The State Of The Restoration Industry

Hayden Lee

Welcome, everyone, to the Success Elevated podcast, as always. I’m your host, Hayden Lee. I am joined this week by my co-host managing Partner at Spot on Solutions, Katie Harris. Katie, thanks for joining the podcast this week.

Katie Harris

You bet. It’s easy to come on when one of my favorite people is joining you as well. I got two favorite people right here on the podcast today.

Hayden Lee

It’s a good time always. And we have returning guest, someone that we’ve loved the relationship that we’ve built over the years with Michelle. It’s been awesome to work with her and, record podcast together. We’ve done a bunch of stuff. Michelle Blevins, owner and publisher over at C&R magazine. Michelle, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Michelle Blevins

Thanks for having me here. I love chatting with both of you, and we had fun at The Collective a few weeks ago. And, I think I see it every time I see you guys here. I’m so thankful for the partnership that C&R and S.O.S. has had from the very beginning. For me, last week was three years since owning it, but you guys were in it with me even prior to that, which was really exciting. And we also have some new things coming, which is kind of behind the scenes working on that. I know Katie has ideas for and stuff like that too. So I’m excited to be here. Thank you for always backing up C&R and I love supporting SOS as well. So thank you.

Katie Harris

I am like consciously making an effort Michelle, not to spill what we’re working on with this thing on our website right now. So Hayden doesn’t even know yet what we’re on, but everybody listening like we are always. It’s been such a labor of love to to create the in our website with you and spot on solutions. Love being a part of that in the very beginning. And we’re always looking at ways it can be more important and more relevant to the industry, more helpful. And I will just tease it. I won’t even say anything more than that, but there is one page on the C&R website that industry wide is the most visited page and is super popular, and we’re going to bring some improvements and updates to that.

Michelle Blevins

I’m curious if Hayden has any guesses on what that page would be. If he guesses it, then it’s okay. You have any guesses?

Hayden Lee

I don’t even know if I have a guess. the homepage no I don’t no, no, I have I really don’t have a guess. So that’s, now I’m now I’m very intrigued, and I’m pretty sure if I twist enough arms here at Spot on Solutions, I could probably get access to the back end to actually know what it gets.

But, I don’t I won’t do that. I won’t do that. So I’m just going to be just as surprised as everybody else when you guys announce this stuff. So that’s cool.

Michelle Blevins

It’s fun. I feel like every year we have kind of 1 or 2 big projects that we work on. And last year you really redid the nav and it looks so much better now. And so we have something else in the buyer’s guide we worked on a few years ago. State in the industry just got revamped. So that’s more easy to navigate. So, these little projects always work out great.

Katie Harris

There’s a reason why it is I think the the most visited news source in the industry right now and analytics are impressive. So congrats to you on three years and in really making a difference, I think, in the information that gets put out to the industry. Speaking of which, let’s talk about the industry. So we got state of the industry coming up. And this is this is such a this is honestly at first I thought this is a great idea. This is really fun. And we took a lot of fun. Get takeaways from it. But now we’re into it a couple of years and I’m like, no, actually this is making a difference in how people are managing their businesses and the decisions they’re making.

Michelle Blevins

Yes, I agree, I actually was diving into the responses so far before we came on, just to kind of like see how we’re doing and where things are at. And one of the things we added this year was kind of at the end, how is this serving you? Is this like, do you find this valuable? And it is comment after comment, which is so reassuring to me of like, this is so valuable. We use this all the time. It’s invaluable for every single department in our company. Tons of comments over and over about that. And so it’s fun to watch it grow every year and to find new things to dive into every year. We try to pay attention to the industry and find new trends and topics to dive into, which I know we’re going to talk about. so it is really it is so fun and so, so valuable and is exceeding my expectations, which is great,

Katie Harris

awesome. If you take just a step back, we take just a step back and tell our tell all of our listeners what is the state of the industry and how can they get involved in it?

