Welcome to “Mission Critical,” a brand new series from KnowHow that explores how today's restoration leaders are navigating the industry's most urgent challenges. Sales are soft, margins are thin, and getting paid feels like pulling teeth. In this series, we spotlight elite restorers who share battle-tested systems and strategies from the trenches.

Each feature dives into specific tactics leaders use when everything's on the line—from stabilizing cash flow to driving profitable growth in unpredictable markets.

If you want concrete strategies to hit your sales numbers and produce work profitably, you're in the right place. Expect real advice, actionable insights, and takeaways from leaders who've been through the storm and come out sharper.

Ready for the mission brief?

The decision arrived during one of Thomasville Restoration's off-site meetings. The leadership team had a question for the entire company: What are our values?

Most companies handle this behind closed doors. The C-suite decides, announces, and moves on. Thomasville did something radically different.

“We came together as a company to finalize and come up with our values,” JaMar Plater, Thomasville's newly promoted COO, recalls. “Everyone had a vote, and no one had a more powerful vote than the other person.”

Technicians. Estimators. Project managers. Owners. Same voting power.

They started with ten values. Whittled them down to five. Then voted on the final three that reflected them. “And we were all bought in,” JaMar says.

The result? A 150-person company united around one mission: helping families put their homes and lives back together after a disaster.

When Everyone Builds It, Everyone Protects It

The democratic vote wasn't a feel-good exercise. It was strategic.

 “We realized that it wasn't really about the money or really about what we were doing,” JaMar explains. “It was really just [aligning] a bunch of people with the same values.”

The three values they landed on: family first, compassion, and communication.

Simple. Specific. And because everyone voted, everyone owned them.

“We may go out of business, but we are not gonna lose our values,” JaMar says.

That's not hyperbole. It's the operational reality that guides every decision at Thomasville, from hiring to expansion to how they handle customer complaints.

“People started gravitating towards the company based on the values,” JaMar notes. “We didn't have to necessarily recruit people. People just started saying, ‘I wanna be a part of Thomasville.’”

Strategic partners followed. Vendors. Adjusters. Repeat customers.

“People are just attracted to [Thomasville] because they feel a safety and security, and that's a rare thing these days,” JaMar observes.

But values only matter if they hold under pressure. For Thomasville, the test came when they decided to expand into Richmond, Virginia, a hundred miles from their Baltimore home base.

The Richmond Challenge

Geographic expansion in restoration is operationally brutal. Project concierges at Thomasville and estimators can live locally and service reconstruction work. But mitigation teams have to deploy from the Baltimore headquarters.

“Our challenge is, how do we bring those services to those areas without losing the Thomasville touch, without losing the speed of service, without losing the ability to be able to service the customer the way they're supposed to be serviced and not cut corners?” JaMar explains.

Most operators would solve this from the top. Build the plan. Announce it. Then Execute.

JaMar took a different approach in line with one of Thomasville’s core values.

“We communicated our goals to the rest of the team,” he says. “We said, it's one thing that the leadership team knows about these goals and our concerns, but let's communicate this to the whole company.”

All 150 employees. Here's the challenge. Here's the goal. Here's what we need to figure out.

All of a sudden, their network of employees started raising their hands. Some Mitigation techs offered to relocate. Other employees offered contacts who could help out.

Intriguingly, employees started volunteering solutions that headquarters would never have found alone.

“What we realized is that we had a wealth of people who wanted to help us with our goal, just because we communicated that goal,” JaMar reflects.

Most operators assume they need answers before they can present problems. JaMar proved you just need to ask the right question.

“As leaders, we feel like we have to solve all of the questions and have all of the answers. We don't," JaMar says. “We just need to be able to communicate the right questions. Who can help us reach our goal?”

But transparency only works if people trust that leadership is being honest, and that’s another place Thomasville shines.

At company off-sites, they unpack the company's financial statement with the entire team—margins, targets, and why they need to hit certain numbers.

