros have gotta get in there and clean everything up. Yep. Equipment, that’s another huge one. You you can bring everything that you want. You you can pack up your whole building. You’re inevitably gonna forget something. You’re inevitably gonna not have enough of something. And the the vendor relationships that you have with rental companies and other companies in general too can just keep you in equipment that you’re gonna need in the zone. No matter what you leave with, you’re gonna need more. No matter what you didn’t bring, you you know, and you thought, well, maybe we won’t need this. You’re it’s gonna come up. A chainsaw is always my thing. Nobody ever everybody’s always like, why do you bring your chainsaw with you everywhere? Well, you ain’t never been by the roads close by a tree down before. Chainsaw is always on my list, man. That’s that’s that’s that’s one of my life hacks with disaster work. If you If you don’t got a big chainsaw, get a big chainsaw and put it in your truck. I saw in the chat a minute ago, somebody talked about bringing lots of cash. That’s another good thing to talk about too. Financing is important in the storm zone, and their debit card version readers and ATM machines are all out. They don’t work. They’re the you know, the the Internet’s down, everything else. Right? And due to network security, they they don’t wanna connect to a satellite Internet broker or anything like that. They wait for a hard line reconnection. So fueling is another big issue where you gotta take a whole bunch of gas everywhere you go. You gotta take fuel for your vehicles, not just your vehicle, every vehicle that’s down there that belongs to your company. And nobody takes a debit card. Nobody even cares about your American Express or Visa. None of that matters if you ain’t got cold hard cash. Stay with the stay at home. You know what I mean? Because you’re just gonna be stuck as soon you’re gonna run out of gas in the middle of nowhere sometime, and then nobody there is gonna be able to help you with the debit card either. So take a lot of cash with you. That’s a good point. Charles Henderson made their good point. Supplies and materials, you’re gonna run out of whatever you bring. Bring bring all the six mil you can. It’s fine. You’re it’s gonna be gone. Bring all the painters plastic and stuff that you can and moving blankets and that you can, but it’s all gonna be gone. You’re gonna have to figure out a place to get more of it and figure out how to cycle, like, moving blankets and things like that from one job to the next when they’re not in use at this one, use them at the next one, and everything else to be able to stay efficient. You know? It’s gonna be really important to to do those things. Your your alliances are always important in this industry every single day, whether you’re at home or abroad or anywhere else in the in the nation. Your your partnerships and your alliances are what’s gonna get you through this is what’s gonna get you through the storm situation. Your people are also another thing that to to be very cognizant of. You need really good people that are are are, are very fit mentally, and and you’re and you have to be logistically fit as well. That’s kind of the the thing. Pressure’s high. There’s curfews. There’s, you know, National Guard checkpoints everywhere. There’s all kinds of stuff that don’t see every day. And then the absolute levels of devastation some of these disasters leave behind aren’t things that, you know, even you see on the news, most people. So you you need people with the with the mental toughness, the the acuity to get in there and be able to do what’s what’s needed at the time. That’s definitely a strong resource that you gotta have, whether it comes from your in house folks or a labor partner that you trust or of your cousin’s companies or whatever it else it is, man. Wherever you get your guys from, they gotta be tough. Yep. Yeah. And it’s because it is a mindset. You know? And, you know, I was looking at my my Marriott my my Marriott just my Marriott account. And I’ve spent over in my career, I’ve literally spent eleven years at a at a, in a Marriott hotel. Eleven years of my life has been at a Marriott hotel. You know, two years of that was in was in New Orleans. But it’s a mindset, and you have to be ready for it. Not everybody not everybody is. Three some people, three weeks, two weeks, they they’re they gotta go home to mama, and and that’s and that’s and that’s okay. But, you know, it’s knowing what you what you can and can’t do and and and and always understand what what you don’t know is the most important thing about what we do, is we’re comfortable with what we know. But it’s understanding what we don’t know or what we’re not seeing in that particular deal. And a cat is that is that way. You have to almost see the invisible sometimes and do the impossible. And that that is very, very important. PJ, you got anything on here you wanna highlight? Yeah. I think for me, the main thing is strategic partners, you know, getting those relationships well in advance, taking the time to, you know, make sure you’re onboarded properly if they have that process so that when you need them and not just having one, you know, having multiple labor relationships, multiple equipment relationships. The resources are gonna be very limited and constrained. So to me, it’s taking the time on the front end and doing that prep work and due diligence to have those partners and alliances in place. And and and find out a backup for you to backup. Yeah. For sure. Abs absolutely. And find out where you know, if you’re if you have an alliance that supplies you supplies the materials, find out where they’re gonna be setting up their their field operations, and that’ll help, you know, in your resupply because they’re going through the same motions that you are. All of our vendors that are doing CAT, they’re they’re moving like this too because they’re gonna be in the event zone and because they wanna service you. They wanna make sure that you can have all the supplies and materials that you need. The same is true with the fuel and and the the the only thing with, you know, fuel well, with generators in particular, that’s that’s they become like gold. We have so much more equipment than we ever had in our industry before, but we still run out. Every single cat, it it runs out, but don’t don’t be afraid to reach out to people because what happens is people might reserve equipment thinking they’re gonna get a big job, and it doesn’t come through. So stay with your resources. Stay with your guys. Stay on the phone with them saying, hey. Did that that generator free up yet? All of those things. So it’s very important to have all of your resources lined up and to be talking to them almost on a daily basis So you know what’s available, what’s not available, when it might be available. You know, we wanna be monitoring it. It’s look at it almost like a military operation. So if we don’t have it today, we wanna find out when we can get it. What are our expectations? If I can’t get it today, can I get it tomorrow, or can I get it, you know, by Saturday? So those are very, very important things, conversations that we wanna be having with our our our resource and and and, our suppliers is absolutely key. And probably the number one thing I will tell you, communication on cat is everything. You have to be able to communicate with your crews, with your teams, with the client. The client is number one. Remember, we’re in the business of keep keeping people either in their homes or in their businesses. I would I used to say we’re in the business of keeping big people in their business, and that’s and that is absolutely true. And so, make sure we’re always keeping that in mind. And remember that most of our clients have never been through a disaster before, so it’s our job to guide them through it. Here’s what it’s gonna look like today. Here’s what it’s gonna look like tomorrow, and here’s what it’s gonna look like when we’re done. So we have to pick that up right from the very beginning. And so it starts right here with our when we’re just getting the job set up, just getting started, everybody has to be on on the same page. Tom, we had a a couple of questions come in around the topic of resources and more specifically human resources and staffing. So one of the questions is, cats are usually fast paced in the beginning and then sort of phase out toward the end. What advice do you have for proper staffing in this, situation? And then a second question, is how do you avoid work overload and fatigue in cat situations? Both excellent questions. Both excellent questions. First off, b make sure you have your resources set because your labor is tough. If you don’t if you don’t bring bring it with you, it is a tough one to to fill. If you get it locally, it’s gonna be very difficult. When we were in Katrina, for example, we had to bus everybody in from from Mississippi. We even bus people in from Illinois into work into into work in Louisiana. So be prepared for that. Yes. It does lighten up as as we get through the project or through projects get finished and people start going home. It lightens up at that point, but you have to be sometimes you just have to grin and bear it when it comes to to the labor. Doug, do you have anything you wanna throw in there with labor? Just that, I mean, you you definitely have to make sure that you’ve got it. That’s the most important thing before you’re gonna go into the zones is to make sure that you’ve got a solid labor outlet. You definitely need a vendor that that can supply you guys, then you definitely need to have that relationship already. If you’re if you’re fixing to go somewhere for these hurricanes that are about to start happening and you haven’t called a labor company, this is your reminder from Doug Weatherman to call your labor company immediately and, make sure that they’ve got a location near where, you know, where you think that you’re gonna be working and then make sure that they get on the horn with all their partnerships too. Another thing that’s overlooked a lot is partnering with other firms. Independent guys, we we have the same ability as the franchises do to partner up together and and and send in our whole teams to handle a cat situation. It’s it’s not too hard to do. You can be twice as powerful, twice as effective, and then everybody’s got all their own list of resources that they bring to the table. You know, I in day to day, you guys can be in competition. But if you’re gonna mobilize from your state to another one, what’s the difference in grabbing a few extra guys and and bringing another operation along with you? You know what I mean? Lot of lot of things to consider there. But labor is a is a huge thing. Huge factor. If you don’t have it and you don’t have a connection for it, stay at home. I mean, unless your plan is to go do, like, maybe one or two houses with you and your, you know, you and your foretex or whatever, you know, that’s a different story. But if you’re gonna go down there to make a dent and be really effective, you definitely have to have a labor outlet. That’s all there is. Well, you can turn to you can turn to your allies and ask them also, do you have any labor you you’re not using? You can you can use use your allies. Use your guys that you know down there that you can do business with. We’re all in this together. It’s the way I look at it. And so it’s a it’s a team effort. This is a it’s a big industry, but it’s very, very small. And so we’re all in this in this together. And and back to the the question of fatigue, that’s a tough one because