Meet the Team Behind FIVE New Territories
When Burke Allen, Julie Allen, Jay Hassell, and Steve Taylor decided to take on the restoration industry, they came to the scene with plenty of collective business experience. Afterall, these newest RestoPros Intown GA franchise owners joined entrepreneurial forces years ago.
Today, they’re set to tackle five territories in the Peach State. When they launch RestoPros Intown GA of Northeast Georgia, its service footprint will cover the counties of Fulton, Barrow, Gwinnett, Forsyth, Hall, and Jackson. These areas come loaded with municipalities, communities – and of course, a major city in Atlanta. The four partners understand the opportunity that awaits them, and they plan to use their business savvy – along with their friendship – to propel their RestoPros Intown GA possibilities.
Burke and Julie first met in middle school. They’d attend college together and marry shortly after graduation. Steve connected with Burke through their mutual work in the software sector. Ultimately, the three moved on to start their own venture, NovoLogic – a software and business consulting firm that provides enterprise grade solutions for companies in the airline, quick service restaurant, healthcare, manufacturing, and hotel industries. Jay joined NovoLogic some 12 years ago, helping the team launch another business: Cornerstone Coworking – a space that now serves more than 100 businesses and nonprofit organizations. Combined, the power partners behind RestoPros Intown GA of Northeast Georgia cover all the skillset bases to be a franchise success!
Burke has a wealth of technical, sales and management experience from his time with IBM. He’s harnessed and grown those qualities since kickstarting NovoLogic more than two decades ago. At the same time, he’s guided several other businesses in their startup stages, also playing other leadership roles through involvement in the nonprofit space as well as civic organizations.
In a previous leg of her career, Julie was instrumental in helping First Atlanta Bank transition to digital check processing. Through this undertaking, she managed more than 300 employees. She’s spent the last 20-plus years serving as CFO of NovoLogic and steering the way for Cornerstone Coworking.
Early on, Steve worked as a quality control technician, then quickly shifted to software engineer for a major pharmaceutical company. He built a stellar reputation for his attention to detail and ability to solve problems on the fly. Steve went on to help found NovoLogic, where he zoned in on providing outstanding customer support.
Jay – who spent the first part of his career in leadership roles for a subsidiary of Kodak (Qualex Inc.) – came aboard NovoLogic as the Chief Operations Officer more than a decade ago. He specialized in morphing poor-performing operations into high-output teams and cultures. As COO of NovoLogic, he even gained first-hand experience in renovation. In fact, his day-to-day responsibilities included oversight of repairs and maintenance to the company’s 10,000-square-foot coworking space. Thankfully, Jay’s a certified (S-500 IICRC) Water Damage Restoration Technician (WRT). He ultimately served as the general contractor for both the design and build-out phase of the coworking space!
Shortly after the pandemic started, the four partners began looking for franchise opportunities. The goal was to continue diversifying their business portfolio, and they felt this was the right time to do so.
“Having spent the last decade and a half helping national franchise groups implement systems to allow them to continue to scale while keeping their brand promise, we decided that we wanted to put our knowledge and experience into real world practice,” Burke explained.
Their search led the partners to RestoPros Intown GA.
“It ultimately came down to a few variables for us,” Burke said. “RestoPros Intown GA’ business model offered an overall structure — from employees, equipment, assets, etc. that we were willing to manage and deal with on a daily basis. In addition, they offered a financial model that would support a larger group of ‘owner-investors’ and provide what is expected to be a fairly-quick path to break even.”
Burke added that their team greatly admired RestoPros Intown GA’ culture of leadership, which is driven by candor, optimism, a can-do attitude, and transparency. These are all attributes needed to hit the next franchise level, he said.
Currently, the RestoPros Intown GA system provides four key emergency restoration services for residential and commercial properties. These include solutions for water damage, mold remediation, fire restoration, and smoke remediation. As the Northeast Georgia partners hit the ground running in a sprawling market, they anticipate high demand. They said they’re committed to becoming known as the “Gold Standard” for customer service and feel confident that will spur prosperity along the way.
