Welcome to “Building Leaders,” a brand new series from KnowHow where we dive into how today’s restoration leaders are setting up their teams for success in the future. Inspired by our latest book, Building Leaders, each interview features in-depth conversations with industry leaders actively preparing their teams to tackle the leadership challenges of tomorrow.

If you want to stay ahead and ensure your team is ready for tomorrow’s challenges, you’re in the right place. Expect real advice, actionable insights, and plenty of takeaways to help you build a team ready for whatever comes next.

Ready to build the leaders of tomorrow?

Leadership development is becoming a buzzword in the restoration industry, but let’s be honest—few have truly mastered it. Too often, businesses chase quick wins and forget about a crucial factor for long-term success: planning for tomorrow's leadership challenges today.

Ben Looper, CEO of Southeast Restoration Group and current RIA president, knows this all too well. “The biggest thing I see—and this has been prevalent for as long as I’ve been in the [restoration] industry, and probably in most industries—is that people are living in the current moment and not thinking about the future.”

In other words, most leaders are naturally caught up in today’s tasks, leaving tomorrow’s opportunities and challenges to chance.

But how do you build a business that’s ready for anything? What core processes do you need to ensure success beyond today?

We recently sat down with Ben to get his take on these questions and more. This conversation is an excerpt from chapter one of our latest book on Building Leaders, where Ben shares his insights on leadership planning.
 
Curious to hear more from Ben? Click on the video below to catch the full discussion!

Ben Looper’s Early Days

Nearly 30 years ago, Ben stumbled into the restoration industry. “I didn’t know what restoration was,” Ben admits, explaining that his first encounter with the field came through a high school friend. Back then, there were no cell phones—just pay phones and map books to get around. “Things were so different.”

Fast-forward to today, and Ben is the president of the RIA. His company, Southeast Restoration, has grown to over 260 team members across eight locations, serving the Southeast regions of the United States.

As someone who has had a front-row seat as the industry grew, Ben says that many things have evolved and continue to change today.

This hard-won experience is what makes Ben best positioned to tell us about:

How To Invest In The Next Generation of Leaders

Ben points out something many businesses are guilty of: chasing short-term wins and challenges at the expense of longer-term focused planning.

His solution? Putting training programs in place that develop the next generation of leadership, whether in your organization or the broader industry. As Ben puts it, “Tomorrow is going to happen whether you’re ready for it or not.”

So, it is essential to have a vision and understand that the investment today will pay dividends in the future.

But what does this mean in more tangible terms? Ben has a few actionable steps to help you get started.

1.  Leadership Starts From Within

As Leonardo da Vinci once said: success lies in the relentless execution of the basics.

The same goes for leadership. As Ben notes, leaders need to strengthen their internal core before making external demands of others.

According to Ben, leaders need to start with a solid foundation of character, loyalty, and integrity. Throw in a bit of flexibility—being willing to adjust when things aren’t going well—and you’ll be well on your way to being a star leader.

Once you’ve nailed the basics, it’s time to look ahead. That’s where having a vision comes in.

“You need to have the vision and the discipline to schedule and take time to think about the next steps and who those steps should be with,” Ben explains.

Because when you’re not proactive, you become reactive, which can create additional problems.

Ben’s quick guide for strengthening your leadership core:

• Always ask yourself the hard questions.
• Know the timing of the work you should be doing and when you should be doing it.
• Develop the ability to look into the future with your visionary work.

2. Next, You Build A “GOAT” Culture

For Ben Looper, building a GOAT—Greatest of All Time—culture is simply non-negotiable.

At Southeast Restoration, it’s all about people. “We’re a people-first organization,” Ben says, adding that the people— his organization's growth and development—motivate him.

Interestingly, by focusing on people first and setting them up for success, Ben shares that the financial aspects have taken care of themselves. This point is important because in an industry where you have to make the right decisions day after day, even when they're hard—especially when they’re hard—having the right company culture is critical.

