Operations & Profitability
A fixed-fee Profit Leak Audit of the trailing-twelve P&L: equipment rental recovery, vendor contracts, warehouse control and job costing that matches the estimate to the invoice — then the cadence that keeps it fixed.
Industries · Disaster restoration
Restoration is the trade we know from the inside.
Mitigation, remediation, roofing and general contracting. Steve spent six years at BluSky Restoration Contractors, a national disaster-restoration firm, rising to Vice President & Director of Operations of its Tampa branch — and took it from under $11M to $27M+ in sales, with EBITDA at 211% of goal in his final twelve months.
- <$11M → $27M+branch sales
- 169%of goal, 2023 down year
- #1EBITDA, Southeast 2024
What does Coach to Success do for disaster-restoration contractors?
Coach to Success works with disaster-restoration contractors between $5M and $50M in revenue — owner-operated, franchise and private-equity-backed — on both halves of the branch P&L: a sales team that hunts and forecasts honestly, and an operation that bills its drying equipment, costs every job the same way from estimate to invoice, counts its warehouse and reads its indirect costs every month. Steven C. Lindstrom, our President, ran the Tampa branch of a national disaster-restoration firm from 2019 to 2025: under $11M to $27M+ in sales, $3.47M EBITDA in 2022, 169% of revenue and EBITDA goals in the industry’s 2023 down year, and the top EBITDA producer in the Southeast in 2024.
Based in Tampa, Florida; remote-first, on-site when it matters.
The leaks we see in this sector
Five places a restoration branch bleeds.
Each of these is drawn from a P&L Steve ran, not from a survey.
Drying equipment that never gets billed
The office owns the air movers, dehumidifiers and scrubbers. Run right, it rents them to each job at a rate that carries about a 50% margin, and the jobs pay for the fleet. Run wrong, the equipment goes out for free, the job looks great, and the office eats the cost of owning it — no indirect-cost recovery at all.
Contracts signed somewhere else
$1,300 a month for a phone system and 800-numbers in an office where everyone was on a cell phone — signed years earlier at corporate, for every branch. Months of negotiation took it to $200: more than $13,000 a year back to EBITDA from a single line.
A warehouse nobody counts
Consumables and equipment leave for jobs and never get charged, or leave for no job at all. If the warehouse is not in order, you cannot know what went out, what came back, or what the job actually cost.
Jobs on margin, branch losing money
Every project report says the job hit margin; the office still misses EBITDA. The gap is indirect cost that was never charged to the work that consumed it — and it is the most common question restoration leaders bring us.
A branch nobody at headquarters is watching
The branch Steve took over had been left to succeed or fail on its own: under $11M in sales, minimal EBITDA. The fix was teaching the team a way of selling and operating, then holding the cadence every week.
The record
One branch, as the operator.
$27M+
Annual sales in 2022, from under $11M
211%
Of EBITDA goal, trailing twelve months
169%
Of revenue and EBITDA goals in the 2023 industry down year
~2×
The EBITDA of the next office in the Southeast, 2024
Results achieved by Steven C. Lindstrom at BluSky Restoration Contractors’ Tampa branch, 2019–2025 (Vice President from March 2022). See the full record
Where restoration owners start
Two services, one branch P&L.
Most restoration engagements begin on the operations side, because that is where the money is leaking today. The sales side is where the next $10M comes from.
Sales Team Transformation
A restoration sales team taught to hunt rather than wait for the phone: solution selling, DISC-based communication, honest forecasting and a manager who can run the Friday meeting, installed in a 90-Day Sales Sprint.
Related reading
Why you made money on every job and still missed EBITDA
The trades’ most common P&L mystery: healthy job margins, a branch that still loses money. The five indirect-cost leaks behind it, and how to find them.
Questions
Restoration owners ask.
Restoration contractors between roughly $5M and $50M in revenue — owner-operated, franchise or private-equity-backed, single or multi-branch. Under about $2M you need a great salesperson more than a consultant, and we will say so on the call.
The office owns the drying equipment and rents it to each project that uses it; that rental is an indirect cost on the job and, at a rate carrying about a 50% margin, income for the office. When the job is charged and the client is billed, the equipment earns its keep. When it is not, there is no recovery, the job looks more profitable than it is, and the equipment looks like it never makes money. The Profit Leak Audit checks that every job is being charged.
It did. 2023 was a down sales year across the restoration industry, and the branch Steve ran finished it at 169% of its revenue and EBITDA goals — because a team taught to hunt, forecast honestly and protect margin does not need a good market to hit its number.
Next step
Which jobs are paying for the equipment you own?
Thirty minutes with the trailing-twelve and the equipment list in front of us. We will tell you where we would look first — and whether a Profit Leak Audit is worth it.
- You talk to Steve, not a salesperson
- Replies within one business day
- Based in Tampa
- Nationwide
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