Want to Get More Profitable? Think Like a Nutritionist.

The best restoration reps don’t just sell. They listen, solve problems, and make their clients' lives easier. Here’s how you can too.

I’ve been helping restoration business owners get more profitable, reduce the chaos, and build a business they can sell for a significant amount of money when they decide to move on.

This post is about one of the most basic but powerful principles in business: job costing.

I was listening to Peter Attia’s podcast recently—he was talking about eating habits and how, despite all the new diets and trends, one of the most effective ways to eat healthy is still the simplest: counting calories. Just the act of tracking what goes in your mouth makes you more intentional and more disciplined.

And it hit me: job costing is the business version of counting calories.

Let’s say I want to maintain my weight—I need to know how many calories I burn and match what I eat to that. If I want to lose weight, I need a calorie deficit. That starts with knowing the number, right?

Same goes for running jobs.

If you want to be profitable, you need to start with a target. That means setting a budget before the job starts . . . labor, materials, subcontractors, vendors. . . .the whole thing. And then, just like food logging, you need to track the actuals against that target.

Mitigation, reconstruction, contents, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t job cost, you’re just guessing. And guessing isn’t a strategy.

Now, I get it. Counting calories isn’t fun. And neither is job costing, at first. But the evidence is overwhelming. The data, the research, my own experience, and the experiences of hundreds of restoration companies I’ve worked with all say the same thing: it works.

You just have to decide which “hard” you want.

Do you want the hard of watching profits slip away and wondering why?

Or do you want the hard of building some discipline around budgeting, tracking, and reviewing every job?

One leads to frustration. The other leads to clarity, progress, and higher profits.

Pick your hard. And if you want help putting a system in place that your team can actually stick to, let’s talk.