Chris, do you do you think we open it up for some question and answer? Do you have any Yeah. Absolutely. I I Brooke’s gonna start monitoring that and she’ll fire away. And yeah guys, add us on your LinkedIn or Facebook. Barb, not as much on Facebook, although I think last week I probably was, but definitely on LinkedIn and and if you need anything you got my work email LinkedIn with me. I’m on there all the time, so if I see a message in there, will respond to you. Yeah, and let me take this opportunity to let everybody know that my Facebook page was hacked. I am not making tons of money with what what’s that currency? With crypto and and and you’re not selling time shares? Come on, Elmore. They’re vacation clubs. They’re not time shares anymore, guys. Go to Barb’s Facebook and buy yourself a vacation club. So, I I prefer LinkedIn now. Fair enough. So I’m on LinkedIn, as total content and Barb Jacks CR. So please connect. And I’m also on Instagram at total contents. So yeah. So, yeah, any questions? Yeah. So we have a bunch of questions. If anyone has to drop, just we would appreciate if you filled out the survey that comes up when you exit. Any feedback is appreciated, but thank you to Chris and Barb so much for taking the time to educate everyone on contents and share your expertise. We had tons of questions, so I’m gonna try to go through some of them right now. I’ll start with one for you, Barb. When you started your contents cleaning business, did you work for yourself with other companies who needed your services, like a subcontractor, or did you work at one company cleaning contents? I worked for thirty different restoration contractors as a subcontractor. I never went direct, so I would mark it to the restoration contractors directly. And so I was their subcontractor. Great. Thank you. So jumping to the next one here. Some of these were discussed a little bit in the chat, but, thought it would be valuable for those watching the on demand version to get some of this too. So do you find contents or in homes are more likely to be replaced nowadays due to the availability of items? Like, they can get them on Amazon, Walmart, online, etcetera. It seems like insurance companies are wanting to replace more than try to clean. The reason is the reason being is the pack out slash pack in storage costs and cleaning costs end up being about the same, if not more, if repairs take too long? It seems like we are cleaning more sentimental items, and insurance carriers are replacing everything else. Wow. I think it’s probably region by region, you know, what what’s common. As far as, like, accessibility, I have a what I consider a smaller house. If I had to purchase everything I own, as nice as it it sounds as to get new things, I just can’t imagine the sheer time it would take to replace everything. So I know a lot of companies are still you know, they’re still cleaning and restoring contents. I think the biggest pushback is on electronics, which is understandable because those, you know, are obsolete, you know, so quickly. But for the most part, I you know, I’m not experiencing where they’re trying to total loss a lot up front. I think sometimes adjusters are kinda known for wanting to just total loss because it’s easy. Just write a check and be done. How about you, Chris? What do you see in? Yeah. So so I I think it depends on who you do business with. If you’re on the volume insurers that have more companies that are more people that are running IKEA furniture like I I don’t care what kind of like if this particle board furniture and you’re asked to take it apart and put it back together, We stopped doing it. We’re like no, those are write offs because they’ll never go back the same way as the first time. Not without a lot of horsing around there. At the end of the day, I I still think contents is like I’m in the dispute resolution where we’re looking at three two hundred thousand dollars of contents. You’re not going to spend that much money cleaning it versus versus replacing it, so there’s a value there. If it can be cleaned, why would you not clean it? Like what’s the level of contamination? Think that argument comes from maybe a, you know, a processing part in the insurance companies where they believe that they’re gonna hit a number or ratio, or they’ve had bad experience of the contents, and they’ve had bad experiences. They spend a lot of money packing out. There’s a lot of failed cleaning. They spend a lot of money packing back and then they’re still replacing a lot of items, but you can change that. You can market the difference. You can show them. You have ultrasonics, if you’ve ever done an adjuster tour where you bring an adjuster group in and you show them what you can do with ultrasonics, you well, I’m sure you’ve done those demos where you smoke out a smoke out some some items and then show them that these items you