The One Thing You Absolutely Can’t Live Without

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Annissa Coy

Let’s talk about the human body for a minute. There are a lot of complex systems, organs and parts that make our bodies function and function well.

There’s the liver, nervous system, circulatory system, heart, lungs, kidneys and brain just to name a few. All of these organs and systems are very important and totally necessary for the body to survive.

But is there one that is more important over the other? Can some of them be replaced by a machine or a transplant?

The answer is yes to both.

You can have a liver, lung or heart transplant. You can even live without a kidney and hook up to a machine. But the two things you cannot live without is a brain, nervous system and circulatory system.

So education and systems are to your business what your brain and nervous/circulatory systems are to your body.

Two things you or your company will die without.

Now this is definitely a subject I can sink my teeth into.

I get so passionate and excited when you start talking about educating yourself and implementing systems!

I know to some of you that makes me a little on the weird side.

Ok…a lot on the weird side. :)

But by the time you are done reading this I hope to have you quite excited about my fav topic as well.

You can have a huge warehouse and tens of thousands of dollars worth of the latest and greatest equipment on the planet but if you have no clue how to use them or set your crews into motion processing jobs using them would be like owning a car without a steering wheel and a gear shift.

You can sit in it and look pretty but you aren’t gonna go anywhere.

You can rent, lease or even JV (joint venture) with someone to get the equipment you need. But the right education and systems in place in your operation are what puts you on the road to success.

The other reason that I am so passionate about education is this is an asset that you will own forever.

It doesn’t depreciate.

It can’t be repossessed.

You pay for it as you go so there is no debt to ensure.

And it builds the best kind of capital there is….Mental Capital!

AND THIS IS THE ONE THING THAT WILL QUICKLY SET YOU APART FROM YOUR COMPETITORS!!

Education and systems has consistently put me ahead of the pack in my business year after year. And it will do the same for you.

When you walk into a prospective client’s home and they are devastated by a disaster that involves everything that they own they want to know that they are in good, knowledgeable and confident hands.

Think about it…if you are taking your Porsche into the shop for a major repair would you want to hear that your mechanic has the newest latest greatest equipment?? Sure. But more importantly wouldn’t you want to hear that they have the best trained and most knowledgeable technicians to use that equipment. Of course you would.

Your potential new client would to.

So what kind of class do you need to take?

One that teaches you how to do the job not how to take a test. One that gives you hands on training with complete reference manuals to take back with you for future use.

You want an instructor that is in the trenches with you and is willing to work with you and support you after your class is completed and you are back in your business implementing all that you have learned. Someone who is willing to guide you thru that initial learning phase and getting your feet wet so to speak.

You want an instructor who can give you all the tools and turnkey systems you need to be successful once you are back in the field.

Your classroom should be full of doing the work not just watching a power point.

DON’T SETTLE FOR ANYTHING LESS IN YOUR EDUCATION!

Cause if you do you and your client both suffer.
And that’s not cool.

Too many classes today teach you just enough to be dangerous and not enough to be successful.

Well I hope you are a bit more excited about my fav topic. :)

Are you…???

~Annissa

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So Cut To The Chase…Am I Gonna Need A Second Mortgage?

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Annissa Coy

No! Absolutely NOT!

And if someone tells you otherwise I’ll bet it’s because they stand to make some commission when you spend all that money.

I’ve heard horror stories of people who are getting into this business being sold tens of thousands of dollars or more of equipment and they don’t even have a building yet nor have they even taken a class!

Now don’t get me wrong you can spend as much money as you want to start up any kind of business and some people do and are very successful. But some people do and within a year they are broke and closing the door and selling off all of the assets that they spent tons of money on that wasn’t necessary to buy in the beginning phase of their business in the first place.

I know first hand of countless cleaning and restoration companies that started out on a shoe string budget sometimes not even owning a single piece of equipment before they opened their doors. And they have been wildly successful.

Sometimes I wonder if this makes us stronger as business owners knowing that it’s up to us to have the skills and ability to sell the job and deliver the value not the fancy equipment in our arsenal.

Now before anybody gets ticked at me (like any equipment manufactuers reading this :) ) I want to make it very clear that I am not saying that equipment is not necessary or important in this industry. We all know that the better the tools are that you have the easier, faster and sometimes better the job.

But if all you are worrying about is having all the big bad expensive equipment at your disposal and don’t focus on the other part that you can’t rent or lease then you probably aren’t going to have much success in your business.

