Restoration Pros Unplugged

One 11-inch rain event cost Tyler Hendrix and his partners an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 in a single day, because they weren't built to handle the volume. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Tyler Hendrix, co-owner of Voda South Kansas City and incoming general manager of 1-Tom-Plumber Kansas City. Tyler came out of construction project management, building municipal water...

At 20, Caleb Owens took over a $525K mitigation department that had bad hires, heavy churn, and stolen equipment. Fifteen months later it was running at $1.5M with 37% profit. Then he left, liquidated his Roth IRA at 23, and started his own company. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Caleb Owens, owner of Kern Water Damage Restoration in Bakersfield, California. Caleb is 24, came u...

Rick McGuigan asked Larry Braun to join his company for ten years. Larry kept saying "you can't afford me." They finally settled it on a napkin. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Rick McGuigan and Larry Braun of Pine Ridge Cleaning and Restoration in Cleveland, Ohio. Rick bought a small carpet cleaning business in 2003 and grew it to $3.5M largely on his own. Larry...

Malik Stevens believed what everyone says about TPAs. Then he ran five fire claims in six weeks, and the first one billed almost $60,000. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Bobby Thomas, CEO of Extreme Services, and Malik Stevens, a Louisiana owner converting his independent company into an Extreme franchise. Bobby came up from carpet cleaning to technician to owner and runs corpor...

Most restorers think contents is easy. Put stuff in a box. Kristen Stein says the box was never the hard part. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Kristen Stein, owner of Blue Kangaroo Packouts in Randolph, New Jersey. Kristen came out of international trade, bought a restoration franchise three years ago, and now runs 20,000 square feet of storage serving New Jersey, New York, and...

Michael Harrison told his insurance agent he'd do $250,000 his first year in business. He finished at $1.6 million. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Michael Harrison, owner of Mid-South Restoration Services and 1-Tom-Plumber Memphis. Michael started in the trade at 14 as his brother's helper and spent 20 years learning it at franchises and independents before two phone...

Most restoration business owners only show you the highlight reel. Not this episode. Raul Gonzalez of WonderBuilt Restoration and Construction gets real with Clinton James about the two times his business almost didn't make it — bad hires, a cash crunch, a lawsuit that blocked his SBA funding, and high-interest loans just to cover payroll. He shares exactly what it felt like, what he got wron...

Tunde and Moji Adefolaju opened their SERVPRO one week before COVID shut everything down. Six years later they're running six territories and 15 service vehicles in Northern California. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with the husband-and-wife team behind SERVPRO of East Concord / Brentwood. Neither came from restoration — Tunde managed construction projects, Moji came out of ba...

Nine months into business, Dwayne West landed a $100,000 job off his second lead. In this episode, he tells host Clinton James how he did it. Dwayne owns Firehawk Restoration in Jasper, Georgia. He's a Navy veteran who grew up working construction with his dad, then built a career flipping houses and running a general contracting business before jumping into restoration. You'll walk away...

Running your restoration company on gut feeling and bank balances is a quiet way to stay stuck. Real growth comes from installing hard numbers and accountability into every job. In this episode, host Clinton James sits down with Larry Braun, VP and Co-owner of Pine Ridge Restoration in Cleveland, Ohio, and a featured speaker at the Restore Scale Dominate Summit in San Diego. Larry spent 30 years r...

Most episodes of this show feature a single guest sharing their unique path through the industry, but today we are completely flipping the script. In this special roundtable edition of Restoration Pros Unplugged, host Clinton James brings together two of the sharpest tactical minds in the home services space: Chris Nordyke of Floodlight Consulting Group and Nikole Mackenzie of Momentum Accounting....

Most restoration owners have a crazy story about how they got into the business, but very few have survived a first job so brutal it almost drove them out of the industry forever. In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, host Clinton James sits down with Andrew Rickabaugh, co-owner of Rick and Ball Restoration and a One Tom Plumber franchise in Huntsville, Alabama. Andrew pulls back the curt...