can put them right in ultrasonics. They come out looking like new. I guarantee you’re gonna get some customers guarantee it. The people are going to give you a shot if you know what you’re doing. I did. We did a lot of work with a franchise group across Canada, and we told them every event, please invite adjusters at no cost. They can stay all five days. They can come in for an hour. One of the adjusters came in day one sitting in the back row with his arms crossed. You know? And his two big hang ups were paying for supervisor hours, and he was always total lossing, writing the checks. And so at the end of the five days, he’s like, okay. I see the light. He says you got the host company that we were with had one of his packouts in their facility. And so he says, I’d like you to lay everything out, and I want you to give me a price or what you’re gonna charge me to clean all these, and then I’m gonna give you my cost to replace. So we did it, and we were ten thousand dollars cheaper than he was. And he goes, okay. So they started getting more and more of his packouts, and he wasn’t total losing things so much. So, a quick way of doing a cost comparison of replacement versus restoration is take ten items from the house, TVs, furniture, ten things, you know, different, like hard furniture, soft furniture, whatever, and then price it out, what it would cost to replace those items versus the cost to clean. And it’s gonna be such a huge difference. It’s gonna make the point. The cleaning is cheaper a lot of times than, replacement. Great. Thanks, guys. I’ll move on to the next one here. What is the best way to help a customer determine if an item is worth cleaning or disposing of for cost, and will they get more for cashing out over cleaning? Well, that’s a loaded one. I I tend to look at the whole job that if, you know, if I’m looking at the whole house, it’s gonna cost less to clean it than it is gonna be to replace it. When we start whittling down to individual items, it slows us down, and, you know, it’s so hard. So the items that we definitely say, no question, it’s just better to replace, is gonna be, like, contents from the catch all drawer or, all their paper products, their food products, like, more categories of contents versus individual items. Yeah, you also got you also have to look at one is quality. Is it solid wood versus is it MDF? And then and then the the agent and sentimental value. So there’s there’s definitely gonna be items that are. And I like Barbs away. If I can group it, I can sometimes sneak an item that normally they say, well, we’re not gonna pay for that because cheaper to replace. We’re like no, it’s part of this whole group of items, so you know you should. You should try to restore that because it means more to the customer than something else. That’s you’re going to win the job that way, right? You’re gonna you’re gonna win the emotions of the the homeowner and then when you throw a grandma stuff. Unless you’re dealing with a collector, then then they might want to keep everything. Thanks, guys. Another question. Can you tell us a little more about non restorable listing? How you decide that this furniture cannot be restored? You wanna go? You wanna take that part or you want me to Go ahead. So so if you’re gonna go in and do a test clean and that test cleaning doesn’t appear that it’s gonna work or or maybe it’s heat damaged, and so there’s maybe maybe you’ve got some heat damage on it. The fabric has a different texture. You could start writing that off and then if you’re asking about the details of it, because heats irreversible, so you’re looking for reversible damage in water is wicking up and bring a contaminant in. Are you doing a test clean? You might have a questionable list of items before you get to non restorable, so you’re going to have a definite non restorable list and then a questionable list. But the other thing is when you’re documenting it is making sure that if it’s on a questionable list or non restorable list, do you better have a lot of documentation because that is what the insured needs to get their money back from the insurance company. So you’ve got to go through those steps of of having a really good documentation. I agree. Next question. So do you guys have any comments around subcontracting contents versus handling it in house and profitability. Wow. I the first thing I would ask is how much have you subbed out last year, and would you like to retain that amount? So if you’re subcontracting, how much of it are they doing? Are they packing out at the house? They’re taking it to their shop. They’re storing it and processing it. And then are you getting a referral fee for that? And, you know, yeah, I think it’s all a matter of, like, at what point is it worth doing it in house. You know? And it it’s gotta be that you’re ready for it to do it in house, that you’ve got the