The big thing that I want to stress here is not to worry about how to buy the equipment so much. There are several ways to “get” the equipment that you need. You can buy, rent, lease and sometimes trade for it.

I’m not going to go into the equipment and supplies list this post (as I am going to cover that in great detail in a future post) but I am going to dig into the things that you must have and how you can get them.

Then you are going to need to purchase some smaller cleaning tools and supplies. For instance mops, buckets, brooms, specialty scrub brushes and industry specific specialty cleaning and deodorizing agents. But again remember you don’t need a warehouse full you just need enough to do one job to begin with. As you get bigger you can buy in bigger quantities and save some money as well.

A big thing you need to budget in is Education and systems. This is the single most important aspect in my opinion. Cause without it nothing else matters.

Now you can get educated in a variety of ways. You can take a class, buy an online course, read a book and even Google yourself to death. This can all range in cost from several thousand dollars to free.

But I would ask you what is the value if the price is free?

Without education and systems in place you can have all the shiny new state of the art equipment that money can buy and you will have shiny new state of the art equipment that you have no idea how to use to make money with.

You need to be willing to invest in your knowledge base so you can build a good foundation for your business.

You can expect to spend several thousand dollars on your education and systems right away. It’s your best investment period!

So I guess to answer the question “How much do I need to invest to startup a new cleaning reastoration company”?

I would give you an estimate of minimum supplies and equipment that need to be purchased outright and tell you that you can get into this business for under $1000.

I’m just trying to drive my point home that this is really a question that needs to be answered by the individual circumstances of the individual and what they are willing and wanting to do.

Next we are going to talk about Education and Systems.

So what do you think?

I would love to hear your feedback…

~Annissa

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The Truth…How Much $$ It Really Takes??

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Annissa Coy

The number one question that people ask me about contents and restoration cleaning is…

“How much money am I going to have to invest in equipment and supplies to get started?”

And my answer is always one word…”Depends”.

To begin with asking how much money will it take for me/my business to get into restoration cleaning is like asking how much money will I need to buy a car?

Depends…

Do you want new or used?

Where are you located?

What fazes of the cleaning process do you want to do in house and what do you want to sub out?

Are there equipment rental facilities near you?

Are you willing to JV with someone else?

Just to name a few.

If you want to buy a car you can go to a Kia dealership or to a Mercedes dealership. Obviously you will be having two very different conversations with your pocket book when you decide which dealership to go shopping at.

The same is very true for getting into the cleaning aspect of restoration.

I know companies that use 48,000 square foot facilities and yet I do all my cleaning in less than 320 square foot of space. So it’s easy to see there are several ways to get the job done.

And obviously there is going to be a huge difference in cost between the two. Insurance, Utilities, initial cost investment, upkeep etc.

However…you have some questions to ask yourself before we can answer the “how much money is it going to cost me” question.

1. What type of services am I going to offer?

2. How much money do I have to invest in startup?

3. What type of Education and Classes do I need to take?

4. What size facility will I need?

5. Employees???

6. What kind of software do I need to bill out to insurance companies?

7. What equipment and supplies will I need?

8. How do I market my services?

Because there are so many questions I am going to break them down over several posts.

So let’s begin…

1. What type of services am I going to offer in house?

Restoration cleaning can be anything from full on handle anything in the house or structure that was damaged or just handling specialty items like area rugs, upholstery or artwork. Some people say that if you don’t handle every single aspect of a job that you won’t get the work but that is not true. I use sub-contractors on my jobs all the time to do work that I don’t have the equipment to handle and don’t want to buy it. Such as piano guy, grandfather clock guy, HVAC guy and maybe plumber guy. :)

Now the more services that you handle “in house” the more money that you get to keep in your pocket. But if you are just starting out and are limited on how much you can initially invest then sub-out some of the specialty item cleaning and you can still make a smaller profit percentage until you can invest more in equipment later on as your business grows.

For instance you can do laundry in house and buy an $80,000 Esporta Machine…

Or you can JV with a cleaner to do the laundry for you and you get a percentage of the total billing and not have to put out all that cash or get a loan.

You may also want to offer complete structure cleaning services within your company as well. I would highly recommend this as it does not require a lot of equipment and the profit margins are huge!

As I said earlier you can sub-out to specialty contractors certain pieces of your job but it is very important for you to remain in charge of the quality and service that your sub contractors provide on your job. You will need to have a good understanding and knowledge of what processes are needed for your subs to complete there part of the job so you can inspect what you expect from them.