and that’s really where as owners and managers out there in the field, and I and this is what I’ve always had to do, is you always have to watch safety is the number one thing When it comes when you’re a cat, this is our number one concern because people get fatigued. And when you’re fatigued, you do stupid stuff. And all of a sudden, you know, you’ll have an accident. So as managers, we really have to keep an eye on our people. We wanna make sure that they are getting enough rest. Now we talk we joked about, you know, eight you know, eighteen to twenty four hours. We’re not gonna do that every day, But we need people need to get rest. They need to recharge. They need to get re re dehydrated. Probably the the number one thing, especially if you’re coming down here, to Florida. Anybody’s ever been down here to Florida for a hurricane knows. You’d better bring some hydration and and, and just be ready and and keep your you know? And, you know, I always I I always try to be physically fit. You know? I I tune up my my workout. You know? Like, right now, I’m, you know, I’m I’m in the gym, you know, five, six days a week just in case, you know, because you never know. And so it’s like, just try and and be ready physically because it is it it’s it’s a it’s a military operation, basically. And and and there are there will be people that you’ll have to watch out for that are in in not as good a shape or conditioning as other people. And, again, it’s a team effort. We’re all in it together. We gotta watch out for each other. If there’s somebody that that is falling out, we need to get them taken care of, and somebody needs to step up and take their place while they’re while they’re out, getting some rest or rehydration. Again, it’s it’s a it’s a team effort, and we all have to watch out for each other. If we’re in a flood area, we gotta watch out for snakes and other other things that can can, be a problem. So it’s very important that we’re not leaving people on their own. If somebody’s out there working hard and they’re working on a project, getting it set up, and they’re out there by themselves, before we go back to the hotel or before we go back to Airbnb Airbnb or to the RV, make sure we’re in contact with those people and we’re showing up and we’re helping them so that they’re not out there all by themselves trying to conquer conquer a job. And and we’re at we’re at the hotel, you know, by the pool or something. So make sure make sure we’re checking on our team, make sure we’re we’re we’re before we all go to bed every night, that each job is taken care of and each team member is in a good spot. I think we’ll move on to our our, strategic alliances. And we’ve touched on this a little bit already, but this is can’t say how important that these are, and they need to be in line right now. These need to be people on your on your speed dial. I just about said Rolodex, that would have showed how my age. But on your speed dial, you know, people that you need to be talking to every day. And so those are the people that can give you the anchor jobs that we talked about that are gonna cover our mobilization cost. They’re gonna be able to supply you with generators. Now you gotta be on the phone with them. You know, if they’re if they’re calling a storm coming in, you need to be on the phone with them right now, getting on the list, and seeing what we need to do if you need generators or power distribution, fuel, all of those things. We need to have them lined up prior to the event so that we’re on their list, so they’re thinking about us. If not, somebody else is gonna get on that list. Don’t ever take it for granted. We just talked to him yesterday. Nope. Call him today. Stay front and center with everybody. Don’t take anything for granted. You will be left behind. Somebody will take your place. And so make sure that doesn’t happen. If we get in a situation like we had at hurricane Ian where you where you have to pay off the the pirate boat drivers. You know? Those you know, be ready for all of that. Be ready for all all of those crazy things because anything is possible on CAT. Labor suppliers and and supply and all these things we’ve talked about, make sure you have all of these lined up for you, before you go. You guys have anything more we wanna plug into that? Or The pirates on Sandbel, man. Those were that was craziest thing I ever saw. Yeah. That you definitely gotta be prepared for everything that you never think is gonna happen, including guys charging seven hundred and fifty dollars an hour to use their boats to get some stuff from one part of Florida to another part of Florida that just happened to be separated by a little bit of water. Then once you get to that little island off in the middle of nowhere, you have to wait there. And then the boat the boatman’s still charging you by the hour, so he doesn’t care how long you’re waiting there for. So but you have to wait there for the clearances and everything else to go through, and they’re gonna call up and call down and make sure that you’re supposed to go past the checkpoints. And all takes about an hour and a half, two hours. Then you gotta unload everything off the boat because you just now got permission to do that. You can’t take a thing off the boat until they clear you to get through the port. Oh, man. The Pirates of Sanibel was a whole different that was a whole different monster going on top. Yeah. But be prepared for everything that you’re not good that you can’t be, and that that’s that’s the thing. Right? Is it’s a mindset more than something that you can actually do. If you wander into the zone and you just think that you’re ready, like, I got my truck full of fans and d hues, and I got some plastic and some guys, and we’re gonna take this thing down. You’re gonna you’re you’re inevitably gonna fail. And whatever you forgot to bring with you is is something that you’re gonna be needing. But, inevitably, there’s always gonna be something that you didn’t even think about that you, you know, that you’re gonna need. And nobody will ever know that they need a chainsaw until their entire convoy pulls up to a road closed by trees. You know what I mean? And it’s just one of those things that you that you learn through doing, and you’re more prepared the second, third, fourth, fifth time than you ever were the first time. A lot of the folks on here that do it all the times, there’s probably some guys on here that are from the south and stuff like that too. They stay prepared. They they have trailers that are ready to go all year long just in case something happens. But when the season starts coming, their level of preparation steps up just a little bit more because they know it’s gonna happen. They know that there’s gonna be other companies calling them, looking for work and everything else too, and they redevise who they let in, how they vet the people that they send to their customers. Fueling is a big deal. Big deal. Nobody ever expects how big of a deal fueling is gonna be until, until they’re there on-site. Once they’re there, they they can’t get fuel anywhere without having somebody literally at a station for hours just trying to fill up one vehicle of one gas can, which is the current limit. You know what I mean? But if you don’t have your fuel services figured out, you don’t know where there’s gonna be a fuel station that’s supporting this industry like the restoration contractors where you can go and get multiple types of fuel, everything that you’ll possibly need and everything like that. Those are things that you definitely wanna have ahead of time. These are the things you wanna start planning for now. Labor supplies, your no matter how many labor outlets you got, inevitably, that fifty other people also have your guy’s phone number. And he’ll be out of dudes, the same guy that you the same time that you need people on your job. Right? You call them and they’re all alright, man. So you thought you had a great relationship. Maybe you’ve even done another job with them on this cat. And you’re like, alright, man. Hey. Can I get those same guys I had back two weeks ago? Hey, man. Actually, those same guys from two weeks ago are on this other project for the next month and a half. I may have four or five guys I can send to you, but they won’t be with those guys I sent to you two weeks ago. The things like that, you you have to always be prepared for. And staying being prepared for the for the unexpected is is a is a huge thing that’s very hard to do. It’s it’s not something that you can wake up and be like, well, I think there might be, you know, something wild happening today, and I should probably get pre prepared for that. It’s something that you have to be able to think on your feet, and you have to know who to call to help and where who’s gonna be able to get in game right away and make a difference for you. It’s it’s it’s the game is to make sure you’re ready, you know, ready. I guess that’s that’s the difference between doing work at at home and doing work on the road. You have to be ready. Leah? Yeah. We’ve had this this sparked a a number of questions that have that have come in. And, Doug, thanks for answering some of the questions on the fly. Appreciate it. Some of them are gonna save some of the questions I’m gonna save to the end, so I don’t want anyone to feel that that I’m ignoring your question. I just think it it’s more of a a general type question, but some specific to the topic of preplanning. We were asked, how do you, guarantee you have enough equipment? I don’t think there’s any guarantees in restoration, but, how do you plan to have enough equipment? Try your best, man. Try try your absolute best. Bring everything you can just like Tom had in the slide. Bring every single thing that you don’t need to have at home. If if if you’re if if it’s slow at home, take some extra stuff. They can rent equipment at home much easier than you can rent equipment in the storm zone. I promise you. A lot a lot of things that you definitely it’s it’s impossible to know how much to bring. No matter how much you bring, inevitably, it will be gone. If someone finds out that there’s a DHEU in a storm zone that’s not chained down to a job, they’ll probably try to rent it from you daily rate. Yeah. I mean, there’s just stuff like that you gotta be really concerned of. You know? No matter what you bring, there’s no way to prepare. Bring everything that you possibly can and know where to get all the stuff that you’re bringing in duplicate and triplicate if if and when it does run out because, I mean, it will. Anything else to add from Tom or TJ on that question? I think the biggest thing also, you know, we’re so focused on the project that you’ve gotta remember the business administration side, and so you have to understand your supplier’s payment terms and keep that in mind as you’re designing your project. Yep. Yes. Because, you know, because we’re very important. We’re when we’ll go back to finances on the on these projects. So remember that you’re you’re you’re you’re on a project. And if you’re on a big project, you know, god bless you, you got you got a two, three million dollar job. Well, guess what your labor is gonna be per week? You might have two fifty to three hundred thousand dollars in labor per week. And if you’re not ready to pay to pay the man on a weekly basis, because you’re you’re you’re it it goes away very, very quickly. A lot of companies have gone out on cat and and and they go out of business because they land that big job and they can’t afford to do it. So make sure that you can actually do what you say you do, and you can afford to do it. If you can’t afford to