This week Piranha Marketing sponsored a sold-out Applied Structural Drying (ASD) IICRC-certification course at Dri-Eaz in Nashville, Tennessee.

We had Piranha Members brand new in the restoration business, to those with decades of experience, to those having had ASD before – all coming in to learn the latest in technological advances as it applies to drying a flooded house.

As you can tell from the class photo – it was a FUN group!

As a team we not only took a house flooded for several days, and in a week of rainy weather we dried out flooring, walls, and the crawlspace … AND as a team we also collectively ate more than EIGHT pounds of candy (a record with Dri-Eaz, which I do not know if we will receive a trophy for or not).

The course was instructed by Kevin Fisher, helped by Mike Newby. It had a great balance of the technical “how to” with great hands-on opportunities.  We even had the chance to field test some different drying theories, as Kevin gave us a lot of latitude to make adjustments as needed.

Most of this industry is NOT certified in ASD or WRT (the pre-requisite for ASD). Yet insurance adjusters are beginning to purchase their own courses in order to train their own teams on determining why some losses have problems versus others.

Being certified in this field IS a marketing advantage – if you leverage it. (You certainly do not want to be in a situation where an insurance adjuster has more certifications than you!)

What I love about Piranha Members is that they have a culture of learning and “bettering their best” in their blood.

Even though they may be more knowledgeable than anyone else in their town – they are continually seeking out new ideas and better ways to achieve the results they are after.  You see this in their marketing efforts, always learning through events and coaching programs … and that same mindset extends to the technical realm, where you are looking for the latest research, tools, and techniques to deliver even better value to your clients.

I have taken many different courses in this industry – and this ASD course now ranks top of my list in an educational experience.  Dri-Eaz put on a great course, and everyone walked away with much more knowledge than they arrived with.

Now they can return to their cities and be able to powerfully communicate why their knowledge, their equipment, and their training sets them apart from their competition and why they need to be handling that water loss.

If you are in restoration and are not certified, or the only meter you own is a moisture meter, or you think you can deflood a house with a shop vac, or you have no clue what the S-500 means … you are setting yourself up to take a big fall.  Education and equipment ARE marketing strategies that can secure you jobs, if you know how to use them.

I could not have asked for a better group of professionals to learn with this week.  Thank you to them, and to Dri-Eaz for creating a great week in Nashville.

- Lisa

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

If you’re thinking about getting into Restoration (a 130 billion dollar a year industry), watch this video…  This could be the most valuable 3 minutes you spend online for your business this year!
Visit www.AskTheRestorer.com to sign up for this awesome teleseminar training!

Here’s an example of what Piranha has done for one Cleaning & Restoration Company: