What Happens In Vegas… (on Tuesday Sept. 8th)

Hopefully what will happen is another FANTASTIC “Rugs & Restoration Roadshow” event, this time at Winner’s Circle Training Center! If you are a Cleaning  & Restoration Professional – this event is FREE to you due to the generosity of our sponsors, so get yourself registered (there will be NO entry without prior registration because we are approaching our limit of attendees). This qualifies for 1 CEC for IICRC cleaning and restoration certifications – can’t beat that!

Las Vegas Rugs & Restoration Roadshow

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Smokin' Hot Rug…

Don’t know if you know this, but wool does not carry a flame. It is naturally fire resistant.

This does not mean that a super hot fire cannot engulf a wool textile, but an isolated flame will self-extinguish. This is good to know when you are choosing fabrics in your home, because inevitably fires do happen, and it’s best to not give it extra fuel. (When I watched a video of how quickly a Christmas tree can become an inferno in a home – literally seconds – I started buying small live trees instead of chopped down ones, it scared me that much.)

Once in awhile we get rugs with fire damage. With soot, smoke, ash, we can give the rugs a bath and remove much of the damage to put the rug in “pre-loss” condition.

Once in awhile though, it’s more than soot – it’s a burned hole. And even then, sometimes, the “impossible” is possible … like with this rug that a client believed headed to the trash heap:

Damaged to Done photos

Damaged to Done photos

This is the handy work of my mother Kate, a weaver, and the founder of our facility in San Diego. We have a repair team on staff to handle everything from the usual suspects (torn fringe from a vacuum cleaner to be replaced) to the more difficult projects like this fire damage order from the wildfires in San Diego.

When you have a home that has gone through the emotional devastation of a fire, and you’ve lost about everything, being able to save one thing… one piece of your former home… means a lot.  So when we can make a small miracle with a rug like this, it creates one of those really happy moments in a company – when you know you’ve made a small difference in someone else’s world.

At our plant at San Diego Rug Cleaning Company, we love rugs. But we also love people, and it’s that mix that creates success in any business because it’s a mix that makes a difference.

- Lisa

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Lisa in Tampa (8/4) and Atlanta (8/7)

Next week David Brinkley and I are taking the Piranha Rugs & Restoration Road Show to Tampa (Tuesday) and Atlanta (Friday). Seats are selling like hotcakes, hush puppies, or whatever it is y’all eat down south. :)

I’ll be covering rug cleaning do’s and don’t's, the rugs to run from, how to handle rugs in floods and fires, and how to generate restoration work through your rug cleaning channels. I have more material than time, so you are guaranteed to have your brain full after we have this workshop together!

Register at Rugs & Restoration Roadshow or call us at (800) 275-2643 – I look forward to meeting you!

- Lisa

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Hitting the Road: Tampa, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, Las Vegas and Phoenix

I’m getting ready to hit the road as part of the “Rugs and Restoration Road Show” presented by Piranha Marketing.

This is an event that is a weaving of technical training and marketing training. You see, marketing is telling a story in a way that engages, educates, and builds TRUST in a client-company relationship.

With the restoration business, trust is a critical issue. Your pipe breaks in the middle of the night – who in the world do you trust to call?  Who will do the work right, and will treat your home as if it is their own?

I know those fears. Not only has my town been subject to two city-wide fires in the past 6 years, but we’ve all experienced a flood in our lifetimes. You are frantic, and are worried about what to do, and what will get ruined by the experience.

With floods especially, when there are investment rugs in the home – you worry what to do, or NOT do to them.

Your antique rug is flooded - what do you do?

Your antique rug is flooded - what do you do?

We, like any rug cleaning operation, get calls from our clients worried about their rugs when a flood or other damage hits. This gives us the opportunity to give sound immediate care advice, recommend a restoration company (if they do not already have one), and facilitate bringing the textiles in to remove all of the contaminants before they go back into the home.

What I am going to present at these events to the professional cleaners and restorers who attend are strategies for the proper handling of textiles from a disaster (to minimize the damage), and do’s and don’ts in the cleaning to provide the best clean possible.

I am also going to share some of the strategies I use to not only generate more insurance contents-cleaning work, but also how to document the process to not only build trust with the clients, but to make it a more enjoyable experience for the adjuster also (they work really long hours, and it helps if we can make their work a bit easier so everyone is happy).

David Brinkley will be presenting with Piranha’s Restoration Coaches a range of restoration topics on generating residential and commercial work, and how to use the right equipment and training to make securing that work even easier.

Joe Polish will be a special guest presenter in both Tampa and Atlanta, sharing the marketing systems working the best right now for his members across the US.

It is going to be a fun, hands-on, valuable day of training. I have not taught “rugs” on the road for a few years now, so I’m excited to go out and meet many of the cleaners I’ve helped by email and by phone over the years. Plus the event sponsors are covering speaking costs, so the event fee is super low at $97 – you even get lunch.  Just what you’ll learn from me will pay you back that several times over.  And in Las Vegas, with our additional sponsors, you can come to that one FREE if you are one of the first 75 to sign up.

I love to teach. I love rugs. And I love helping put things back together after a disaster. They are emotional experiences, and so when you can help make one piece of the process a real pleasure for everyone involved, you really feel like you are making a difference.

I hope you come meet me in one of the Road Show cities. I’m looking forward to it!  If you want to register, just visit www.RugsAndRestoration.com.

- Lisa

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