SBR 003: How Kevin Waldron Built a $24M/year Disaster Restoration Company from Scratch

Summary: In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, I speak with Kevin Waldron, a successful entrepreneur, business coach, and exit plan consultant. Kevin has a great life story. He arrived in the U.S. from Scotland in the early 1980s, and stumbled upon working in disaster restoration, which is the general term for companies that go in to clean up the mess after a restaurant or other business has a fire, flood, or other messy disaster. It's dirty work, but turned out to be quite lucrative. Over the course of 17 years, Kevin studied other successful entrepreneurs and methodically put in place their methods and techniques, slowly growing his company organically and through acquisition. At its peak, he took in $24 million/year in revenue, and had over 230 employees and 5 offices. After selling his business in 2005, Kevin decided to go help other entrepreneurs use the techniques he had studied and used to build their own businesses. He is currently the CEO of Waldron Consulting Group, where he coaches and trains a wide range of small to medium size clients - mostly go-getting, driven entrepreneurs like Kevin. I recorded this interview with Kevin a number of months ago, and since then he has become a good friend and my partner on the Business Profit Academy. There was so much good advice in this original interview that I knew I wanted to use it on the Podcast. In spite of all his success, Kevin is still an incredibly modest, down-to-earth guy who just happens to really know his stuff. That's why I like him so much. I bet you can't help liking him either. In this episode, we discuss: how Kevin built his company up to $24M/year in revenue with 230 employees and 5 offices. why he ran the company like he was going to sell it, even years before he ever decided to sell how he burnt out once margins went down and insurance companies started fighting over payments how he created a plan to sell his business why it’s important to make sure your employees have relationships with your key customers why he says “if you have to be there every day to turn on the lights, that’s not a business, that’s a job.”   Right Click here to download the MP3   Enjoy the show! Click here to subscribe via iTunes