Michelle Blevins

Sure. So it is the largest study of the restoration industry. It is fully anonymous. When you jump in, it takes 15 minutes or less. And it is just a survey that gauging everything in the industry from company size, residential versus commercial work. We’re breaking down like franchises versus independent companies in a new way this year to show like revenue size and growth and differences between the franchises and the independents. and how that’s affecting the industry. Time to get paid. Your technology usage. your like pay. We talk about pay scales a little bit, both for managers and for technicians. we’re talking about I and you know, you talk to our technology, but that’s another AI portion. And then this year we’re adding in, we’re talking about minorities and, like English as a second language. How many Spanish speakers are there in our industry? What is the need there? We’re diving into mental health this year. That’s a new one that we’re talking about, which is such a big topic in the industry. So, you know, it’s just kind of all of these things. And it literally takes 15 minutes or less and it’s fully anonymous. And so you can just go through there’s no like trick questions or anything. And because this is our third year now we’re really starting to have these like benchmarks. And we’re not going to have just two dots now. Now we can start showing three dots. And what it starts looking like for all the data.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. One of the coolest things, even though and this is something that I feel like is, is super helpful and and maybe, maybe if I owned a restoration company, I wouldn’t feel this way. But, one of the coolest things about it, even though the responses are the submissions are anonymous, I think it’s really, really impactful to see that, like, you’re not alone when it comes to this stuff, right? Like like seeing that like, oh, it also takes everybody else 45 days to get paid or, you know, whatever, or like little things like that, like, oh, other people are also worried about AI. Like, I was a big thing last year that popped up on the survey a lot. So like there’s something cool about yes, the submissions are anonymous, but it also is really unifying to be like there are other people out here that are also experiencing the same struggles that I am that are maybe as frustrated as I am, that are worried about the future and things. And so it’s helpful to see like, hey, I’m not alone. We’re going to figure this out together. Like, we can talk about this. I can maybe, you know, talk to Michelle and reach out to somebody else in the industry. I can join that webinar. You guys always do the webinar to kind of break down the report. Like there’s some really cool things that come from it that I, I feel like outside of just the knowledge of what’s going on, like, oh man, this I don’t feel alone. I feel like there’s other other people that are also struggling with this. I don’t know if you’ve heard responses or heard people feel that same way, but for me it’s like, oh, this is this kind of cool to see that.

Michelle Blevins

Yes, that is a lot of the feedback that we’ve gotten is, it’s good to not be alone. And also the value of some of the data to use in pushing back, like if you are struggling to get paid. We are not alone. This is really actually how long it is taking to get paid in full on jobs. Look at what the industry is showing. Not just me. It’s not just me. and so all of these pain points and then also kind of finding the strength in like AI is a big topic for people. And I know it can be a scary step for some restorers to take. but seeing kind of where others restores are and how they’re embracing it and moving forward to how people are hiring and getting ideas of like, what are other people doing to hire when it’s really hard, and how much are people paying? Am I paying enough? Am I paying too much? It depends on the market. But, lots of questions can be answered in there and kind of filling in those gaps of really doing it right, you probably are.

Katie Harris

And one of the interesting things I heard you just talk about, and I think this is a growing, of growing importance, is what did you put in there this year about, bilingual workers and Spanish language and, and things like that. Give us a hint into those.

Michelle Blevins

so we asked what percentage of your workforce might be Spanish speaking? And, I actually don’t directly remember the other questions related to it. I think there’s three related to it. because there are softwares and other platforms, training academies, in the industry that are starting to do Spanish speaking classes. We started doing some Spanish language content for C&R, those kind of things. We know that that’s a really big area, and it actually doesn’t matter what part of the country you’re in. Like, I know a restored North Carolina that has, a lot of Spanish speaking people on her team. And so, you know, it’s something that’s impacting people everywhere now. And I think it’d be good for the industry to understand how to meet those people where they are, so that that’s overcoming a big hurdle into hiring some probably really good talent. But they need to understand your processes and have a way that they can also learn how to do things. What’s going on in your company in their native language, instead of trying to fumble through if they don’t speak fluent English, maybe.