Another important piece of cleaning belongings is electronics. The equipment to do this can vary from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. So this may be a good item to sub out at first unless you can rent the equipment (which we will talk in detail about on another post) and have the proper training on how to use it.

There is a portable system made by Fireline that is quite inexpensive.

And a system made by Odell that is considerable more.

Both of these systems are good and work well. It again just depends on you and your budget.

The one thing that any homeowner or adjuster is going to want from you is for you to be their one stop shop. They only want to deal with one contractor and write one check in most cases. So the more you are willing to expand and handle under one roof the faster your contents processing business will grow.

Well I hope I have given you lots to think about. And hopefully didn’t freak you out. :)

Next post we will talk about question #2 How Much Mullah Is This Gonna Take?

~Annissa

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The Secret Piece Of Cleaning And Restoration That Has More Profit Than Any Other Piece Hands Down!

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Annissa Coy

It continues to astound me that so many Cleaning and Restoration companies walk away from tons of profit on almost every single job. With just a little bit more effort you could be smiling just like her all the way to the bank.

And why would you ignore a 65 to 75% profit margin that is yours for the taking??

Why would you not want to do something that can gross you up to $25000 or more in as little as 7 days?

Would I have your attention if I told you that you can get paid on your invoice almost immediately upon completion?

How about if you could add this profit center to your business for less than it would cost you to buy two air movers?

Other aspects of the Cleaning and Restoration industry can cost tens of thousands of dollars to get into. This piece can cost as little as a few hundred dollars to start up.

And the funny thing is most of you are already doing it for your clients but you’re not doing all of it and leaving a lot of money on the table in the process.

The part that is so frustrating for me is the reason companies don’t want to deal with this piece of the job is that they assume that it’s gonna be difficult and just don’t want to be hassled with it. They just want to get on with the dry out or the remediation because they think that’s where all the money is at.

Well if that is what you think let me tell you you’re dead wrong!

Yep you guessed it. I’m talking about contents. :)

Look you can say you don’t do contents but you are only fooling yourself. And you would be wrong. Because if you are in this business dealing with cleaning carpets, rugs or mitigation work then you are dealing with contents whether you like it or not. And most often I find that businesses don’t like it at all so they just look the other way and stack all those personal items in the center of the room and pretend that they don’t exist.

In essence what they do when doing this is literally ignore money. Just doesn’t make any sense does it?

Contents remediation and processing is not only one of the highest profit margins in Cleaning and Restoration but it really is not difficult to deal with. I promise. :)

You of course need the proper education and systems in place to handle the job. I mean you wouldn’t dream of buying a van and a truck mount and just start sucking water out of someone’s house without having the proper paperwork in place, certifications and getting educated about the process…right??

To ignore them will not only hurt your bottom line but will tell your homeowner that you don’t care about them. Cause that’s the message that they will get loud and clear.

A key component to handling contents successfully and making lots of high profit is to ask your homeowner what their concerns are right up front. And if their concern is the grand piano then handle it right away. If the biggest concern is her wedding dress then handle it right away.

Where the problem arises is when we don’t address these things right away in the beginning of the job. And that is where the fear of contents comes from when these horror stories start circulating about cleaners having to buy $7000 pool tables and $10000 diamond rings gone missing. If you look a little closer you almost always find a cleaner or contractor who ignored the pool table and the ring to begin with thus creating their own nightmare.

If they had just given the pool table a little bit of their attention they could have been paid a lot of money to clean it instead. I have billed as high as $1500 to handle a pool table and it only took me 2 hours to do it.

Not a bad ROI!:)

So the moral to this rant is…

Don’t turn your back on money that is laying around for you on almost every job you are already handling. Putting it in your bank account makes a whole lot more sense to me.

I’m just saying…:)

Ps. My next post you won’t want to miss. I’m going to go into what is needed in way of supplies and equipment to do contents and structure cleaning.

Pps. Be sure and subscribe to the blog by hitting the follow me button at the top so you don’t miss out.

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Adding Content Cleaning To Your Cleaning/Restoration Business

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Annissa Coy

If you are currently in anykind of cleaning business and you are not doing fire/soot clean up even on a small level you’re really missing out on a lot of profit.

You may think that fire and soot cleanup is expensive to get into and very labor intensive. But that’s not true.

Yes you can spend tens of thousands of dollars setting up a huge warehouse full of the latest state of the art equipment and there is nothing wrong with that, if you have that kind of money. But if you don’t have a spare stack of money lying around and don’t want to go into debt in order to add fire and soot cleanup to your companies repertoire of services you will be happy to know that for just a small investment you can add a very high profit center to your existing company right now.

