The full interview transcript follows below.
Bill: Hey, good morning. This is Bill Luallen with XL North. I have the honor and privilege to have a dear friend, also a board member along with me, Leslie Anderson with Paul Davis. Good morning, Leslie.
Leslie: Oh, good morning, Bill. Great to see you this morning.
Bill: Likewise. Your smile is always contagious, so it is wonderful to see you. I asked you to take part of the interview today because we’re always looking for different avenues and different realms that have connective tissue with floor care and cleaning. Certainly the restoration industry certainly has a lot of connective tissue with restoration and cleaning. I would like to start out by asking you to tell us about yourself?
Leslie: Absolutely. Been in the industry though about 25 years. Started out helping a family member with their business, which was a turnkey business. That’s where it started many, many years ago. Turnkey being someone moves out of a condominium or apartment or a rental property, and our company would come in and turn it around for the next person. I really got an appetite at that point for water mitigation reconstruction.
Then the more of those jobs I did, I realized, wow, this is such a unique experience to serve someone in their time of need. Something has happened in their home, and we get the distinct honor of coming in and putting their home back together, which transitioned me into starting my own business. I was the mitigation side. My partner was a general contractor. We did that for many years serving people, whether it was water, fire, mold. Then we branched into trauma crime scene cleanup. Then at some point I sold that business and did consulting work and joined Paul Davis initially in operations as a operations helping our franchises, and that was in 2011.
Bill: Nice. Well, you’ve got a varied background, and share with me what restoration companies do?
Leslie: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s a little bit different than I think some people may think. Years and years ago in our industry, titled restoration, oftentimes people would think of us more as construction. Let me break it down and back it up as to what it is. Restoration, if I break down the word down to just its basic piece is to restore. Put a home back together. Not necessarily a rebuild, but it’s to look at the materials within the home. What type of materials are they? Can they be salvaged? Can they be restored? Can we dry them and clean them in a commercial or residential property so that the individual or family can move back into their home? It’s looking at something that may have happened, a fire or water loss, and then putting it back together for the homeowner. Less about new construction, more about saving the beautiful property that is there and how can we enhance it?
Bill: I’m sure that there’s a lot of courses and certification and classes that your organization does to better educate and keep up with the times. I’m sure technology changes all the time.
Leslie: It does. For Paul Davis, we are what I would consider an educator brand, meaning education for us is the key to the people on the front lines having the tools they need to best service that customer they’re working with. There are basic things that everyone on our team, and that includes folks that are on the franchisor staff, everyone learns so that we can be the best resource for our customers. That’s water restoration, fire and smoke certification, applied structural drying, which is really a different way to look at a home that’s about saving structure materials, not just ripping them out and replacing them. Mold and then lead. Those are some of the basic core certifications our franchises have, and certainly there are others.
Bill: Wow. In the cleaning world, we have the basics from upholstery to leather to resilient to carpet, color repair and things like that, but your classes are much more in depth it sounds like. I had an opportunity to see a flood house once and was just amazed at the processes and the steps that it takes to go from a wet sopping structure to a completely dry, ready to go back into service.
Leslie: It is. We just, not recently, but we have built two flood houses, Paul Davis. We have one of the earliest flood houses back in the 2000s. Then in 2009, we built our second flood house. It’s an 1800 square foot two-story home. You walk into our warehouse and voila, you’ve got a full home there with kitchen and living room, a laundry room, garage, bedrooms and bathrooms, just as if a family lived there. We will flood it. We bring in our teams, and they will extract it. They’ll monitor, get readings of the moisture content of all the materials within the home. Then daily they will check their equipment, they will make sure it’s drying, and then we problem solve. What if this wall isn’t drying? What if this floor isn’t drying properly? Then we walk them through, all right, we have completed the job. The home has returned to its preexisting moisture levels. We’ve dried all those structural materials, and the homeowner can move back in.
Bill: Wow. I always think about restoration companies prior to being associated with the IICRC. I always thought them as natural disaster folks that just go towards natural disasters, but you’re a whole lot more than that.
Leslie: Yeah. We do natural disasters. We have an entire team dedicated towards catastrophe response, responding to things like tornadoes or hurricanes or wildfires, mudslides. We have an entire team dedicated to that as well as just the daily things that happen in a home. You go to work and you return home. You started the wash as you walked out the door, and the dishwasher line may have broken or an ice maker line or the washing machine. You come home and you’re like, “Oh my goodness, I’ve got a couple inches of water coming out from underneath my garage door. What’s going on?” These things, just accidents, right? Materials at some point decide, well, I’m done here and I’m going to release the water I’m connected to.
Bill: Well, statistically I’m sure that the residential side of things are just exponentially more than commercial, but do you also do commercial work?
Leslie: We do. We do a tremendous amount of commercial work. We have national accounts with big suppliers like Target or Costco, big companies as well as property management. Maybe if you’re thinking of one story business buildings as well as multiple stories. Not just on water, but it would be water or fire. Occasionally, we do have trauma or crime scenes that happen in commercial structures. We’re seeing that more in North America, and so we do come in and respond to those as well in a commercial structure.
Bill: Wow. That’s a extremely large breadth of offerings that you guys manage. I’m sure these aren’t small ticket items. When a restoration occurs or needs to occur, you probably have to work a lot hand in hand with insurance companies and adjusters and things like that. It’s not just the consumer paying for these items as well.
Leslie: It’s true. We are partnered with nine of the top 10 carriers within the United States and Canada, partnering with them as their preferred vendor. An example would be you call your insurance company, and then they would give you the option of calling our company to come out and do the repairs and work directly with you and your insurance company, making sure that we’re all aligned on what needs to happen within the home. Also, staying within the parameters of the policy itself. What does the homeowner’s policy cover?
Bill: Gotcha. It would be the Wild, Wild West if it wasn’t for organizations or certification bodies like the IICRC. I know that was a cheesy lead in, but you and I… I have the privilege of serving on the board of directors of the IICRC with you, but you hold more than just that title as a board member, don’t you?
Leslie: I do. I started, Bill, just like you, as a board member or director level with the board. Little story about me and the board. Here’s what happened, I was nominated multiple times. Each time I wasn’t a part of the team. I remember a third or fourth time of being nominated, I finally made the team, if you will. I was over the moon. I a little bit did a dance within my home because I thought finally. I think for any of us, when you work hard to achieve something or be a part of something bigger than yourself and you finally get there, it’s such a rewarding feeling. That was my first step. I then was asked to be a part of the education and exams committee, which now I serve as chair. That’s over all of the certifications globally for the IICRC.
Bill: Wow. That’s three different divisions, correct?
Leslie: Yes. It is. You’ve got Cleaning, Restoration, and Inspection Division. Those three.
Bill: There’s an awful lot of courses. We work together because I’m the current tech chair for the CCMT, the Commercial Carpet Maintenance Technician and former RFMT. We work on a micro level through our staff members like Stephanie that do an excellent job of bridging the gaps. I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but how many certification courses do you manage as EdCom?
Leslie: I want to say we have 27, but we’ve just added BMI, which we’re just working on getting instructors for, so that would be a new one. There are lots of certifications under that-
Bill: Building moisture, right?
Leslie: Building moisture inspection. It’s a new course within the Inspection Division, I believe. Currently, we have four within the Inspection Division and we’re adding a new one for it. So a total of 28 certification courses.
Bill: Well, IICRC back in the day was really known for cleaning. But the Inspection Division, we’ve got senior carpet inspector, resilient floor inspector, the substrate inspector, and now BMI as well. You’ve got a lot of restoration classes and certification programs also, don’t you? That’s probably even more than cleaning.
Leslie: We do. We have a vast number. In the Restoration Division, we have 12.
Leslie: That’s a lot in the restoration. Then in the Cleaning Division, it divides into textiles and hard surface, and in textiles we have six. Then under the hard surface, one you mentioned, but we have five. Then with the BMI, we have five in inspection. We do have quite a few courses.
Bill: Between you and your predecessor, Brian, you guys have really changed the more standardization along with the I&S, the Instructor in School committee. You all have really teamed up together to make a more fluid or transitional process, in my opinion.
Leslie: We have. Everyone that works on those courses, the certification courses, is a volunteer. I am a volunteer. Bill, you are a volunteer. It’s really capturing subject matter experts globally to write the course itself or a manual or the examination. We felt how do we make the process more streamlined and speed up the return on how quickly we start an exam and we can get that out to the registrants. We started with just the outline or the CPD for each course, and they were all a little bit different because everyone volunteered to write them. We did work with the team at the IICRC and we’ve now created with their amazing help one streamlined outline, if you will, and how many exam questions there should be on an exam, how long you should take to complete it, what hands-on components there are just to create simplicity for all the volunteers out there.