Nothing hammers home this point like Ben's recent experience on the job. As he recalls, his team was working on a large church project when they realized they missed an important step—asbestos testing. Funny enough, the church leadership and the facilities group would never have known they skipped the step.

But, as Ben shares, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep well at night knowing the team missed a critical step and nothing was done to fix it.

So, after reviewing where the error occurred, Ben’s team took corrective measures, including a massive hit to the wallet, to fix the mistake.

“We self-penalized to the tune of about $80,000 to $100,000 that we had to go back and fix on our dime,” Ben explains. For context, this was all the profit—and then some— they would have made on the project, meaning they worked on the remaining parts for nothing.

Ben’s crew called themselves out on the error and informed the church and the adjuster about what happened.

The best part of that story is that Ben was unaware of the whole thing until after the fact.

“My team had the character to make that decision, and it cost everyone involved along the way, but they [made the decision], knowing it was the right thing to do,” Ben recalls.

He continues:

“It was a hard situation and hard to take, but knowing that the decision was made without my input was the most satisfying thing about the whole situation.”

3. Then, You Build Leadership Skills In Others 

Are leaders made or born? It’s the classic chicken-and-egg question.

Ben believes it’s a mix of both: “I think everyone is born with an innate percentage of those [character, integrity, loyalty] qualities, but I do believe they can be taught and learned.”

The answer, as Ben explains, lies in who you surround yourself with, what you’re reading, and what you’re doing—because these things influence you.

Ben also uses tools like personality assessments (DISC, Myers-Briggs, Kolbe, and Working Genius) to help his team understand their strengths and weaknesses. When everyone knows what they bring to the table, the team becomes stronger.

“We have big boards and magnets for specific planning meetings, where we acknowledge and place these profiles on a board so everyone’s aware of who scores high in which areas and who doesn’t. This [approach] helps when we’re completing the strategic planning process, so it’s clear who needs to be working with whom,” Ben explains.

4. Finally, Employ Strategic Planning and Future Thinking

“If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail,” as the saying goes.

In business, the difference between whether you react or respond to curveballs is—all things being equal—down to your level of preparation.

That’s why Ben and his team spend their time planning well over a year in advance. For an organization of their size, Ben says they have to be strategic about when they’re meeting, the topics they’re discussing, and what they’re doing.

“I’m working on the 2025 and 2026 calendars now because we have to. We have to do it ahead of time—we can’t do it in the moment. We’re literally scheduling next year’s calendar now.”

Beyond planning, another thing that helps is being flexible with plans. Ben explains that if something changes, the team evolves with the change. If a strategy isn’t working and needs to be updated, they do so, too. “But preparation, staying ahead of [things], and knowing what’s coming is essential,” Ben stresses.

He notes that his role as a leader is to stay ahead of the curve. In practical terms, this means ensuring the team is talking about the things they need to be talking about today, knowing that it will affect what happens tomorrow.

Final Takeaways

Ben’s proactive approach to anticipating leadership challenges is a surefire way to avoid future regrets. To recap, Ben says that:

• Leadership starts with self. Leaders must build core traits—like character, integrity, and loyalty—before demanding them from others. A leader must also develop the ability to see beyond the now or collaborate with visionaries to adequately plan for the future. 

• Building a great team culture is important. A company’s culture mostly always determines its success regardless of its strategy. Therefore, a great company culture is simply non-negotiable. 

• Always plan for the future. Today’s strategy may not be effective against tomorrow's newer problems. A leader’s job is to help team members develop the muscle to respond instead of reacting to potential curve balls. 

• Nurturing people and their leadership skills is everything. As Ben notes, “You can have anything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.” 

Remember: Developing leadership skills, like any other essential skill, is an ongoing process, and thanks to Ben’s insights, you’re starting on the right foot.

For more hard-won insights from Ben and his team, listen to the full interview on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

This article is the first part of a series on our book about Building Leaders. So, make sure to stay tuned and look out for subsequent episodes.

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