After 16 years of owning and operating All Nation Restoration in Austin, Texas serving clients with water, fire, and mold remediation I’ve made more than a few mistakes. But one stands out above the rest. It was a mistake so costly it almost destroyed my company. And yet, looking back, I’m grateful for what it taught me about strategy, patience, and what it really means to pivot.
In the early years of All Nation, we thrived on referrals mostly from plumbers, property managers, and the occasional real estate agent. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that it was standard to give out gift cards as thank you’s for referrals. Keep track of the address, send a little appreciation, and move on. Simple enough.
As someone who’s always respected the IRS and stayed on top of my taxes, I never imagined I’d run into an issue. But around year seven, I was audited. And that audit, though nerve racking at the time, was one of the most valuable experiences of my career.
My books were solid. Every dollar accounted for. Every tax filed and paid on time. Except for one thing: those gift cards. The IRS agent told me plainly, “How do we know you didn’t just buy these cards and spend them on yourself?” Even though I never did, she had a point. There was no proof I hadn’t. In the end, she agreed to allow about half of the deductions and disallowed the rest, handing me a relatively minor bill with penalties and interest.
Being the kind of person I am, I took the lesson seriously. I wanted to do it right going forward.
So, I put together a plan. I called every plumber and property manager we worked with. I told them about the audit, explained that from now on we’d need them to fill out tax paperwork, and that gift cards would be replaced with mailed checks. All legit. All above board.
I was confident they’d appreciate my honesty. After all, I hadn’t reported any of them to the IRS. I’d eaten the liability. I’d remained loyal.
I was wrong.
Almost overnight, every single one of those referral partners disappeared.
No loyalty. No conversations. No pushback. Just silence. They moved on most likely to the next company still handing out gift cards under the table.
Looking back, I see the flaw wasn’t in my integrity, it was in my timing. I should’ve taken a slower, more strategic approach.
If I could do it all over again, here’s how I would’ve handled it:
Hell, I even could’ve kept giving gift cards without writing them off as expenses until I had a better plan in place. It’s not that doing the right thing was wrong. It’s that I did it too fast. I ripped the Band-Aid off without a backup strategy.
The collapse of our referral network left us in free fall. It was brutal. But in that chaos, something powerful emerged: necessity. And necessity has always been the mother of innovation.
We pivoted…hard.
We stopped depending on plumbers and real estate agents and built a marketing engine. We dove deep into SEO, Google reviews, paid search, social media, and digital platforms. The scary unknown world of online marketing became our new home. And we got good at it fast.
Today, All Nation Restoration is stronger than ever, thanks to that audit and the painful lessons that came with it.
Sometimes in business, doing the right thing still leads to painful consequences. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing what’s right it just means you slow down, think it through, and implement change with strategy, not impulse.
I made the right move at the wrong time but in the long run, it forced me to build something better.
Stay strong. Stay focused. Stay in business.