Katie Harris

well, I love, I love the focus on that demographic. And what does that we know what great assets that demographic is to the whole industry. And so I love the new the new focus there that we’re seeing. The other thing that, I know we’re passionate about is spot on solutions. And we don’t have time to dive into this very much today. So hopefully we’ll come back to it is a new to state of the industry. Are some questions around mental health. This is this is of high importance to I know the Success Elevated podcast and our team here at Spot on Solutions.

Michelle Blevins

Yeah. We we tried to break this down a little bit. One of the questions is asking, do you do anything for this? Do you think about or address mental health at all whatsoever? and it’s kind of a gauge of yes we do to no, we don’t at all. It a little bit in between. There’s four measures there. And so far, the pie chart that I glanced at so far is pretty equal in all of the sections. All four sections from yes to no. And, then we also ask, what are you doing? If you are doing things, what are you doing? And I can see a lot of good feedback coming in there. So I’m looking forward to revealing those things and hopefully there things that will get picked up by other restoration companies that maybe need ideas in this area or haven’t thought through this. it could be really timely considering we’re in cat season, and so far the projections are it’s going to be a bad one, and that is the time of year when things get really bad for burnout. So yeah, I’m curious though, talk a little bit about for can I turn the questions on you? I want you guys to talk a little bit about what you’ve done as far as mental health and why this is such an important issue in the industry. Honestly, it was watching some of your content and some of what others are doing. and there was a study on it that, I think a professor with he was with Middle Tennessee State. Now, maybe Purdue, did on burnout specifically with estimators a few years ago. So all of these things kind of were churning in my head, and I realized it was time to talk about this. So what prompted you guys to talk about it, and what have you done?

Katie Harris

So originally when we did this the first time, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. So two years ago, Success Elevated decided we would do a podcast series through the whole month of May around it when I realized, like 1 in 5 people, have some sort of mental health challenges that they’re dealing with in their life and how much it impacts not just their daily life, but their work life. Right? I started looking around my office and I’m like, okay, I got 60 people that work here, and if 1 in 5 that is true, what does that mean? And I felt this, honestly, I just felt this obligation to my team. I’m like, I started hearing things and that’s what sparked our interest initially Hayden. And then from there, we just got really, amazed at the things we learned and what we started implementing on our team. And then as we started talking to restorers and our clients and how much more I mean, we’re digital marketing, right? So yeah, we have mental health challenges just like everybody else in the world. Like that 1 in 5 is a universal number, but that number is considerably higher when you look at what restorers are doing and pacing and handling on a day to day basis. Yet he hit us pretty hard, right Hayden? when we realized it’s not being talked about in the space, that is probably needed the most.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, 100% like that. And I think this goes for just about any home service industry or, you know, for lack of a better term, the blue collar world. Right. Like that mental health is just not talked about enough. It’s not talked about enough in general. I mean, to look at any industry and just the world and like, there’s a there’s a stigma when it comes to mental health and people don’t talk about it enough. But especially, like Katie said, in an industry that like you’re dealing with traumatic events or you’re you’re you’re speaking to a customer that is dealing with probably their worst day ever, like you’re doing that every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. And, that can wear on you big time. And, it can contribute to burnout. It can contribute to, you know, employee turnover, like you got employees that are quitting or that aren’t showing up to work because they just they don’t know how to deal with the stresses of the job. And so we, you know, like Katie said, we may was coming up and we really wanted to do this series and we had some awesome guests. Come on. We’ve been able to partner with a local counselor that’s been super, super helpful and and kind of opened our minds. I know there’s been moments in the podcast that Katie and, I have done that have been like, just mind blowing to learn these things and have been super incredible. And Katie’s seen, you know, experiences in her own life, like her son worked for a restoration company briefly and had to deal with some pretty wild things. And so there’s just there’s so much that just was kind of like calling us to talk about this. And, and we love that you’re doing it in the state of the industry because it really is so, so impactful to just talk about it. We’re not we’re not experts. I don’t know anything about, you know, your background, Michelle, but I don’t think you’re an expert either. Probably on mental health. Right? It’s not. You’re you’re background’s probably more in journalism than in mental health. Right? So, like, we’re not experts here, but just talking about it more can really help your team feel like they’re they’re being cared about and they’re being included. And so including it in state, in the state of the industry, even just as a, as a question like something that simple can help your team know that, hey, people care about me and care about my mental health. So, yeah.

