The old way sucked: A conversation with Discreet Restoration

Josh is the owner and president of Discreet Restoration and has been using magicplan for years. Follow along below as Josh shares his thoughts on magicplan and explains how it helps communicate his company's mission of full transparency.

Tell us about Discreet Restoration and your role there. How did you get started?

My name is Josh Winton. I own and operate Discreet down in South Florida. We handle all sorts of indoor environmental remediation and abatement processes. It all started when I worked for UPS and realized I didn't want to be a corporate guy. I first jumped into this industry as a part-time employee at a company that offers mold remediation services and all sorts of other abatement services. I liked the work and ended up opening my own company four short years after entering the industry.

Looking back in time, what were the most prominent issues the industry was facing, and how did magicplan help solve those problems?

Obviously magicplan didn't correct the dishonest nature of our industry. Unfortunately, it's plagued and blacklisted in a lot of areas as a very dishonest service. But for what we do, magicplan has been great because we're all about transparency. It lets us display what we do and how we do it in a digestible manner.
magicplan, at least for us, allows us to not only put all our ideas down on paper but really explains what we're doing with visuals that the insurance carrier, the adjuster, and the homeowner can understand.

Can you walk me through the process how you use magicplan on site?

Typically our project manager Mike will go out to a property and meet with – let's call her fictitious Mrs. Jones. We'll want to explain the process to her and make sure she understands what we're going to do, and also make sure we communicate what makes us different in our industry.
When it comes to incorporating magicplan, the first step is going through the property and sketching out the rooms. We mark up all the affected areas where we're going to be performing some level of remedial services. That floor plan is our basis for what ultimately becomes the estimate we'll produce back in the office.

When you think about the old way of doing business, how much time does magicplan save you?

Oh, the old way sucked! The new workflow has been absolutely phenomenal for us. Your average single-family home, let's say under 1,500 square feet, we can sketch that in a matter of minutes. It's very easy and very user friendly. The fact that it has a built-in estimating tool is amazing as well. If we wanted to, we could produce estimates right then and there. We can sit down with the client, review everything, and finish the estimate during our first meeting.

Read our free whitepaper: How to reduce estimating time by 30%+ and maximize your customer win rate

Do you remember how you first heard about magicplan?

I think I was just going through the App Store, looking for floor plans. I've always been into the tech side of things. I regularly go on my midnight binges looking for new apps, something that could make my life easier. Stuff I can spend money on, haha! I think I just came across magicplan as a floor plan tool. Back when I found it, the app was not nearly as developed, and I still found a use for it then.

Do you have a favorite magicplan feature?

As I mentioned before: having an estimating tool on site. Within our industry, we've got tons of different software applications. We've got estimating programs, and then we've also got floor plan creation programs. We've got areas to save photos like your typical Dropboxes and Google photos. magicplan brings it all together where we've got an all-in-one tool that can handle everything from photo collection and annotation to floor plan creation. Also, having the ability to place 360 photos in the rooms, just for a visual reference of what we walked into at that snapshot in time, is super huge for us on the insurance side.

It's great to hear we can help! Would you recommend magicplan to other businesses in the industry?

NO! Hahaha, it's the worst tool I've ever used! Seriously though, magicplan is great. I literally tell anyone and everyone I can about it. In my experience, magicplan has always had an open-door policy. I can always contact customer support about things I'd like to see incorporated into the program. Like all things in life, if the demand isn't there, you're not going to see the fruition, but magicplan has taken most of my requests into consideration. You guys have an awesome Facebook Group – since it is 2020, and we need to use social media as a platform. It's been great to use it as a customer support tool and talk about new features, like using Zapier to integrate other programs out there… it's been really cool to see magicplan grow.

Fantastic! Thank you, Josh. Finishing statement: magicplan is…

... revolutionary.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. We’re always grateful for your input to further improve magicplan for the restoration industry. It has been great!

Check out the Discreet Restoration website and Josh's awesome YouTube channel.

You can also read about why replacing ‘the industry standard software’ with magicplan was a very easy switch for Warren Restoration to make.

Interested in learning more about magicplan?

Request a free demo and learn how magicplan can support your business.

Or learn in our free On-demand Webinar how to benefit from magicplan as a restoration business. You can watch it on your own time.