So you need to understand that there are several levels of fire and soot cleanup within a cleaning or restoration business. There are huge contents and structure cleaning jobs that take weeks to complete with all the laundry and specialty items to deal with. And there are small jobs that take just 2 or 3 days to complete.

Now obviously there is a huge price range of job invoices as well. A large job can be $50000 or more while a small job may be only a few thousand. And the profit margin can be very high on these jobs so even a “small job” can be huge to add to your bottom line.

You can ease your way into this type of restoration cleaning in several ways. If you are a carpet cleaner you can market your cleaning services to other restoration contractors that don’t offer this type of cleaning within their company.

You can also partner up with a restoration or construction contractor that does not offer any cleaning services, structural or contents, in their business. Let them know that you aren’t looking to compete with them as you are not a building contractor but that you want to create a Joint Venture relationship for the good of both companies.

Depending on the severity of the smoke or soot contamination will determine what kind and how much equipment you will need. Alot of the equipment you can rent and don’t have to buy right away. For instance Air Scrubbers, Air Movers, Ultrasonic Machine and Hydroxyl Generators can all be rented. This can be a very inexpensive alternative to buying this equipment right off as they can cost thousands of dollars.

I have done jobs that took 2 or 3 days to complete, under a thousand dollars worth of equipment and the invoice was almost $7800. With a 72% profit margin! What will that do for your bank account?

The one thing of course you cannot rent and I can’t stress enough, is the education that you need to do these jobs and do them right. It really is the absolute most important tool you will need in this kind of work.

Actually you could just go out buy some buckets and sponges, google fire and soot cleaning and go for it. (Trust me some do)

But I would not recomend it if you want to be successful and build a good refferral based business.

So don’t let startup cost scare you away from what could be one of the best profit centers in your business.

Posted in Marketing | Tagged , , ,

It’s Whats On The Inside That Counts

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Annissa Coy

We go to great lengths in our business to make a good impression on our clients. We pay big bucks to put expensive graphics on our vehicles and put our team in nice professional looking uniforms. We spend thousands of dollars on training and certifications not to mention phone book ads, pens and coffee mugs with our logo on them.

But are we missing the little things that matter most and actually cost nothing to do?

It’s one of those little things that I want to talk to you about.

How are you packing your boxes?

Funny question huh? But a very important one.

I’ve had clients tell me that they felt confident and secure in our company just by seeing how we placed items in their boxes after cleaning their contents.

Using bubble wrap and packing like kind items together such as glass with glass and books with books, let’s your client know I care without you saying a word.

Some companies even put a business sized card on the inside of every box that they pack that says “Packed With Care By ________” so the client actually knows the name of the person that handled their things.

What an awesome personal touch!

How does that song go…”You say it best when you say nothing at all”…? How true.

If you are gone and your client is unpacking their own boxes what are they going to feel about your company when they open one up? What are they going to feel when they see how you taped up the outside of the boxes and put fragile or do not stack stickers on them?

Will they feel special? Cared for? Or will they feel unimportant?

So what does your packing say to your clients….?

Remember people forget what we say and what we do but they never forget how we make them feel.

Just something to think about…:)

Here’s a short video of Travis showing students how to properly pack contents in one of our Firehouse Classes.

Posted in Client Experience, Technical How To | Tagged

The Miraculous Chem Sponge

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Annissa Coy

I find it funny that we call it a Chem or Chemical Sponge when in fact chemicals have nothing to do with it. I personally think it should be called the Miracle Sponge because I have seen it remove dirt and soot from items that without it there would have been to other way to get the job done.

The Chem Sponge is used for removal of dry dirt, dust, hair and smoke/soot residues. On a lot of surfaces we try to avoid wet cleaning which often leads to smearing, smuding or staining and we can actually do more damage on certain surfaces than the fire did. These 2″ thick, porous dry cleaning chemical sponges are used primarily in smoke and soot removal in fire damage jobs. They work like large “erasers”, these rubber sponges drawing the dust, soot and smoke residue into the cells of the sponge material. They are very soft and squishy and come in about 3 different sizes. I preffer the 6″ ones myself.

We primarily use them on books, photos and artwork. But then can be used in some cases on walls, wood, furniture and specialty collections like porcelain dolls and coins. Basically any item that if it got wet would be damaged either in value or appearance.