Bill: You know what? You mentioned volunteers. It couldn’t happen without volunteers. We have an unbelievable staff, and because of the growth of the IICRC, the team continues to grow. From within, it’s always fun to see that from my perspective. But we’re always looking for volunteers in whatever course, whether it’s a standard. You and I haven’t even talked about the standards yet. But you mentioned globally, and I was reflecting today on I’ve had the honor of teaching students from whether it’s from Australia or South Africa or India or Europe. But we are a global organization, and along with these standards and the standards mean an awful lot. I know as a board member and as restoration, you are seeing a lot of traction with our standards when it comes to them being enacted or put in as guardrails for different states and governmental agencies.
Leslie: Incredibly on spot with that statement, Bill. It’s so true. The standards themselves, we see it at a state and city level, but we also see it with the insurance world. We are now seeing an insurgence, if you will, of executives, adjusters, whether at desk or in the field. They want to see the standards. They want to be certified so that they have the most up-to-date knowledge of the topic at hand on that standard. Those standards have been adopted. We’re seeing it with our Governance Division at the IICRC in Washington DC. They’re being written into different military housing requirements around mold. We’re seeing a big adoption.
Bill: Well, and the last thing I will bring up because I think I personally get excited about this is what you all have done with the MRS program. Can you give a 30-second overview on that?
Leslie: Yeah. MRS… Boy, our industry is full of acronyms. We talk in them. It’s almost another language. MRS stands for mold remediation specialist. That is a different certification. That one is we’ve taken it on the next level. It’s been approved, reviewed by a completely different certifying body. Our courses are reviewed and certified, but this is at a different level. An example would be our standards are ANSI certified, right?
Someone independent from us is reviewing our content in order to say, “Yes, this is worthy of a college level type course, and we will review it.” They review that every two years, Bill, certifying that our questions and content are accurately reflected for the end user in mold. That one is around all 50 states in the United States, the MRS designation.
Bill: That’s almost an out for these entities to say, “We’re not pushing the IICRC. Here’s a third-party certification program that we believe if you hold and maintain this, we feel comfortable you working with our constituents or our population.” [inaudible 00:20:00]-
Leslie: Absolutely. Yeah. It does. They feel… It’s not just saying, “Oh, I do mold.” It’s saying, “Hey, I’ve been certified by a third party saying, yes, I in fact am knowledgeable and have the skillset to properly remediate a home.”
Bill: Wow. That’s really awesome. I think that… As I always bring up in my classes, you need certification licensure to cut hair or to do fingernails, but somebody can walk into a supply house, get a gallon of bleach and a gallon of ammonia, and without knowing it they can cause bodily harm to the people within a space. This little step in our industry of the certification I think can further education and the concept that we need to be careful and we need accreditations.
Leslie: Yeah. To that point, and I’ll touch here on safety, safety is so important to everything we do. We do offer a health and safety technician course because we can go in and do all kinds of jobs. But if we’re not protecting ourselves properly, we won’t have longevity in our career path. Safety, for me, is always the first step in anything we do in any of these structures for our teams.
Bill: Well, I took that course. I thought it was awesome. I learned so much more than just my little area of expertise. We talk about regulations and certainly with the mold and with the safety. But also in restoration, when you can’t clean it, when you can’t restore it, you have to remove it, right?
Leslie: We do.
Bill: Do you see things like the Care Act and other things affecting or even the cost of replacement, are you seeing people go, “Let’s try to restore this, let’s not rip and replace”?
Leslie: Great question. Yes is the answer. You look at some of the beautiful craftsmanship that goes into homes today, and a homeowner turns to us and says, “You know what? Please, we spent years crafting and honing this home to look the way it does. What can we do to salvage these?” For us, it’s pretty simple. It comes down to the type of material it is, what type of porosity does it have? Then what type of contaminants affected it? Can we properly disinfect it so that we are sure that we are not creating something additional?
If we feel that we can clean it, perhaps sand the floors, removing that layer, cleaning them, and then refinishing those in place, that is always the goal. I would say 2009 ASD, stands for applied structural drying, came out, and that was really just, to me, out of the box looking at ways we can save materials as opposed to just removing them and putting new ones in. Folks, there are beautiful, beautiful building materials out there. We should always be looking for ways to restore them to their original life as opposed to, “Eh, let’s put something new in here.”
Bill: Well, and I would be remiss if I didn’t talk just briefly about content processing as well. I had no idea the abilities that are now available to save items.