do it, then find the finances tie tie team up with somebody, a a strategic alliance that can float the job for you and you work with them. But be prepared for that because, you know, you see that that three hundred thousand dollar bill, and and they’re, you know, they’re not hold they’re not waiting thirty days, you know, unless you got a good deal with unless you got a good deal with somebody. Typically, your labor company is not waiting, thirty days to get paid. You know? Because Even if even if you’re a big company, this is the same concern. What are you gonna do if a nineteen million dollar hospital lands in your lap? I can tell you from personal experience that, people start scrambling real quick because they know what it’s gonna take to pull that off, and it’s not gonna be a a little amount of money. That’s the that’s the big differentiator there. Everybody goes hunting. Everybody wants to land the big job and stuff like that. There’s there’s a whole different level of politics storm zones and stuff like that too. And, but guys that guys that do get lucky and land, large jobs like anything, you know, million dollars up, that’s great. Make sure that you’re very cognizant of how you’re running that job. Tom’s not kidding. Your your labor rates, your your your labor bills can go up and up and up by the day. The next thing you know, you made fifty bucks for all your trouble. You know what I mean? And that doesn’t even cover the cost of getting your guys out there and stuff like that. Tom’s not wrong either about companies that go out of business chasing storm. If your if your company is already suffering, probably the storm zone’s not the place for you to go. It’s very hard to run those jobs out there. Mobilization hits you every day. Airbnb wants their money up front. Hotels want their money up front. If you’re fielding a team of twenty guys, that that bill is due today, and you may or may not be able to garner any money from from clients and jobs until long after this is all done. You, you know, you definitely have to be financially prepared. If there’s if there’s a shortage of the money part, you should probably just stay home, focus harder on your on your market at home, and hope that everybody else left, and there’s plenty of work for you to do there. You know what I mean? That that type of thing, is a big deal. The the finance is is another thing that you can always partner up with another firm onto. I’ve seen a lot of independent guys that when storms happen, there’s four different parts of the country that all come together to work it, and they, you know, they they pull off a great amount of work, and they they are all profitable for their efforts and things like that. So there’s a there’s a lot to be cognizant of, I guess, is what I would say when you’re when when you’re forming your strategic alliances, especially with financial things, but you definitely wanna make sure that you’re rolling in able to do what you’re doing. Yes. And it it it and, again, I’ll go back to you know, we’re all in this together. You know, if you’re not a a huge company, you know, or a huge franchise that has a huge network of that they can pull on, you need to have your own little network. And you need to you need to have people that you can rely on, that you can trust, you know, that you when the chips are down, you’re you’re gonna be alright, and they’re going to have they’re gonna have your back, and you’re gonna have their back. Very important. Very important. And you’ll see it all the time when you go out. You know? And it’s so tempting to get that big job and to overdo it. And and you have to manage you have to dial it in more than ever because you’re you’re probably might be up thirty, sixty, ninety, one twenty, hundred and sixty days before you can pay for what you’re doing. And so make sure make sure that you have all of that in line. Finances is number one, and then the ability to do the job is number two. Alright. So we’re we’re actually staying on time, if you can believe that. Okay. Let’s go. Alright. So we’re gonna move to the heart of the operation. We’re gonna spend a little bit of extra time here. And TJ is actually gonna do some TJ is a quiet one in the group, and so we gotta get him to to to talk. He’s a numbers guy. And so, we’re gonna get into the heart of the operation. So this is these are are kind of these are my most important parts of of of project management and and and managing CAT in general is number one, it all starts with the foundation of the project, which is our damage assessment. Everything starts with a damage assessment. We can’t write our scope until we have our damage assessment. And if we have a garbage damage assessment, we’re going to have a garbage scope. And if we have a garbage scope, I can tell you that our invoice is gonna ****. And so we we don’t want that to happen, so it all starts at the very beginning. Make sure we’re taking relevant pictures, relevant videos, make sure all of our sketches, whatever whatever tool we’re using to sketch, to mock, to to to document, make sure that it’s all relevant and that we know what it is, so that it supports our scope of work. Because after we get done with our our damage assessment, we’re gonna work walk into our scope of work. And the scope of work is the road map of the project, and it’s specifically going to tell people what we’re going to do and what we’re not going to do. So it’s it’s just as important to tell people what we’re not going to do for that specific amount that we’re gonna estimate on the job. Because remember, when we give them a a a project budget, here’s a if it’s a million dollars, whatever it is, then here is what goes with that million dollars. Once we go past what’s in our scope, then we do a change order for for what’s out of our scope because you’re not going to catch everything when you do your damage assessment and your original scope of work. There’s going to be something. So make sure that your damage assessment supports your scope of work. Make sure we’re writing a scope that is not too tight so we don’t have any wiggle room in case things we find out something that we didn’t see when we did our damage assessment. Estimating when we get into estimating, it’s so important that we’re using tools that give us our raw number on that front end because on CAT, you’re gonna be moving like crazy. You might get thirty jobs coming in a day that you have to do estimates on. And that’s I’m not exaggerating, but it might might be slightly. But and you when you first start, you might have to put together, let’s say, ten to fifteen estimates in that one day. You have to have be able to create your ROM before before so you can move on to other projects so that you’ll you know what your budget is on each one of those jobs and before you get to where you get the formal estimate put together. So make sure you have all of those tools, available to you and that you’re using them, to to make that happen. The next the last thing here is a critical path. Critical path is your scope of work in a visual format. So this critical path is going to tell the client what you’re going to do, when you’re gonna start, when you’re gonna finish. It’s really that simple. So we’ll use an example. If we’re if we’re doing a Holiday Inn or we’re doing a hotel or something of any magnitude, a resort, whatever it may be, they care about heads and beds. So they wanna know when you’re gonna start, when you’re gonna finish. Why? Because they wanna know when they can get heads in those beds. And so it’s our job to know their business. So when we’re writing the scope, we need to be thinking about the client. What are their expectations? Long term and short term expectations are gonna set how we’re going to do this project. Because if we know that we’re working for a resort, we know they wanna be open as quickly as possible because they’re losing a lot of money not being open or having they don’t have their heads in beds. So we wanna turn that around. Our scope of work or critical path and our scope are going to be tied together. The critical path is not written in stone. It’s gonna change. It’s gonna fluctuate, but at least gives everybody that light at the end of the tunnel. Here’s when we’re here’s when we anticipate being done, and here’s how we’re gonna do it. Remember, we’re always walking the client on that journey. Here’s what it’s gonna look like today. Here’s what it’s gonna look like tomorrow. Here’s what it’s gonna look like when we’re done. Tomorrow, that wall is gonna be gone. So when you walk in here tomorrow, that wall won’t be here, so it’s there’s no surprises. We wanna make sure that the client has no surprises. Remember, this might be the first time first and only time that they go through a disaster of this magnitude. It’s our job as restorers to make sure that we’re walking them through that that here’s what it is today, tomorrow, and and when we’re done, Because we have to take them on that journey and explain it to them because they don’t know what’s coming unless we tell them and explain them what’s happening. The critical path does that. The scope of work does that is the beginning of it. Then it’s up to us as the on-site restorers to relay that, communicate that to the client so that they they are on board with everything that we have going on so that they know what is happening so there’s no surprises. Because a surprise to your client in the middle of a disaster is going to equal what I call the disaster after the disaster, where the client is going you think everything is going great. Your team is like, they’re they’re they’re they’re kicking ***. They’re doing great. All all is good, but they’re not thinking about the client. They lost track of the client. And all of a sudden, the client, in their eyes, you’re making their their loss worse. And it’s all because you’re not communicating. And so communication is key. Communication can eliminate any issues or any problems that may come up. So make sure that we’re using the critical path. This is our first communication tool that we’re using as project managers to the client to where they’re like, ah, okay. We got this, and they got us. Look at that, man. They understand our business. And when and when you do that for a client, when a client looks at you and said, they get us. They understand our business. Guess what? They’re gonna become a client that is gonna call you up every single time. Because when you’re out doing these projects, remember, you’re building the future of your company. It’s not a one time. It’s not a one off. Never look at any of these come these jobs that you’re doing as a one off. We’re just gonna come down to Florida, do some work, and leave. Never look at it that way. Always stay in communication because I can tell you as living in Florida, what happens is down here is there’s a resentment of restoration companies coming in after during hurricanes because they just come in and then they leave. And we see this in the senior living world. And they actually, in the senior living world down for senior living facilities down here, they don’t even like you to to say that you are restoration company because of the hurricanes and everything that they’ve been through. So make sure that we’re using the scope, the critical path, and communication so that they know that we we’re we care about their business, we care about them, and we’re not just here as a one off. We’re here for for the long haul. It’s very important, and these tools will help us do that. Alright, guys. I talked enough on that one. TJ, wanna jump in there? What do you Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s having