The Chem Sponge is also an amazing tool to market your skills and knowledge with. Not only can it show case you ability to get things clean but it is sure to WOW! your client who has probably never even heard of one let alone seen how well they clean otherwise almost impossible to clean items. It allows you to toot your own horn and brag about your knowledge and skills without being offensive.

Using the Chem Sponge to demonstrate your companies cleaning abilities also lets your client and your adjusters know that you care enough to get the job done right using the latest technology and equipment available to you. You would be shocked at how many restoration cleaning contractors out there that do not even know that such a thing as a Chem Sponge exists. They show up to clean with a bucket and a wash cloth from Target. Sounds nuts I know but trust me I’ve seen it.

Here is a training video that I did on one of our recent job sites demonstrating how to do this. Let me know what you think. Do you see any way that you could use this tool to market your Cleaning or Restoration Company?

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Cool Toys We Get To Use

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Annissa Coy

It’s not only cool that we get to do what it is we do but it is also cool that we get to use some of the most sophisticated equipment around:)

The Ultrasonic machine is one of my favs.

Not only is it a very impressive technical machine but it does some really neat stuff too!

Just watch the video and you will see what I mean.

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Less Stress Less Headaches…Sound Pretty Good?

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Annissa Coy

Hi Everyone,

I am really excited about this post. I know I have been a little lax with posting this past month so please forgive me:) I was traveling to visit my grandkids quite a bit and got pretty side tracked.

But watch out…I’m back and I’m excited!

So I can see by my husband’s Facebook that he has been teasing you all with a little project that we have are working on. Kevin has a reputation for having quite a sense of humor but let me reassure you this is no laughing matter and he’s are not playing around.

Early on in our business we knew that we needed to have good, reliable, easy to use systems in place. Otherwise we would create a great company with even greater headaches. We wanted to enjoy our business not be consumed by it.

Some would say that money is the biggest concern for businesses right now but I would disagree. I think it’s stress and not feeling like we have enough time to take care of everything.

Trust me we have had our share of pain in business. In fact on one extremely painful 12 hour day after being chewed up and spit out by a very ticked off client on the phone I decided enough was enough!

I was tired of not knowing whether or not our clients were all being cared for in the same WOW fashion no matter what technician was on the job? Or wondering if my referrals knew how happy our clients were? Tired of wondering if we had good and consistent communication with our clients on all contact levels? Were we following thru with before, during and after marketing and care of our clients? Wondering how I was going to have enough time in the day to check up on all of these critical touch points in our business!!!

How could we keep up with all of this when we couldn’t afford to hire more staff?

So…

We set out to create something that took only minutes of our time, was super easy to access and easy enough a child could do it.

After many many months of analyzing, tracking and dissecting every stage of our client touch points it became clear what was needed.

So we immediately created it and put it in place and in the first year it completely transformed how we do business. I really don’t know how we survived without it.

Seriously no hype here guys we want to give this to you.

We know that it can help a small business look like a rock star and keep a large company from going crazy:)

So stay tuned and we will post it for all of you real soon.

Till Then,
Annissa

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The Psychology Of A Fire

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Annissa Coy

This is probably the most important topic that I am going to talk about on this blog. It’s the one thing that you can’t be ok at or even pretty good at.

You need to be the best at it.

The range of emotions that someone goes thru when they find themselves going thru a fire in their home is pretty intense. The will feel scared, angry, violated, vulnerable, depressed and confussed.

They might even feel all of these at once:(

This can pose a very intimidating sitiation for any Contents Restoration company to handle. That’s why it’s so important to have the right tools and capabilities in your tool box.

You and your team need to be willing and able to help your client not only thru understanding what to do next but how to do it. This takes compassion, understanding, patience and the ability to connect in a huge way with your client in just a few hours. Most of our fire jobs only last about 7 days. That doesn’t leave me or my team alot of time to build a close relationship with the homeowner. Yet that is exactly what we need to do so they feel comfortable taking our advise and allowing us the kind of freedom we need to get the job done.

The last thing you want is to find yourself in a situation with a homeowner that is suspicous of you and doesn’t trust you. If this is where the relationship is at from the get go, you might as well walk away from the job. It will save you and the client a lot of heartache later on.

Helping them handle the letting go process takes them trusting you and is just as much your job as helping them understand how to talk with their adjuster about the payment process of their claim.

I had the privilege of having Dr, Ned Hallowell, an expert psychologist on ADHD and ADD, tour our Mobile Clean Unit and talk with him about how we walk our clients thru the emotional side of a loss.

His feedback was really awesome!

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