CEO
Innovative Restorations
Crossville, Tenn.
2021 Revenue: $3.4 million
Advice to others: My advice for young professionals is to never quit and know your numbers. If you don’t, you could be sinking your ship unknowingly. It’s why so many go under and I still see it happening today when we bid against other companies.
Best innovation: I struggled for years to get jobs done on time and not over budget. Most contractors quote just cost-plus, but we quote jobs and charge what we quote. But I couldn’t keep my costs in line after trying different things. At one point in time, I lost some employees, but I came in and told my crew that we have all this work, but we can’t get behind. If you can keep us on track with normal hours, I’ll give you $80 in cash each on Friday. They all went home at 40 hours and we got all the work done. The next week, I said the same deal, and they stayed on track. They finished all those projects on time and on budget.
Two years ago, I changed the performance pay to a percentage basis of the project. They know going into it what their total labor pool is. They’ve been smoking it ever since.
Business podcast recommendation:
The EntreLeadership Podcast
