How do we get restoration jobs?
Hello everybody!
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I have been considering a pretty major career change for awhile now, I currently work as a software engineer, I literally have a masters in computer science, but truth be told this was never my original plan, it was always my backup plan.
Over the past 6 months I haven't been able to stop thinking about running a blue collar business of some kind. I did a lot of construction from the age of 16 to 24 before I became a full time software dev. While I was in school though, I always intended to run my own business, but the corporate world has been a soul-crushing experience. I spend all my free time looking for an exit strategy—searching for ideas with enough growth and financial potential to finally let me work for myself.
In the past few months, it’s like the universe is shouting at me to do this. Everywhere I turn, I’m meeting people in the industry. I reconnected with a friend from high school who runs mitigation and pack-out crews, it was a grind to begin, but he does very well for himself at this point. I recently met someone in a close friend group who works on estimation for a restoration company. Even more recently I have gotten very close with an old friend from high school who actively works as a project manager for another restoration group.
When I reconnected with this last friend, I had asked him if he ever planned on starting his own thing and he answered that he had. He has enough hours to get his ROC in our state as well so that would be taken care of. Since then, we have been talking non stop, realizing that we really do have almost all of the connections and network to start a small group and get our grounding.
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Please forgive me for how long this has all been, I wanted to set the precedent because I do not want anyone just saying its not worth it, or I have no place jumping into this space because thats not what I am looking for. I have a very specific question.
For all that is holy, where do we begin getting jobs from?
I get that this stuff is largely paid out through insurance, but is it the insurance companies who we need to develop relationships with? Is it mitigation crews who don't want to do the actual restoration, is it online SEO or is it the actual homeowner?
Restoration doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can just advertise on social media since it's a service people are usually hoping to not need in the first place, but this seems like the big thing we need to solve.
In our network, we have access to a ROC, we have access to a solid network of subs, we have access to estimators who will do free lance and commission based work, I can even build us out a custom CRM if we ever needed it, we literally just need to figure out how to start getting jobs.
PLEASE HELP, I will take any suggestions.
p.s. the all knowing AI tells me that plumbers, insurance agents, and property managers is who we need connections with... sounds valid, is it?