For a lot of business owners, October isn’t exactly a time of new beginnings. You might be fantasizing about taking a breath, taking a break and starting fresh. If you’re like most, setting a New Year’s resolution for your business is the furthest thing from your mind. It shouldn’t be.

Apply the same investigative mindset we teach our teams to use in water-damaged homes when you are dealing with interpersonal and organizational challenges.

Jim Kowalski is owner and vice president of Kowalski Construction Inc. He is also president of the Restoration Affiliates board. Here, he shares secrets to success and lessons learned in growing his third-generation, family-run property restoration company. He also explains what Restoration Affiliates is. 

Restoration M&A expert Gokul Padmanabhan answers one of the most-asked questions he receives.

For the last five years, Dallas Nevill’s restoration company has grown at a steady pace. Old habits may be hard to forget, but if they hold your business back from reaching its potential, it’s time to kick them to the curb. 

A lot of people talk about marketing their company, but not enough of them have actual data to back up what they say and think.

Now, more than ever, it’s a “buyer’s market” for labor with workers having the power to choose the organization, culture and job opportunity they want to “buy.” Your task is to be sure that your business entices the right employees to want to buy it over others.

With a good subcontractor agreement that has solid insurance requirements, many of the most expensive losses in the restoration business can be offloaded on a primary basis onto the subcontractor’s liability insurance policies.

Rolling it uphill requires that before we blame the team for being careless or sloppy, we as leaders look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we truly set our teams up for success.