Michelle Blevins

Yeah, I totally I totally agree. And you know, this year has been an interesting year. We’re for a lot of people, it has been slower. And that’s something to overcome as well. There’s just it’s, industry that requires an incredible amount of resilience more than probably most industries. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever. Yeah. So I’m looking forward to seeing what, you know, we’ve always asked the question, like about company culture and what you’re doing to feed the culture, but this is the deeper dive, right? What are you doing to actually care for your people more deeply than if you’re having fun and you have a good, healthy culture? What’s let’s go beyond that. So I’m excited to see where that takes us.

Katie Harris

Yeah. One of our main guests said something so impactful. And then we’ll move past this because I have a couple other things I want to cover with you really fast. We’ll come back and deep dive into a few more of these things at another time. But, he said that trauma actually, is the leading cause of anxiety and depression or one of the things that really conflicts and, we look around at our Restorer clients and they live lives of trauma. Right? They are in trauma all the time. And so it’s like it would make sense that this industry has a much higher rate of anxiety and depression and some of these challenges than are even being acknowledged because it is the body’s, the mind’s natural reaction to trauma. So I think it’s I think it’s an important conversation. And obviously, you know, at Spot On Solutions like we want to elevate people and businesses. And we feel like this conversation is one of the things that actually has the ability to make a difference in people’s lives.

Michelle Blevins

We do kind of get, because I found this when I worked in news and I, you know, we cover not great things and you do kind of you can become, immune to it a little bit or, what is the word? I’m missing the word, but you get the idea. Yeah. It’s just. Yeah. Numb to it, I guess. And so. But just because you feel numb to it in the moment doesn’t mean it’s not impacting you later. And I think that that’s the thing that we miss in the industry, I think, is you’re dealing with these things and you go through the motions. But that doesn’t mean that what you’re going through isn’t hard, or that it’s not going to have some sort of effect on you mentally. Because we are still human. We still have these ways that we process things and so,

Katie Harris

Ashton Holbrook actually said to us, he’s our clinician that we refer to on a lot of these issues. he said, don’t get irritated with your team. If they show up on on site to something really hard and they laugh like he’s like, that is the mind’s natural response to a lot of really traumatic things is, is to make light of it, not to make light of it because it’s not important, but to make light of it because it’s a way of kind of coping. So, yeah, I think kudos to us to, to you guys for including that in the conversation this year. We’re really excited to see what that turns to. Yeah. All right. We got a couple other things and we only have a couple more minutes. So Hayden can we can we talk can we transition from state of the industry.

Hayden Lee

Yes, yes. I’ll, I got a couple things I’ll wrap up with, but I’ll let you you go first. Go for it.

Katie Harris

So before I do that, Michelle, really quickly, why don’t you tell us where people can go if they haven’t had a chance to complete state of the Industry and then where, like, I would, like, I would really encourage people put it on your calendars to show up, show up with your team on the day that you guys roll this out. so give us some of those details.