crew, and you’re ready to make the investment of time and money to set things up properly. But if you’re if you don’t have it, then it’s better just to subcontract it. Yeah. You gotta look at your numbers. Like, there’s there’s a there’s a cost of of having a plant, and if your plant doesn’t have volume, then your your cost is gonna be high on that. Like, if you see contests margining sixty to sixty five or seventy percent, And you’re like, oh, I think I can get into the game. Okay, well, your plant cost might be more than that unless you get the volumes to support it. So sometimes just focus on the things that you can ease your way into that are aligned with your your skill set or your your team skill set. Right? If you do a lot of volume like think it typed in there, if you do a lot of volume on laundry, probably a good place to start. But if you’ve only done one or two electronics claims, probably not worth the gear because you’re not doing enough volume to cover the cost of the equipment, the training, the getting familiar with the processes, that sub out. But if you’re doing laundry every other day, then then maybe bring that in house. Yeah. And and, you know, you might start out just cherry picking, like, what jobs you do take and test the waters, you know, see how efficient you can be if it’s worth it before you make, you know, big investment jumping right into the deep end. Great. I have a this one’s a bit of a loaded question. So what’s the process for when the contents arrive back to your facility? When slash how quickly do you clean? When do you deodorize? Techniques for storage? You wanna start, Chris? Not like you. You’re the pro. I’ll follow I’ll follow in behind you on this one. Okay. So so what was the first process coming in back to the shop? Yeah. So when slash how quickly do you clean, when do you deodorize, and Okay. Techniques for storage. Okay. So how quickly do you clean? It’s usually as soon as possible. Because the longer the soot is on the contents, then it could cause more damage. And what was the next part of that question? And then how soon do you deodorize? Deodorize would be the same as soon as possible. Yeah. And then what’s the next one, Brooke? The last part was techniques for storage. Techniques for storage. Yeah. That is the that’s a broad one. Techniques for storage. So anytime that you can contain the items in the vaults, is good because then, you know, they they are contained. They’re not gonna get mixed up with other jobs. You can stack them, and they’re they’re secure. Anytime there’s contents exposed in the warehouse, they can get, cross contamination. They could get knocked over, damaged, stolen, misplaced. So the the storage part of it is important, and making sure that the building is secure. And I like to segregate the contents from the other divisions so that there’s no chance that the, equipment coming back from a water loss is banging into the furniture. So I know when you’re starting out and you’re just kinda ad hoc ing your your facility layout, the things there’s so much crossover, and that’s what we wanna avoid as much as possible. Even if you can palletize, if you don’t have bolts yet, palletize and stretch wrap the contents on the pallets to keep them all together. Is that everything? Each part of the question? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I I I’m a bigger fan now of not deodorizing. Go clean the contents. And if you still have an odor issue, it’s usually a cleaning issue. And then deodorize if you have to after. Not I’m not as big of a fan of deodorizing at the beginning because you’re trying to get rid of the contaminant smell. Just get rid the contaminant and then deal with the odor. Chris, I am so glad you said that. It’s one of the things that I see that’s a time waster is when everything is put through the deodorizing chamber. You know? Like you said, the cleaning part of it should clean it because we’ve got heat opening up the pores. We’ve got our degreasers. We’ve got odor counteractants in the cleaning solution. All of that is killing the odor. The only thing we ever wanna put through deodorizing is things that have a lingering odor, which might be porous, semi porous, like wood items or clothing. So, yeah, good point, Chris. Yeah. Well, we’re we’re we’re seeing that now. We’re it’s spinning there for years of marketing is like get in there and knock the odor down. It’s like, well, the amount of oxidizers or chemicals you’re going to need to knock those orders down. Go clean. The odor is the result of the contaminant. Go clean, remove the source, remove the contaminant, and then if you can’t get rid of it, then you can think about doing some order control treatments. But that order is the site. That’s what we’re trying to remove as the order by removing the source. If you just remove the order, how are you going to find the source? And it’s