Leslie: It is incredible. Our Paul Davis offices have a complete area in a warehouse that is, pardon me, processing. Maybe you had a fire in your home. We pack that out. We bring those soft goods, hard goods in, furniture, photographs. We will have families say, “This has been in our family for generation after generation. Can you salvage this? Can you bring it back?” We will bring it back, and we will do everything in our power. We will hand wash, clean it with proper chemistry so that we do everything in our power to bring those items back to the homeowner as opposed to let’s buy all new.
Bill: Wow. It really is quite remarkable to me that technology has come this far.
Leslie: I was just going to touch on technology. We have now so many tools. We can test the surface. What type of contamination is there? We can clean it. Retest it to see what we have. To your point, technology has taken us from years ago when we really did just remove all of those items in a home or a commercial structure. We now know that through technology and testing, we can save more things. I think that’s the goal for all of us.
Bill: As I’m sitting here thinking, the folks that get an opportunity to listen to this interview, a number of them are in the commercial floor care environment. I would imagine that there are some Paul Davis franchises that also do some floor care as well. But what happens… Just an average commercial floor care provider says, “You know what? I heard this interview. What does it take to really become also a restoration company”?
Leslie: Oh, yeah. For us at Paul Davis, 40% of our work is commercial. A lot of commercial contracts. A big part of it is commercial work, around 60, maybe a little less, is residential work for us. The commercial world… Let me back up and say there are so many commercial floors out there. For us to say we understand them all would be just irresponsible. Often, Bill, we’ll call in subject matter experts just like yourself and say, “Hey, can you take a look at this floor for us? Tell me the components of it?” We do lean on those relationships with commercial flooring because we may not be as knowledgeable about it. But for someone who maybe is in that world and would love to be a part of a franchise, the knowledge that you all possess is amazing and I would say is a step above what most of the folks possess in that industry, in that world, because they’re not as familiar with commercial floors as you are. I think that would bring just an elevated skillset not only to our organization, but to the region in which you would have a franchise.
Bill: That’s really cool. I was thinking of that as you were speaking. Heck, you get me excited to jump in. I don’t want to take up your whole day. I really do appreciate it. If somebody wanted to lend a hand to volunteer for the IICRC, how do they go about it?
Leslie: Oh my goodness, of course. You can log onto their website. There is a chat feature right there on the main page, and you can very quickly say, “Hey, how do I get connected? Here’s where I’m passionate.” Share that. Then your passion, which excites me, you probably even hear my voice getting higher, you sharing your knowledge with others makes us all better. Please know that the knowledge you have really helps us with our standards be better, our examinations, our way of thinking. Challenge in those groups a way of thinking. It will make the end product so much better. I would just say often individuals will say to me, Bill, “Oh, I’ve just been doing X all these years.” Yes, your X, whatever that is is so valuable. Please, I welcome your knowledge. Your career in our industry is the inspiration for so many young people coming in. You being on any of those committees is almost like a light for others who are just joining our industry. Be a part of it. Share your knowledge with those on a committee and younger individuals just entering it. Show them where their careers can go to.
Bill: Well, I know from my standpoint, the IICRC is evolving. I don’t want to pick on myself, but it’s becoming younger. We’re always looking for the experiences, the knowledge that the younger folks that are hopefully listening to this, I do want to make sure that your voices are heard and you get involved.
Leslie: Please, please hear that from both Bill and I. Your voice matters, your expertise and your perspective. Sometimes in life, we do things because that’s how we’ve done them, but those fresh perspectives give us a clean and… What do I want to say? An opportunity to see the value in your knowledge and how it can make the end product even better.
Bill: Nobody could say it better. Leslie, I so appreciate this opportunity to spend time with you. Look forward to many more opportunities for you and I to work together on the board. I will have contact information in the transcript, so if somebody has a question they can reach out to you personally.
Leslie: Oh my gosh. Yes. I would like to add the knowledge that your viewership has is knowledge we are always looking to learn from. I’d love to learn more about what individuals in your flooring world do to make us all better on the jobs we currently have.
Bill: Leslie, can’t thank you enough. Have a great day.
Leslie: Thanks, Bill. You too.
About Paul Davis
Paul Davis is a franchise organization that provides services to cleanup and repair damage to residential and commercial properties due to water, fire, mold, storm or other disasters. Founded in 1966, Paul Davis is a rapidly growing network of independently owned and operated franchises in the United States and Canada. Our headquarters is located in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as our National Training Center, where Paul Davis professionals are certified in the areas of emergency restoration, reconstruction and remodeling. Paul Davis puts people and property first throughout the recovery process.
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