a plan and documentation in place for each of these core pillars. You know? I would love it if people threw in the comments what they’re using for estimating. What are you using to to generate your ROMs? You know, we use the edge, both Doug and I, from Large Loss Mastery, and it’s one of the fastest ways to get that that wrong number. So I I would love to see in the comments what people are using and their processes. But if you don’t have a process in place for each of these core pillars, you’re already off to a bad start. Hundred percent. Yeah. The these are all the core things that you definitely need to have, you know, a solid understanding of before you wanna start doing this type of work. Right? Your damage assessments are you know, they’re crucial. The step one to a successful project is knowing the hundred percent scope of damage. If you’re unclear on every single thing that was damaged, how it was damaged, why it was damaged, you you can’t restore it. You can’t bring it back to functionality. Act the the accuracy of of, the damage when you put out your initial reports, your estimates, your scopes, it all has to be there because sometimes those people that are seeing those things don’t see them that way. They have a different way. You know, they they, you know, the adjusters nowadays too have widely varying levels of experience in in cat zones. Some of them that, you know, they just got their adjusters license two months ago. Some of them have been doing large loss adjusting for the, you know, the better part of two decades, and there’s a lot of those guys out there still too. It’s it’s important to make sure that no matter what that you’re putting forth and especially if it’s something that you’re releasing as an asset or a document from the job that it’s a hundred percent accurate and that you can back it up with photo, video, three d scan, whatever else you’ve got to make sure that it’s there. Estimating is is another huge thing. The edge is great. It does it does really well with getting you to a number really quickly. If you if you’re forced to use the other estimating softwares too, like, and all the other stuff that’s out there, Whatever CoreLogic’s calling their product this week, all the stuff that’s out there, you can you can you can turn in, yeah, your sheets however you do it. But the accuracy is very important. Right? No matter how you to do it. And if you are using an estimator who’s on a standard software, another thing to be cognizant of is that that is a full time position for a human. Like, that’s a full time job being able to estimate cat jobs, and that’s not a person that you want driving to to twenty locations a day. That’s a guy you want locked in a room somewhere with a with a strong Internet connection who’s able to just turn these things out and put them into whatever you’re using to to centralize and get them out to clients. If, that’s that’s that’s another very important thing to consider too is the time it takes to produce an estimate in a storm zone is vast, and it can be, you know, houses can even take you a long time depending on the scope of damage. Right? So the the time it takes you to to get your estimate into the customer’s hands is also a big deal. Right? Especially if you wanna talk about closing jobs. If you’re going out there to sell jobs after after you’ve gone back after you’ve already gotten your anchor and you’re already doing that stuff, you’re out there selling jobs. Don’t go if you’re just going to sell jobs. But if you you got your anchor established, you’re in the zone, you wanna try to sell some more work, your speed and accuracy on your estimating is gonna be a huge, huge factor. You’re not gonna be able to get work out of folks that you can’t turn an estimate into and and at least, you know, reasonable amount of time for turnover. I’ll leave that up to what everybody we usually don’t allow more than twenty four hours between the time we do the inspection and the time that we release the estimate no matter what the size of the property is. So that that’s our that’s our personal, guidelines and goals that we set for ourselves in disaster zones. These folks just talk to you. They want an answer really fast too. Whether it’s a hotel that needs heads in beds, a mom who needs her kids bay her kids her kids back in the basement or her kids bedrooms back or whatever, a a biological facility that’s got bodies literally defined as we speak. I’ve been you know, we’ve seen it all over here. You know what I mean? So, there’s a lot of stuff that you will have to do, but all of these things are really important. Yeah. They all want answers, man. They all want answers, and they want them right now. And if you’re the guy that’s gonna be able to do this job, this is your first opportunity to show that off. Right? Your scope, everything has to be just right there, and it has to hit your budget number. You’ve gotta know what your unit costs are even on the road, which for some guys is very hard. Some guys don’t even know their unit costs in their own market. Then they definitely don’t have a clue what their unit costs are on the road and what their you know, the increase in the margins have to be to be able to make that back. Critical path, huge. And this is actually something that I learned from Tom. I had done a ton of large loss and disaster work before I’d ever encountered Tom Maguire. But ever since Tom showed me the critical path plan, I’ve never done a larger project without it. It just helps give everybody a visual representation of what’s gonna be happening, when it’s gonna be happening, the phases of the project broken down into a visual representation, whether it be on a calendar or, you know, a document that you just released to the you know, as part of the the book for the project. Critical path is huge. You definitely wanna have those those things out there. Folks are gonna be looking to you to stick on to a schedule, and if they can look every day and see where you’re supposed to be at, it helps them to stay organized. Your project’s not the only chaos that’s being dealt with by a facility or a homeowner during this time. I assure you. There’s even gonna be facilities who are being managed and ran by folks whose homes are also damaged. Yep. They have a lot of things that are going on in their minds, man. They their car got washed away. They don’t they they had to get a ride into work today from their friend. You have to be cognizant of all these things in in a in a disaster zone. You have no idea what these people are dealing with and what they’ve had to deal with to to this point today. And you don’t wanna be the guy that pushes them over the edge and have the disaster after the disaster like Tom was talking about. You don’t wanna be that guy, man. You will you will ruin your the name of your company, not just your franchise too, man. There there’s been, you know, large organizations that had one single franchise that did something, and it made it hard for the entire, you know, unit of franchises across the whole country in storm zones. A a few times, that’s been that’s occurred over over the history of our industry. It’s important to make sure that you you can you do what you say, and you have to be able to promise it down to the millimeter. And you have to know that you’re gonna be able to deliver it, or else don’t promise it because those folks out there are already dealing with a ton as it is. Don’t overpromise and under deliver to them. That’s probably the biggest mistake you can make to who’s been through a cat situation, whether it be in their business or their home. Absolutely. And, you know, that’s probably one of the oldest, you know, things that we and I’ll do a shameless shameless plug here. If you’re not familiar with the edge, you should get familiar with it. It is the fastest way to create your ROM, your estimate on the front end by far. There isn’t anything even close. And we’ve been using the data and everything in it. It’s all based on data. It’s all projects that we’ve data that we’ve gathered over over nearly thirty years, of projects, and data that that works. And so use it on the front end. TJ will tell you and Doug both will tell you. If you use it on the front end and then if you have to do Xactimate or whatever you’re doing on the back end, even even time and materials. I’m a time and materials guy. I’m a I’m a commercial restoration guy. I’m not I’m not rest I I don’t do residential. I’ve done three resident residential projects in my life, and so I’ll leave it to everybody, leave it to Doug and and TJ to address that. But you can use it on any type of project that you’re doing, whether you’re using time and materials or whether you’re using Xactimate. You can do the edge on the front, get your number, move on, and then come in and and as you have time over the next couple days, get your your estimate tied together with the edge. It works as a great companion tool for for doing creating your ROM your ROM estimate, which is your your for those that it’s a it’s a term that’s been around for a while, and it’s a military term that got plugged into restoration somehow over the last decade. But rough order of magnitude basically means what’s your what’s your budget? What are you what are you projecting? The budget? And I always I always recommend to everyone that it’s not a number. It’s a range. Here’s your low. Here’s your high. You have your give them a range. Don’t ever tie yourself into something that you you you’re just given a a what is called a SWAG number. We’re not giving a SWAG number. We’re giving a we’re giving an educated guess. And so everybody knows a SWAG is a scientific wild *** guess. Try to take try and take the wag out of the SWAG and focus on the science so that we’re we’re giving a a a good range that we know we can live with right from the very beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just on the the concept of the critical path, there’s one that, it’s a new term or a new concept to them. Where, can you maybe just expand on what that is and where they can find more information about about it? Is it in the cat ops manual? Is it in the edge? It it is. And the the easiest way to to to do it, there’s there there are several tools that are free, And there are they like, what it is is a Gantt chart. And so, and that’s the most common term. So it’s critical path, Gantt chart. So they can use a Gantt chart or and also go into Excel. And in Excel, there’s three, there’s three, I believe, three really good charts you can use in there for and one of them, I think, is a Gantt chart, and they’re all they’re all about scheduling. And they’re really good as long as the formulas work. And so and then we also we also have one that we give out. You know, if somebody somebody needs something, I’ll I’ll I’ll send it out to them, Lee. If there’s something that they you know, somebody needs, I’ll I’ll hook them up. That’s not a problem. It’s all these were all free tools. The critical path that I created my first critical path that I created was one of my my very first projects. I’ve out in California. I still have it. It’s a little file. It’s all it’s still intact and everything. But that was nineteen ninety, I believe that, when I first put that one together. And then my first big one was for the World Trade Center. We were at the World Trade Center in nineteen ninety, two. And so the or nineteen ninety three. Sorry. But it’s it’s just really a tool it’s a tool that once you start using it, you will use on every project because it’s so important to guide the client along. You know? Again, what it’s gonna look like now, we’re we’re guiding them through