“People don't feel like, well, is the company gonna go under tomorrow? Are we moving here, but then we're moving someplace else?” JaMar explains. "We are very transparent with the team, and because we are, it's allowing the team to communicate.”

The result is a team that flags problems early, suggests solutions proactively, and owns the outcomes.

The LEAST Framework

Transparency and values create the foundation. But JaMar also needed a tactical system for solving problems consistently—and teaching others to do the same.

His framework: LEAST.

Listen. Empathize. Apologize. Solve. Thank the customer.

"I needed to listen to the customer because 90% of the customers, when they're calling you, it's a problem because they don't feel like they're being heard," JaMar explains.

So, he listens. Really listens. Not just to words, but to what's behind them—body language, situation, frustration.

“If you're trying to listen beyond the words, their body language, their situation, then you begin to empathize.”

Next step: apologize. Not for who's right or wrong, but for the situation itself.

"I apologize for them being in that situation, because the feeling is real. They feel like they're not heard."

Then solve it. And thank them for the feedback.

But here's where JaMar takes it further.

“I ask the customers, is there anything that you would like me to tell them while I'm up there?” he says, referring to his team. “Can I use your example to help them be better?”

Most operators would never think to ask this. JaMar turns customer complaints into training moments—with permission.

“I realized that I can't hold that tool myself,” he says, “so I explain that to the teammates, then I give them the tool. Hey guys, let's do some role play. Let's do some examples.”

The more people on the team who can solve problems, the fewer issues roll uphill to senior leaders like Jamar.

“I try to not only solve the issue, but I also try to teach the folks how to fish and solve it themselves,” JaMar explains. “Ultimately, I'm teaching them to be better leaders, not just estimators and project managers.”

Systems and frameworks matter. But so does knowing what's breaking before anyone has to tell you.

The KPI JaMar Checks Every Morning

JaMar’s morning routine reveals how he stays connected to what's actually happening in the business.

“My first KPI is to look at the estimator pipeline and then I look at my reconstruction pipeline,” he explains.

He's checking: How many claims came in today? How many this week? Have they been inspected? How far out are we on inspections? Have we uploaded the estimates?

Then he looks at reconstruction billing weeks.

“Each one of our project concierges has a certain amount of billing that they have to do each week,” JaMar says. “If they have 180,000 left to bill, they have six weeks' worth of billing left. They have six weeks' worth of work left.”

But if someone only has one to two weeks of work left and they're not meeting their billing numbers, that's a red flag.

“Now my question is to the estimators, we gotta get these guys more work,” JaMar explains. “But if they have six to eight weeks, they have a healthy amount.”

The ultimate goal is visibility.

“I don't want people to be struggling,” he says. “Because those numbers tell a story.”

The leadership team looks at the same dashboards, so everyone can see who needs work before that person has to ask for it.

This is what radical transparency looks like in practice: not just showing people the big-picture financial statements, but also giving them lines of sight to the operational metrics that affect their daily reality.

What You Can Learn from JaMar:

• Vote on Your Values As a Company. Don't just decide them in a leadership retreat. Give everyone equal voting power. When people build it, they protect it.
• Communicate Challenges, Not Just Solutions. When you face operational problems, tell the whole team: here's the challenge, here's the goal. Your network will solve what leadership can't alone.
• Teach Problem-Solving, Don't Just Solve Problems. Use frameworks like LEAST that you can hand to your team. The goal is to teach people to fish, not to be the only person who can solve issues.
• Check the Right KPIs Daily. Know who has six weeks of work versus two weeks. Spot struggles before people have to ask for help. Visibility prevents crises.
• Make Transparency Operational. Don't just share big-picture numbers. Give people sight of the metrics that affect their daily work. When everyone can see the same story, problems surface early.

The market is brutal right now, but JaMar proves you can navigate it with values that hold, transparency that scales, and systems that turn employees into problem-solvers instead of passengers.