Michelle Blevins

Perfect. Okay. So you can take the survey. It’s at C&R magazine.com/state of the industry. excuse me. You can also find it on our Facebook and our LinkedIn and our Instagram and anywhere. So you should be able to find it pretty pretty easily. that’s where you take it again 15 minutes or less. we are partnered with knowhow in this they kind of power the behind the scenes stuff, which is fabulous. They help dig out the data and, make a lot of the comparisons and the charts and stuff like that. They produced an amazing book at the end. In conjunction with the full state of the industry issue that comes out in November. And then also in November, as Katie teed up. Thank you. We’re doing a webinar series. It’s Layton and I. We will be kind of, deep diving into the state of the industry report. So there’s there’s three webinars total. One is the very first Wednesday of November. And that will be an overview of the report and all of the data. The next one is they’re they’re consecutive Wednesday. So then the next Wednesday we’ll take a deep dive into one of the big topics we found for this year. And then the next one will be at the same. Another deep dive. And for the deep dive once we bring in, an industry expert or two as well. So whatever kind of data comes out, that’s what we’ll decide on what those deep dives are and who to bring into those conversations. But those are well worth being on. so you can really we can start picking apart the data and see what it means. And then you know, what to take back to your team. A lot of it is actionable. The book that know how puts together has actionable things for you to literally go through with your team. So this isn’t just a report that’s just like, here’s some data. This truly has stuff that you can take back with you and work through as a team to find meaning in it for yourself.

Katie Harris

It’s so good. So it’ll be great. Okay, that is not the only thing that C&R is putting out for our industry. we have the Unsung Heroes Award coming up, and I think that this is one of the newer awards in the industry. And I want to make sure you have a chance to tell everybody what is an unsung hero.

Michelle Blevins

okay. Yes. So, I love industry awards, and I felt like there wasn’t one to celebrate. There’s no offense to all the owners out there and C-suite people. There’s a lot of stuff out there to celebrate, like the leaders and organizations, but we have a ton of unsung heroes behind the scenes that don’t get celebrated every day, and they deserve that. So that was where the Unsung Heroes Award was born from. we are this is the third year of it, and it’s a it’s three categories. There’s a winner and the executive level, there’s a winner from field staff and then there’s a winner from office staff. we had some judges that helped figure out the the finalists in this one. And, we will be announcing those in the September October issue. So you have to wait a little bit to figure out who those are. But that is coming

Katie Harris

Cool. So keep your eyes out, everybody. look around and keep an eye out for who are the unsung heroes in your organization, because, I know Michelle, this is really popular. And this is going to continue on, right?

Michelle Blevins

yes it is. And I know you guys probably saw the customer service elite award that we did earlier this year. I think Hayden was, one of the top finalists in that one. So, that’s that’s something that we started for vendors. The vendors deserve more praise in this industry as well. So that’s a vendor specific award that we launched this year. So be on the lookout again for that in 2025. That will for sure be back. we try to do things all year long, things that are meaningful. And if things miss and we find something else to do but try to keep the industry going.

Hayden Lee

I love it. Love it, Michelle, what I want to do, and we’ll make sure all this stuff is linked below. But anybody that’s listening, anybody that’s curious and wants to maybe make sure their voice is being heard, especially for the state of the industry. They got two weeks left, so two weeks left for submissions. We’ll link all of this stuff below. Unsung heroes, all of these things. Please check them out in the descriptions. any last thoughts? Michelle, with regards to state of the industry, unsung heroes, anything you got big coming up?

Michelle Blevins

No. That’s it. I appreciate you guys having me on and be on the lookout for, a change coming on the sea on our website. The Katy tease at the beginning. Hayden, I want you to go figure out now if you could figure out what the most landed on page is for C&R. I’m wondering if anybody listening to it could figure it out. Probably because I think that it’s what people. Yeah, it’s the go to place. Yeah, it is the go to place. So I’m excited about it. Thank you guys for having me on. Thank you for the chatter. I and looking forward to having Katy. Hopefully you involved in the state of the industry issue talking more about mental health there. so thanks guys.

Katie Harris

Excellent. Thanks, Michele. Appreciate you.