the process. Always remember, they haven’t been through it before. It’s our job to make sure that they’re alright. Got it. One last question, and then I’ll I’ll save the other questions for for the end. For residential, how often do you find that homeowners will only sign with a real estimate versus getting a price sheet or a rough ballpark price? A real estimate is a is a real estimate no matter what. However, it’s pushed out, an estimate’s an estimate. You can scribble a number down on a piece of paper, and that’s an estimate. Tom’s right about the scientific part. That’s what we need to be focused on when we’re putting price tags on things is is what we’re estimating. Then it’s how you present your thing. I mean, if if, if if, like, the comparison is between, like, Xactimate and a rate sheet estimate, like, time and materials type of estimate, have you ever seen a client that actually knows what the heck an Xactimate estimate says, means, understands a word of it, any that crap? No. You have not. So, I mean, either way, guys, it’s it’s every estimate is a real estimate. It’s the person behind it that makes it real. Right? It’s not the number on the paper. It’s not the logo at the top. It’s the it’s the person who wrote it that makes that estimate real. If that person has the scalability and everything to do that estimate, then that’s a real estimate, and it can be presented to the client just as such. And residential jobs work on time and materials just like large commercial jobs do. A lot of folks have, different proclivities. Right? If you’re if they have an if an ins if an if it’s an insurance thing, on CAT and you think it’s gonna be easier for you for whatever reason to write your exact estimate, present that exact estimate, perform that exact estimate, then do that. Right? But time and efficiency is becomes your that’s gonna be your handicap there then. You’re you’re you’re gonna be less efficient, and you’re gonna be spending a lot more time trying to push out documents. Time and materials works the same way any other estimate does. This is what I think it’s going to take for, for time. This is what I think it’s going to take for materials. This is what I think it’s gonna take for equipment, and here’s your number based on that. Literally what you’re billing for in your Xactimate estimate too. They just have a fancy way of breaking it down into line items. And, I mean, I’m I’m not I’m not preaching to the convergence. I’m I’m I’m I’m a certified Xactimate guy. You know what I mean? I I I have it all there, but it’s the ability to do it. Right? A real estimate is real based on the person who delivers it. Tom and a truck can come and deliver just as real of an estimate as BMS CAT or any other large franchise, you know, any other large corporate operation can. It doesn’t necessarily make a difference. It’s the person who wrote the estimate that makes it real. Yeah. I use the edge for estimating residential losses here at home. You know? And I feel that providing that damage assessment, the scope of work combined with your rough order of magnitude tells the story of the job to where, you know, your residential homeowners can actually understand what’s going on. So I don’t you know, to me, it’s very easy to present that, but you’ve gotta have those four pillars in place to be able to present. And critical path’s important for residential folks too. Don’t don’t think that that’s just a commercial thing just because Tom doesn’t have the same level of experience doing residential houses as TJ and I do. It’s just as important, man. It really, really is. It people need to know what’s gonna be happening in their house just as much as they need to know what’s gonna be happening in their hotel. You know, the wall not being there. That’s a big thing. You know what I mean? If somebody comes home and go, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. What happened here today? You know what I mean? Like, that’s not what you wanna be. That’s not who you wanna be when they come home from work. You want, well, everything they told me was gonna happen today happened. Boom. We’re right on schedule. That’s what you want. That person doesn’t get a phone call. The guy who doesn’t say anything to his client and then they come home to have their drywall missing, that guy gets a phone call one hundred percent of the time. Where’s my drywall at? You guys didn’t tell me you were doing any of this stuff. Critical path isn’t new. It’s it’s, the Gantt chart that that Tom has that he’s gonna send to all you guys is a wonderful tool. It the critical path is, you know, after doing some research into it and everything else is a huge thing in large construction. People that do developments, people that do large buildings, people that do business parks and things like this, they don’t even start these projects without a critical path. It’s a mandatory thing. They’ve gotta have it so that every single person, whether they be an investor or a worker on the project, could pull up this thing and see what we’re supposed to be working this week. It’s it it’s a very commonly used thing. And as it’s coming into more and more restoration, it’s great to see because it’s one more thing to to create a transparency level between us and our clients. This is what we’re gonna do. This is what’s on our estimate. This is what was on our scope. Scope goes to the estimate. Estimate goes to the critical path. Everything runs because we said this is how the job’s gonna go. Once you pull that off, Tom’s right. You can be you can be five states away from home, and you just built a relationship there for life. And now they will call you the next time they have a storm issue because of how smooth it ran and the horror story that they had to tell for after the last time. These are all huge things to have. These are definitely the hearts of the operation. Critical path, I I see a lot of people are being super duper interested in that. I’m so happy to see that. You guys all make this a part of your presentations and see if you are not received differently by the people who you are presenting to. It’s I I can’t tell you. I and you guys know because you you’ve you’ve known me for a while. This is, like, my favorite project management tool because there is nothing better for me. I’m I’m a people person. I I you know, communications is a big deal to me. If you can’t communicate in this business, man, it’ll just it’ll just kill you. But critical path because I I like being in that that morning meeting and getting what I call the first set of eyes. We’re in a big meeting. They wanna talk to us first. And why? Because we put together this critical path, and they know that we understand their business or their home, that we care about them. And that is, you know, the biggest thing, and it and it should be we shouldn’t actually have to really say it, but, yes, we do. The most important part of the job is the client. That is it. It’s not about what we know or what we how good we are or how big a company we are. It’s about the client, and it’s always about the client. What are we going to do for them now and in the future? And when when we come in and we’re doing a one off, the client knows that. They know they know, dude, because they can feel it. It that they feel like you don’t they don’t mean anything to you. And if they feel like that, then that’s gonna be it’s gonna affect your invoice. It’s gonna affect everything. So bring them along in the the journey. Explain to them what’s what’s happening so that they can feel comfortable that you are the light at the end of the tunnel. And like I always tell you guys have heard me say, be the light at the end of the tunnel and the cool side of the pillow. So be calm, cool, and collected. Get the job done. Make them happy, and don’t just go into it as a one off. Please don’t go into this business like we’re only gonna be here one time. We’re gonna get out, because it does mess things up for everybody else. It shows off in your clients too, man. You’re when you see clients look up businesses and they they send you a one star review from eight states away, that is the most powerful thing that you’ll see all year long. Like, man, you went out there to try to help, and you did you know? The don’t ever forget about your clients. You’re gonna be tired. You’re there it’s gonna be there’s gonna be plenty of times where it’s gonna be easier for you to not do your documentation, to not take that photo, to not send out the burn sheet, to not do whatever. Sleep is gonna become super important, and you’re gonna learn to love it a whole lot more. But get through this first. Get through this first. I can’t I can’t stress that to you enough. Your clients are the thing that’s gonna get you back into the zone. Right? If you if you’ve done it if you’ve done disaster work out there, you you know this already. You you probably have a return you know, a client that calls you again when the thing happens and make sure that you’re already on the way. That that win that those relationships are very important to have, and you ruin them by going out there. And it’s not just what you do for yourself. It’s it’s the whole industry. Right? As a restoration industry, we are in constant recovery as well from bad actors after storm situations and disaster situations. There’s now laws in states like Florida and Texas to prevent fly by night contractors and stuff like that. A lot of states don’t have those laws. A lot of states you know what I mean? It’s it’s an open kind of battle ground out there still. Give a good reputation for our industry. Put your best foot forward. Give the people the service the the best service that you’ve ever given anybody because that’s what they need. That’s what they really need out there, man. They don’t need another problem. They don’t need somebody else dripping oil in their driveway. They don’t need an you know what I mean? They don’t need a whole bunch of extra nonsense. They need solutions. They need them fast. And the better that you are at providing those solutions, the longer of a disaster mitigation career you’ll have. People will call you over and over and over and over and over again. And then you work your way up the ladder, and you find yourself a couple of really good connections that you’ve done really good work for over time, and you don’t need to do anything else in disaster zones anymore but service those folks. You know? I mean, there’s there’s so many things that that are that are that that can go right, and there’s so many things that can go wrong in a disaster zone. And a lot of it does come from the contractor. I everybody knows we’re tired, man. We’re all tired. Everybody’s tired. Understand that when you signed up to go to this storm, that that meant working tired. That meant working long hours, and that meant doing all of your documentation as you as fast as you possibly can. You know what I mean? And that means staying up till two o’clock in the morning and being awake and at job site again at seven o’clock in the morning. That’s what it means. That’s that’s what this story that’s like that’s the moral of this story is. It’s very, very hard. If you become good at it, you can become very, very profitable. But there’s a lot in between those steps, and experience levels is is the biggest thing. Guys that are new to cat don’t know how to balance the work. They take on too much of it, and they end up with a whole bunch of really mad homeowners with with demo with demolished houses who have no idea what they paid for, what their insurance is paying for, where they’re supposed to go from here. Nobody set them up for anything. Another good thing