If you remember when you first decided to get into water restoration work, that first big call is EXCITING. A chance for you to put your training, tools, and team into action.

Piranha Marketing dominates the carpet cleaning industry as a marketing company (we are the #1 provider by a long shot of marketing tools and business training in this industry). But Piranha also dominates the restoration sector, as two-thirds of our members do some level of restoration work from a small loss now and then to chasing hurricanes.

This year we decided to lay out a complete system for getting into water damage work. Every step it takes to go from ZERO knowledge to a full-fledged Disaster-Response Restoration Operation.

Our very first company in this “Zero to Hero” Restoration Success Path has been the Dry Guys (Jerry, Mike, Jamie and their team). You’ve seen updates from them with their Piranha Restoration Mentor Ron Osborne on this blog, going to get their WRT and ASD training, getting their equipment (and saving THOUSANDS through Piranha’s Buyers Group), and getting their technical/operational/documentation systems in place.

In fact, Mike and Jerry were both at our recent Hands-on Restoration Symposium in Nashville co-hosted by Dri-Eaz and Interlink Supply, where we flooded a house right here:

Here’s Mike & Jerry asking questions to Dri-Eaz’s Mike Newby and Interlink’s Ron Collings:

100+ other professionals came to town to learn a ton about the technical side of the craft…

In particular how they can, even if they are a small company, use the Piranha Network to do LARGE LOSS work.  No matter what the size of loss, they have the resources to secure jobs that before they believed to be out of their reach. Here’s one of our Partners helping with larger loss work – Bryan Dant of GDSI with one of his first response vehicles:

Here’s the Dry Guys update this Father’s Day weekend – TWENTY FLOOD CALLS!

They knew in January they were going to get into water restoration work, so they ran an ad in their Yellow Pages directory that just recently hit homes … just in time for the rains, and basement floods.

Basement flooding was a question we addressed in depth during our recent technical Restoration Success Tele-Training call with ASD Instructor Kevin Fisher of Dri-Eaz, so they knew what makes these floods in particular a Category 2 versus a Category 3 and whether the path would be to clean or to replace all affected areas.

(By the way – these are VERY important distinctions, and each dictates how you approach the job. Reference your IICRC S-500 Water Damage Restoration Standards for what is recommended for each, and be sure to own a copy of Dri-Eaz’s “New Guide To Restorative Drying” manual, it is incredibly valuable for you and your technicians.)

This weekend Ron was planning to head to the Dry Guys facility to help do some intensive one-on-one consulting on their marketing systems to get more flood work, and now he’ll be an extra set of eyes and hands in watching these newly certified, trained, and well-prepared Restoration Professionals in action.

Most who get into restoration do so accidentally.  They have a cleaning client who has a pipe break, and BAM they become a restorer.

Or they invest hundreds of thousands into vehicles, a franchise, and equipment and sit and wait for the work to magically appear. The only strategy seems to be “buy it and it will come.” When it doesn’t come, you “magically” go bankrupt!

The Dry Guys did it the right way.

They became FULLY knowledgeable about they were getting into. They got FULLY trained and IICRC certified.  THEN they bought the equipment and strategized what they wanted to own, and what they could rent from Piranha Partners if they suddenly got a surge in work (like right now). They also began building a network of Piranha Members to tap into when the work gets larger than they are comfortable handling.

Four months after they made their decision to become focused on Restoration Work, they are entering into the weekend with a flood of floods.  Mike and his father-in-law Jerry will be spending Father’s Day doing flood work… and I think that might be one of the best gifts they could have received.

The Dry Guys run a very successful, high-service, cleaning company. In fact, last year they were finalists in our “Better Your Best” implementation contest.

A year from now, because they have chosen to add Restoration to their services, and are planning a Restoration Success Strategic plan to do it, their company will be at an entirely different revenue level.

Not only will they have the personal satisfaction of being able to put people’s lives and homes back together… but they will also discover how valuable (and lucrative) that skill is to their community.

Happy Father’s Day!
-    Lisa