In this follow-up episode, Clinton James sits down again with Toby Clem of Restoration Advisers to dive deeper into what it really takes to grow a restoration company that doesn’t depend on the owner. If your business still runs off memory, gut decisions, and “just figuring it out,” this episode is for you. Clinton and Toby break down: Why running your business from memory will eventually hold you...

If your field techs are juggling four, five, even eleven different apps on a single water mitigation job — you've got a data problem. And that data problem is going to follow you everywhere: estimating, compliance, team performance, and especially AI. In this episode, Clinton James sits down with Andrew Wirick, VP of Product at DocuSketch, to talk about one of the most overlooked challenges i...

You're landing jobs. Revenue is climbing. But somehow, cash is always tight — and when you need financing to grow, the doors keep closing. You're not alone. And the problem probably isn't your sales numbers. In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, Clinton James sits down with Paul Childers of Blue Sky Biz Solutions to expose the financial blind spot that quietly strangles gro...

What if your restoration company could deliver a Disney-level experience—even on a customer’s worst day? In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, Clinton James sits down with Vance Morris, former Disney leader, founder of Deliver Service Now, and owner of Maryland Mold Busters—to break down how service-based businesses can transform customer experience into their ultimate competitive advanta...

Most restoration companies don’t struggle to find work—they struggle to build a business that doesn’t depend entirely on the owner. In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged , Clinton James sits down with Toby Clem of Restoration Advisers to unpack why so many restoration companies hit a growth ceiling—and what it actually takes to scale beyond it. From the “owner bottleneck” problem to buildi...

In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, Clinton James sits down with Erik Peterson, General Manager of Arko Restoration, to unpack a game-changing leadership exercise that’s helping restoration companies break through growth ceilings. If you’ve ever felt like your business can’t run without you… this episode is going to hit home. Erik shares how a simple but powerful task audit categorizing...

Most restoration companies are sitting on thousands of past customers and doing absolutely nothing with them. In this episode, Clinton sits down with Alex Nghiem, Chief Revenue Officer at Epic180, to break down a simple but powerful idea: Your CRM is either a gold mine or a graveyard. If you’ve been in business for 5+ years, you already have a built-in revenue source. Past water losses. Mold jobs....

What does it really take to scale a restoration business and expand into a new market without making expensive mistakes? In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, Clinton James sits down with John Gabriele, owner of 911 Restoration of Des Moines and 1 Tom Plumber of Des Moines, to break down how he grew his company from under one million dollars to nearly three million and why he is now expan...

Real growth in the trades doesn’t come from chasing trends or jumping on the latest tactic. It comes from systems, strategy, and partnering with people who understand how contractors actually operate. In this episode, Clinton James — CMO of Water Restoration Marketing and host of Restoration Pros Unplugged — joins Paul Sanneman, founder of Contractor Staffing Source, for a powerful crossover conve...

Missed calls, slow follow-up, and storm surges can quietly kill your revenue. In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, Clinton James sits down with Nick D’Urbano, Co-Founder and CRO of Distance, to break down how restoration companies are using AI to capture more leads, handle overflow calls, and generate more jobs — without replacing their people. Nick walks through real-world use cases for...

This isn’t just a recap, it’s a celebration of the moments that made Restoration Pros Unplugged the go-to podcast for growth-minded restoration entrepreneurs. In this special Rewind episode, we look back at the top interviews, biggest takeaways, and most replayed clips from our most impactful conversations. From leadership breakthroughs to sales strategies, hiring systems to franchise growth these...

In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, Clinton sits down with Phil DePaul, the powerhouse owner behind United Water Restoration Group Long Island and 1-Tom-Plumber Long Island. Known for his bold “BoomZeal” leadership style, Phil breaks down how he built two thriving service brands by bringing a white-collar approach to a blue-collar industry and why professionalism, extreme ownership, and...

Struggling to find and keep good people in your restoration business? You’re not alone. In this episode of Restoration Pros Unplugged, host Clinton James (CMO, Water Restoration Marketing) sits down with Paul Sanneman, founder of Contractor Staffing Source, to talk about why the “labor shortage” in restoration is often a self-created problem and what you can do about it. Paul breaks down the bigge...