to do, if you’re doing residential in storm zones and you’re not gonna be doing reconstruction in storm zones is find yourself a local contractor with a solid reputation, and you refer that guy in so that you make sure that you you you walk through, bet these people that you’re partnering and referring just like companies who are gonna be referring you are gonna be betting you. Make sure that you’re aware fully of what you’re doing out there in these zones and who you’re doing it to. The the people that are out here have already experienced whatever they just got through, that the reason that you’re in their door, their lobby, their whatever it is. They’ve already experienced that, and they survived that. Don’t be the next problem. Alright. And that’s gonna segue right into beautifully into our next segment, which is gonna be daily project documentation. And and I know I know you guys, everybody has heard this a million times, but I’m gonna say it again. If you don’t document it, it didn’t happen. And so you can do a beautiful job. But if you can’t document what you did, then it’s very difficult to get paid for it. You can’t say, well, it’s obvious that we didn’t know. No. It’s not obvious. No. It should no. Make sure you have all the daily documentation. If you’re out on CAT, man, it’s tough. You know, you’re you’re working heavy hours. It’s tough to do the the data entry. It’s tough to do you know, if you’re doing if you’re doing digital, it’s tough to do the data entry. If you’re doing, you know, even just manual entries, it’s tough to do that. But you absolutely have to do it because you’re running so fast, and there’s gonna be so many projects going on that all of a sudden, you’re gonna you’re gonna wake up, and you’re gonna be a week behind on paperwork. And if you’re a week behind on paperwork and you’re gonna be out on the road for another three, four weeks, you’re you might you’re you’re you’re toast. And so make sure it’s daily. Make sure you’re capturing it daily. That’s daily labor, daily equipment, daily supply usage, your travel, who’s in what hotel, who’s in what Airbnb. It’s gonna become important when you get audited on your on your on your on your invoice to know who was where, what did they did, where when they move around, make sure you keep track of all of that. Don’t try to get cute with percentages and, well, we’re presented to these people who are over here. No. It has to be these that person was in that bed at that hotel on that date. Make sure you have all of that together. Subtract subcontractor costs. And, of course, don’t do anything until you have a signed agreement. And remember that a work authorization is not a contract unless it has your rates and your terms, payment terms attached to it. If it’s just a single piece of paper that says, hey. You can you can you’re you’re allowed to work here or start working, That’s just a work authorization, and it really holds no legal legal tie at all. Put your rates with it. Put your contract your your your your payment terms with it so everybody understands that this is business from the very beginning because the last thing you wanna do is start a job without the contract. So it’s I I can’t can’t say it enough. There are people that do it. I don’t I don’t don’t do it. Doug and and TJ, I know you guys got I know you have input on this. Documentation is the biggest thing. Once you go like, we’ve talked about how to get the job, what to do to prepare for the job, all the stuff now. Now we’re doing the job. Okay? Every single thing of every single day, if it’s on your bill, either better be a photo of it at least. You with the level of technology that we’ve got out there right now, things like 吃瓜不打烊 and things like this too are dynamite at photo documentation. You can have all your photos, your moisture mapping, your equipment loadouts, everything else per job in these files in one place so that it’s nice and easy to go through and submit when it’s invoice time. There’s there’s tons of different things out there, that that you have to use every day in order to make sure, but this is restoration. And in case you guys have forgotten, it is in the s five hundred that we document every single thing, every single day. Alright? That’s what we’re here to do. You did not commit, it did not happen, and you will have the hard time you’ve ever that you document on a storm job. Okay? Insurance companies tighten up the belt on literally every single line item that you said that you send through no matter what the estimate is, no matter what the line item is, everything. Adjusters out there. They’ll tell you they don’t they don’t do time materials. That’s not your problem. Find me an adjuster who does time materials. There are plenty out there, plenty to every carrier, all that stuff. Whatever your estimating platform is, make sure that you’ve got the documentation to back up your invoice. And it has to be in several platforms. Don’t just think that photos and and a couple of moisture readings are gonna do it. No. No. No. You need moisture readings from every single part of every single structure. Now if that’s a hotel with four hundred rooms, guess what? Get it with that mean? That that mean you gotta do four hundred rooms worth of documentation. It doesn’t mean that the room next door is valid for this room over here. It doesn’t mean that the the moisture readings that you took off of the floor by the stairwell are valid for the room at the end of the hallway. You must document every single thing in order to get paid. We’re all here to be we’re all here to get paid for these jobs at the end of the day. Right? That’s why we’re all here is to make sure that we can keep our businesses moving. But at the end of the day, the documentation is the very important thing. And you can be the greatest you can have the greatest customer relations. You can already have talked to the adjuster a hundred and fifty times. You can already have told everybody how to do everything that that you that you’ve done. But if you didn’t document it and you sent out a bill, now you just gave them a way to pick apart every single thing that you did. And I don’t care how tight you are with the adjuster. I don’t care how tight you were with the client. When the client hears that the that the delta’s coming out of their pocket, they’re going to the carrier’s team immediately right away. And if you don’t have your documentation to back it up, you’re just kinda stuck, man, and there’s nothing that you can do about that. What Tom was saying about knowing where guys are staying, that’s that’s a solid thing. Don’t just know that these five guys were in this hotel and make sure you have the receipts because those could come up. Someone could ask you what’s your cost of deployment is. So if you broke it down among thirty five clients or if you’re charging one client for your cost of deployment, it all has to be there. It all has to be documented at an intricate level. Subcontractor is the same way. Your dumpster guys, man, your labor guys, your your your electric your electricians to connect the the the the desk kits and the generators to the buildings and everything else. You gotta have all that stuff documented, or else you’re not gonna be able to get paid back for it. And you have to be able to show, like, the and make sure that your subs are giving you invoices that are up to par, not just scribble down on an app. It’s gotta have a date. It’s gotta have a time. It’s gotta have an address. If none of those things are there, then were they there? You know? Your documentation is not just your documentation. It’s the project’s documentation. It’s what it took every single person who set foot on the property to pull the whole thing off. There’s there’s there can be no fluctuation. And if you become where documentation where your level of documentation is high because of standard, you will never ever ever have a problem with your collections on these jobs, just the negotiations, if you will. But other than that, I mean, the the that’s that’s the biggest part. The biggest, important by a long shot thing when you start doing these jobs is a document. You know everybody who’s in restoration knows that these jobs are important to document when we’re at home. Do double that documentation on the road because you can’t drive you just can’t drive over to the client’s house again in two months and get that that photo again. Get it get it four times. Get it five times. Make sure that there’s a clear image of whatever it is at multiple angles so that when you get back home, you don’t have to worry about, oh, dang. We forgot to get that. We better fly back to Florida, grab that picture out of that building that we did. You know what I mean? You don’t wanna have to do that. Get it now, get it done, and get it done so well that there’s no question anyone could ever have of what went down on that job. Now let’s talk about contract. The oh, go ahead, Tom. Your your documentation should tell the story of the project. A complete stranger should be able to pick your file up and tell exactly what you did on that job. Hundred percent. This building flooded, and these were the guys that came to fix it, and this was the stuff that they did to fix it. That’s that’s your your documentation has to tell the story. The the adjuster who you’ve been talking to the whole time may quit tomorrow. Every single person in this chat right here who’s done storm work before has had an adjuster change for whatever reason it is. Guy quit. Guy doesn’t do this file anymore. Guy moved. Guy’s not out of this office. Guy whatever. The next adjuster has to know everything that that adjuster knew. And if it was something that you guys talked about and didn’t document, you know, you’re stuck again, man. And then you gotta fly back to Florida to get that picture, that thing that you talked to that adjuster about that one time. Don’t be that guy, man. Get it all done as much as you can. The contracting is just as important. In case anybody has forgotten, we are contractors, which is the root word there is that we must have a contract. Okay? We don’t do anything without a contract. We don’t we don’t start jobs. We don’t do anything. Now I understand. There’s something to be said here as a caveat. Right? When you’re selling a large when you’re selling a job, whether it be a big job, a little job, whatever kind of job it is, when you’re selling a job, there is a propensity to say, hey. We’ll just we’ll set up containment. We’ll leave these air scrubbers here for you just so we can minimize the risk until you guys decide to go ahead. If you’re doing stuff like that out there, more power to you. Be cognizant of where your equipment is, and don’t leave your air scrubbers in Florida. I can tell you that from personal experience. Don’t leave your air scrubbers in in Florida. Okay? Alright. So after that, once you guys have your contracts, then it’s about execution. Okay? Like Tom was saying, your your contract has to have your rates. It has to have a dollar value on it. If you’re just going out there getting work authorization signed, you are not prepared for a courtroom. I promise you. And in several, several, several states, it doesn’t even matter. It won’t even make it to a courtroom. It’ll be dismissed with it’ll be dismissed with prejudice before you ever even get to one if you don’t have a dollar amount on your contract. If you’re doing time materials, the signature on every page of the rate sheet, even if it’s initials, on every single page of the rate sheet is extremely important. You will not be able to fly back to Florida to get the initial on page sixteen of your rate sheet