How Your Restoration Company Can Survive the Recession

 

Shana Randell and Dan York discuss not only how to survive through this next recession, but how to emerge a market leader after it passes:  

Click HERE to watch the interview 

 

 

 

What we’re experiencing now induces a general panic on the population which makes people go into hibernation and halts normal spending which creates, recession.

 

  I’ve been though a few of these – the aftermath of 2001 and of 2008/’09. So, now I feel that I should tell you what happened in the aftermath of 2008/’09 for the many Restoration Contractors we worked with at our company. Working with so many, gave me some perspective, to say the least.

 

First, the companies that we’d worked with that were the least professional internally, were of course, hurt. These were fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants companies, both financially and organizationally. They weren’t prepared for anything, let alone a catastrophe with mass panic. So this should be Lesson #1: Run your business like it’s a real business. Be organized, be financially on top of things, keep good financial records, keep cash reserves, plan for a rainy day.

 

But, surprisingly, a majority of the restoration contractors my company worked with did pretty well after the 2008/’09 crash and the following recession.

 

We’re of course in an emergency natured industry, which in a lot of ways, operates outside of the normal market as we work with insured property owners and so get to evade a lot of the economic damage that comes from people closing their wallets in a recession.

 

But what we saw after the recession sunk in, is what you need to pay attention to:

 

As I said in a recent article, “Put rats in a burning building, they’ll find a way out.”

 

Contractors of all types, construction companies, basement waterproofers, etc. will slow down dramatically in the recession. And they, being survivors, will come into the restoration industry due to this emergency driven nature. This is what happened then. We had construction companies and contractors of all types for about two years straight calling us to develop restoration business for them, while they were getting licenses to do the work.

 

Other business owners like yourselves, are survivors. And they will survive. They will look for where the money is being made and they’ll go that direction.

 

Now, what does this mean for you? It means that if a recession is going to occur, competition may be about to get stiff again.

 

So what should you do?

 

• Get your money-management on point. No frivolous spending, make sure you’re running a tightly oiled machine.
• You should be networking like crazy.
• You should be marketing like crazy, work on dominating your market now, before any potential craze hits.

 

This is absolutely not the time to sit back and do nothing and “see what happens”. This is the time to do 10X more reach towards your clientele and referral sources then in the last 10 years.

 

You’d better get ahead of the curve:

 

Listen, I hope I’m wrong, and things calm down and market shoot back up and spending increases. But let’s plan for the worst and hopefully experience the best.

 

I’m not doing any doomsday prophecies here, I’m just giving you my personal observations from working with you all in 2009-’12. We’re lucky to be slightly on the outside of this stuff, and when the chips are down, everyone else will start to find out about it. So think ahead.

 

Click this link for more insight on how to get more water damage jobs.

 

Sincerely,

Dan York, Founder

The SEO Surgeons

www.water-damage-marketing.com