again in two months. You must have it. Okay? Every single initial, every single signature, every single one. On our specific rate sheets, we have an initial for the for whoever’s presenting, whether it be the project manager or whoever and the client so that both people initial each initial. Like, so everybody knows that every single part of this has been approved. You know what I mean? There’s no question about it. And when it comes down to the invoicing then at that time, I have a much easier time because everybody signed up for this at this rate per hour, this at this rate hour. So nobody per day or per week or per whatever it is. Right? We’ve already had this set in stone. There’s no surprises. I’m not jacking my bill up by fifty grand at the end because I was lucky enough to pull this job off on time. None of that stuff. The it’s all in there in the contract. It’s all in all the documents that got you to the point where you’re able to sign a contract with any client no matter the shape or size. Right? Now it’s up to you to be able to make sure that that document is enforceable in the state that you’re in. And for some guys, like, that may be different. For me coming from Colorado to Florida, there are wild differences in lien laws and everything else than what what I can do to protect myself working in a storm zone. Texas is the same way. There’s a North Dakota we were talking about the other day, same way. There are many, many things that you have to make sure that you’re compliant on before you go into doing these things. So before you’re leaving, before your first contract is signed, make sure somebody with the legal ability to do so reviews it and make sure that it’s perfectly compliant in that state. Without a contract, you you it doesn’t matter. You could document everything you want. You could have the most solid documentation in history if you don’t got a contract. Doesn’t matter. You you have to always remember that it is a business. This is this is business. And what we’re doing here, we’re documenting what we’ve done. And whether you’re whether you’re doing time and materials or Xactimate, it doesn’t matter. You have to do this you have to supply your labor sheets, your equipment sheets because you’re getting paid for what you do, not what you estimated, but what you actually did. And in order to prove what you actually did, you gotta have your your sign in sheets for your labor. You gotta have your time stamps for your for your labor, who was there, who who wasn’t there. And you gotta have your hotel receipts, where were your people staying. You gotta have your subcontractor. You gotta have all of this in there. TJ, got anything you wanna throw in there before we head into invoice? I think one of the main things on the contract is a lot of people leave out a per fear a period of performance where they’re setting a a timeline on that contract for that dollar amount to perform that contract. And in a lot of states, that period of performance dictates whether that contract is valid or not. So, you know, another point that you wanna make sure you have in your contract and reviewing these contracts before you even go to make sure that they’re compliant and ready to go for where you are going. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And and because everybody remember this is business, and we’re we’re no. I don’t know that there’s any bankers on the phone. I know I I know TJ’s an ex ex banker, But we’re typically, we’re not bankers, and we’re not banks, but we bankroll a lot of projects. And what I mean by bankroll is we we do the job, and then we we beg beg to get paid for it, which is a crazy business, but it’s a business that we’re in. And I you know, this is my thirty ninth year, so it hasn’t it hasn’t driven me crazy yet, and I’m not done. So, you know, it it is what it is, but we have to make sure that we’re covered in our documentation, in our contracts. Remember who your client is. The client is whoever signs your paperwork. It’s not the consultant. Consultant. It’s not the adjuster. Your client is the homeowner, the business owner. Whoever signs your paperwork is who is responsible for paying you, and that always has to be remembered. And because you can put together a big, beautiful spreadsheet of all of your documents, and I’m gonna segue right into invoicing here. You can have beautiful spreadsheets and all of this great did this incredible job. Wow. But you can’t back anything up? If you can’t back it up, then you didn’t do it. Again, if you don’t document it, it didn’t happen. If you don’t document it, you can’t invoice for it. You know? If it if you can’t prove that you did it, you can’t just say you did it and put and and create an invoice and get paid for it. You can try to do that, but then you’re gonna be wondering why you can’t get paid on that. And so be prepared to create your invoices quickly. Don’t wait thirty days until after the job is done. Because guess what you just did? If you wait twenty if you if you wait thirty days and you weren’t gonna get paid until sixty days, you just made it ninety days. And if you weren’t gonna get paid a hundred and twenty days, you just made it a hundred and fifty days just because you couldn’t produce the invoice quick enough. If you’re on a big project, I want if if I’m on a big project, I wanna be, producing an invoice every ten seven to ten days. So that way, everybody is used to the payment cycle. We’re already in the the cycle before we finish the job. We’ve almost got the entire job invoiced before we’re done with the job. That last invoice is gonna come, you know, about a week afterwards, and that could happen. But we’re gonna be invoiced all the way up so that when the end of the job comes, we’re we’re we should already be almost paid for the job. So don’t wait. Ask for money down, especially if you’re doing commercial work. Do not be afraid. If you don’t, a s k, you don’t, g e t. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. And if you don’t get, you don’t e a t. If you don’t get, you don’t eat. So if you don’t ask, you don’t get. If you don’t get, you don’t eat. So we all need to eat. It’s the reason why we’re we’re in this business. We love the business. We wanna do well. You know, everybody wants to do well. We wanna do well by the client also. Never forget that client is who we are always working for. Make sure that we’re always tracking everything, and I we kinda beat it in the ground already, but do it on a daily basis. Don’t let one day go by. If you’re coming into the event, the cat event zone, will will you, bring an accountant? Yes. Bring somebody who’s gonna be tracking the paperwork, and that that is their only job is to make sure everybody is doing that. Bring an accountant with you. That is that’s that’s what they’re a watchdog. They’re just boom, boom, boom. If you don’t and you’re just a bunch of guys going down, you’re doing guess what? You’re gonna end up, you know, having a couple beers afterwards, and then and then you’re gonna be tired. You’re going to bed, and and you didn’t do the work for the day. You did the work, but you didn’t do the paperwork. Paperwork is the most important thing that we’re going to do right now. And so we’re gonna talk about invoicing, and we’ve gotta make sure that we’re because I’ll tell you, I’m also a third party consultant. I’m independent, so I don’t work for anybody. And I’ve been in the industry long enough that I know ever know everybody that that that is in the, third party consulting world. And their number one thing that that that happens with restorers is just missing documents, missing labor sheets, missing equipment usage documentation, no moisture contents. I’ve gone on projects with people that I know, and and and they only have a bunch of content readings on day one, and this is day seventeen. And so that’s a problem. And so that’s a problem. That is a red flag because if you’re behind on your paperwork there, somebody is coming in to look at your to look at your paperwork and they see that you only did you only did damp you only did moisture content reads on the first day, and you’ve been drawing for seventeen, they’re gonna be looking at it and go, man, what else is in this paperwork that we need to be ready for? Because if you were that slack on moisture content readings, then you’re probably slack on everything else. And so make sure you’re not throwing up any of those red flags because somebody like me, somebody with experience is gonna come in and and see it instantly. It will take about ten minutes to be on the project, and we can tell that there’s something wrong. And it’s that’s what experience gives you. So always remember that when you’re doing a project, it might be the first time that you’ve done a hotel, but it’s not the first time a hotel has been done. There’s a lot of data out there, and all that data is being used. And now that we’re in the world of AI, it’s being used even more than ever before. And it’s all about making sure that your invoice is tried and true. And so make sure we have everything. But these are the those are the most common. Missing missing documentation, no no documentation at all, or, you know, simple, misentries. You know? Not every invoice is bad, and so there are there are times where, you know, there’s a formula that didn’t work in a spreadsheet. There’s something that didn’t have. One other common thing is is categorization of your labor. Make sure your labor isn’t if you have thirty people on the job, that they’re not thirty, specialized technicians because not everybody is gonna be a specialized technician on that job. There’s somebody who’s gonna be pushing a broom or somebody that’s gonna be taking out the garbage. There’s somebody that is gonna be supervisor, somebody’s gonna be a prod production labor. Make sure we’re not loading the job up because we’re slow at home, and we’re gonna make it up on the road by loading up loading up our invoices. Because somebody like me is looking at your invoice. I’m nice. There’s guys out there that aren’t nice. And but I’ll look at your invoice, and I’ll and I’ll tell you. Alright. So what why did you do this? What what is this? And and a lot of times, it’s just because you’re just putting everything in the invoice that you possibly can. That’s not the proper thing to do on CAT. You’re not trying to make up for what’s not going well at home out on cat. Treat the cat jobs just like you would if you were in your backyard. Leah. I’m I’m back. Always good to see. Time flies when you’re having fun. We’re at we’re at fifteen minutes until two PM. Yep. Yep. And we have a number of questions. So I just is this a good time to just start throwing rapid fire questions your way now, Tom? Yes. I think, actually, because we tied the we we beat up documentation. We kind of had invoicing in there with it. Because that’s all tied to it. It’s it’s again, we’ll close that chapter. Documentation and invoicing are like this. If you can’t tell the story of the job, then then you’re gonna be lost, and you’re gonna and, you know, if if your invoice is a pain to read or figure out, it’s gonna go on the bottom of the bottom of the stack. And if and they’re not gonna look at it until they have to. I have a couple of questions that came in specific to invoicing, so I’ll start with those because it’s right on topic. One of one of them was you were talking about, getting paid throughout the projects, particularly on commercial jobs. So would you suggest stopping work if you’re not getting paid on your invoices that you’re billing for throughout? Well, you you can, and and you have to be careful that you know? And and it’s a judgment call because if the client is being you know, if the client is is straight up because sometimes we have clients that are not you know, they’re they’re you know, we can’t wait to get the job done, and it’s like, man, we’ll we’re gonna move on. And but if they’re if they’re being unreasonable, then yes. If they’re if it’s just a technicality that’s kinda holding things up, then probably not. But, yes, you wanna hold to your guns. Remember, it’s business, and the client has to understand that it’s business too. Just like if we were building a house. You know, there isn’t a contractor on the planet. I wanna go and build a new home, that is gonna start my my house unless I give money. Usually, fifty percent down. You give him fifty percent down, and then what happens when, you know, your that fifty percent runs out? He doesn’t do any more work until you pay him more money. And the same should be true in our business too. But in our world, we just have all of these people that we have to answer to that really aren’t our clients. So the adjuster, the the third party consultant, you get all these, you know, the you know, all these different players now that are in your business. That sometimes it gets complicated. I’d say too, you shouldn’t just stop work because of a payment schedule mess or whatever. There’s all kinds of reasons. Specifically, since we’re talking about cat right now, the Internet might not have come back up yet, man. You know what I mean? There’s there’s all kinds of things that that can stop a payment. Tom’s right. Know your clients. Know who you’re working for. If if if if you trust your investment, then they probably trust you back. And, usually, things work out one way or the other. But, I mean, it it’s up to the contractor too at the end of the day. Right? If if if you’re financially tied and this payment is the only thing that’s gonna keep the job going, then what’s your other option? Put it on your credit card? Maybe maybe not that. You know what I mean? Maybe not that. Definitely try to stay on top of your payment schedule. Have a payment schedule that that, is understood by all parties, including their insurance, their adjusters, their carriers, their their third party adjusters, whoever else it is. Make sure that everybody knows that money is due today, money is due this day, money is due that day. Fifty percent down is not crazy to ask for no matter if you’re doing residential or commercial, in in in a storm zone. There’s obviously exceptions to every rule on that as well too. It’s up to the contractor, man. It’s your money. You’re you’re the one you’re the one with the chips on the table. You make the call on how you play the hand, but don’t leave every don’t leave all the money on the table and walk away either. You know? And make sure and make sure you have everything on on a schedule. Make sure that, you know, it’s every seven days or seven to ten days on big projects. You’re you’re just producing an invoice. You’re getting it to them. It has all the backup so that they know what to expect, when to expect it. And and and the the less the the more the easier you make the process, the easier it will be. And that’s that’s the key. And k. Thanks, guys. I’m gonna make my own really quick shameless plug around payments. 吃瓜不打烊 is in a month, we are launching our own in app payments feature. So if you need to get paid really quickly in the field, you can equip your teams with the ability to request and collect payments right there in the field. So just another way to keep the cash flowing for our customers. Alright. I’m gonna go back up to the very first questions that came in because those those folks have been very, very patient waiting for their questions to be asked. We’ve got about ten minutes left, so we’re gonna rapid fire and see how many we can get answered in ten minutes. Okay. The first question, if you wanted to start off small with cats, is there a limit to what you can accept or start as? Also, is it reasonable to partner up with other restoration companies? Yes. Partner up with other restoration companies. No. There is not a limit to how small you can start. Okay? Yep. It’s it’s again, it’s a it’s a contractor’s choice. This is your Okay? If you’ve got twenty grand and you wanna deploy maybe four guys for a couple of weeks and see what’s going on out there, that’s fine. Do not take in more work than you can perform. That is my only caveat. Do not set people up for failure. Do not set people up to be starting their demo in three weeks when it’s a mold job. Only take in what you can physically perform and do. And the best way that you can learn how to do CAT is to ride along with a company that has done it already a lot. Yep. Yep. Alright. Can you discuss the importance of preparation and resources needed for planning for time away and protecting the home front while out catting? I saw this one. I saw this one out earlier too. This is a very cognizant business owner here. You cannot leave your customers at home hanging because you decided to go halfway across the country. You cannot do that. You must leave enough people, equipment, and everything at home to handle what’s gonna be your your your calls there. I don’t know how it is for other business owners. Inevitably, when I leave my business, they just kinda get real busy all of a sudden there at home. Whether it’s vacation, cat, whatever it is, whatever I leave whenever I leave, something crazy is going to happen. You know what I mean? So I haven’t been on vacation out of fear. No. I’m kidding. Anyway, the the point is make sure that that that you’re you’re aware of what you’re doing and you’re prepared for it ahead of time. That’s that’s the best thing to do. Do not leave your home and your customers. Those are the people that you service every day. Do not leave them hanging. They’re the ones that you’re depending on when you come back. Yeah. If you if you leave them while the cat’s away, somebody’s gonna steal your client. No pun intended while you’re out catting. Next question. Do you have a specific process process, I’m showing my Canadianism, for vetting a client. So do you have a specific process for vetting a client assuming this needs to be done first to determine you can deliver on a promise for a job? Yeah. This only really comes in with, residential clients, though. Most most commercial insurance, we don’t do, a whole lot of vetting. With with with residential clients, you wanna make sure, are they covered? Are they, are they, confused about their coverage? Do they think that they’re covered, or do they know that they’re covered? And then you wanna get in with their carrier as fast as you possibly can, preferably before you start work to verify and confirm all these things, and then to kinda set scope with the with the carrier so that they know what your invoice is gonna look like. PJ, you got anything Yeah. If it’s not a claim, credit, it’s it’s the problem. Yeah. I mean, especially on commercial background, you know, credit checks are a great way, and having that vendor set up before you go where you can pull background checks or, you know, credit checks on your your commercial losses is gonna tell you from the get go, you know, some things that you might flag and not wanna do that job. You know? Do they pay their bills on time? So that should absolutely be part of your process if especially if it’s gonna be a financially constraining project for you to perform. The next question is, is quite a bit more specific, but when a commercial client says no to cat three services and doesn’t wanna sign a declination form, how would you tackle this problem? Education is key. Yeah. Yeah. Education is key, man. Let them know the dangers of not doing mitigation the proper way according to the category of the loss. If they still won’t do it, man, then you you can still do the job with a waiver. It’s up to them what they do with their structure. You know what I mean? It’s up to them what they do with their structure. If they wanna do it, a a lesser way or a way where they think it’s gonna be easier to pass for their AR or their insurance or whatever, then that’s their prerogative. You know what I mean? There’s there’s some clients that you won’t be able to get to budge off the cat two to cat three line because they understand the difference, and their carriers have have told them to avoid that at all costs. And their contractor comes in talking cat three, tell them, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. You know what I mean? Like, there’s levels of training that go into this stuff, building owners and things like that for years and years and years and years and years and and years that we don’t necessarily get privy to as contractors. Right? We don’t know what conversations they have with their carriers, with their adjusters, with their their account managers, stuff like that. Cat three, it’s a lineman. If you can’t educate your client into saying yes, then get them to sign a waiver and do the best you can. Yep. And then when you’re dealing with time and materials too, it’s less of an issue than than with, exact because exact you get it has a specific price to it. Whereas time and materials, you know, you’re it’s basically what you know, we’re you’re doing what whatever it is, whether it’s CAT one, two, or three. I think we have time for probably two more questions. One of them is on the CAT two or three real quickly, get a hygienist get a hygienist report. If you if you have those things, it’s harder to say yes or no too. Sorry, Leah. Go ahead. No. That’s all all good. There was a question that came in earlier in the chat is, what do you think, profit margins should be on a cat job? TJ? Well Let’s ask the banker. I mean, I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll take one minute. But the your margins are gonna depend upon how you manage the job. It should have been they’re not built into the job. They’re they’re like, for example, you don’t have cap prices than your prices at home. Your prices at your prices are what your prices are, and so you have to manage the job to where you’re gonna you’re gonna make money. So it’s more about your management of it. Are you able to to do all the strategic partners? Are you able to line everything up and still make money? That’s that’s the big thing. There really isn’t a set margin that you would be shooting for. You you could throw throw out what you usually make at home as your as your goal is what you should be making on the road. There shouldn’t be it’s not a gold rush. But, TJ, if you wanted to throw something in there too. I mean, it it all goes back to the daily management of your projects. You should know where you’re at financially with money in, money out, and what’s coming every day. So it’s it’s actively managing the project during the project and not looking back, you know, at the end and wondering where you might land. Yep. Right. Yeah. I think some I think sometimes people think that, you know, the margins on cap are are are bigger. And and maybe maybe some people are are padding their bills or whatever, but it’s not really what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s supposed to be the same same prices, same same margins. They might differ because you might manage them better. It’s it’s what it’s gotta come down to. So are you managing your jobs, you know, to where you’re making more money? So that is us. That’s it. That’s two just after two o’clock. Really appreciate it. This was such an informative session, and watch your inbox for, for more, more from 吃瓜不打烊 and more from Tom as we go forward. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, everyone.