it’s leading to problems like I’m seeing it in dispute resolutions and legal cases that people come in and dump copious amounts of oxidizer into a building. You create chemicals that resulted creating new chemicals which damaged structures. Just deal with the root of the problem and it requires the elbow grease of cleaning. Yeah, anyway, it’s it’s it’s it’s coming. It’s going to be harder for restores to in the future. There’s more and more case precedent coming that those oxidizers are doing not what we expected them to do. And they were great. They’re actually like amazing. If you can just turn it on and deal with a problem area and then turn it off, your risk goes way down. Chris, how about how do you feel like if if contents are coming into the shop and you’re not gonna be able to get to them right away, but they have a really nasty odor Yeah. Putting them into the deodorizing room, heating them up, just letting them off gas a bit, and then just to knock down the odor where you’re not introducing oxidizers or anything any other kind of issue, you know? It’s just heat to offset. So so there’s two questions there is where they exposed to heat. So if not, and you put them into a chamber and you open the pores of the material, you potentially make it harder to clean. Yeah, which which you could trap that order in it, right? Because we’re when we heated a content item up up and we we open those pores. We’re trying to get the the smell out, but if we do it in and depends on your order room or your ozone room or your oxidizing room. But if you if you do it, I don’t you gotta do something, right, which is it’s it’s hard when we’re backlogged. But if you put it into a c train, it might be good. We call them c cans of the cat. I just think it’s hilarious. But if you throw them in one of those, like, if if you’re worried about cross contaminating your site, potentially, it’s throwing it in an exterior container to keep it Yeah. Away from your shop. And and it yeah. It’s it’s a it’s a great question. I don’t know if there’s a good a good answer when you’re tapped out. Yeah. It’s just it’s just an an option. Like you said, it depends on the type of soot. So if it was a hot fire, sometimes it can help. And, you know, honestly, depending on the season, just the warehouse warming up is gonna naturally off gas too. Yeah. Yeah. And then you and then, you know, there’s there’s a health and safety concern here, which is what was in that smoke, and is that good for your shop or not? And then and I don’t think we’ve done enough research and to figure out what we’re dealing with. I believe the information is gonna show us that we’re gonna have to be a little bit more careful with how we handle smoke and fire damaged items when we bring them back and just let them sit in our shop contaminated. Yeah. I agree. Good question, though. Alright. Thanks, guys. I know we’re out of time. I just wanna sneak in one or two more questions if we can. Sure. Yeah. So next one, what about pushback on providing a non salvageable contents list? I’ve been getting that it is the cost of doing business and that it is a service we provide to the customer. This pushback is mainly from State Farm. To me, this is not a cost of doing business. We’re providing not only the homeowner, but the insurance that documentation. In my opinion, they should provide their customer service or should provide their customer that service so they do not have to document everything by themselves. Chris, you go for it, Chris. So if you’re an insurer that does large volume and put your names on stadiums, you might be playing a different game than you as a restorer. You might be playing the quality game of one of those insurance companies that doesn’t put their name on a stadium. So you’ve got a, you named it, a high volume, the top high volume player in America, and they’re looking to cut costs and it’s your cost of doing business. Well, if that were true, then you would build your price to incorporate it, but we know that Barb says, I’m not building an all in one price. So we haven’t factored that cost into our day to day routine of doing business and listing is part of the hourly rate you get charged when Barb says due time and material. So if you’re doing time material, that listing time is part of the process. If they don’t want pay for it, you’re not going to do it. The thing I have to warn you about or just caution you about is the sympathy for the customer versus the empathy. So you’re they’re in a situation because of a purchase decision they made with a carrier that may not wanna pay for that service. Don’t make it your problem and don’t sacrifice your business profitability because they don’t want to pay for that service. And they if they’re not paying for it, then the customer is gonna have to do it. It’s not part of your cost of doing business. That’s ridiculous. It’s built your cost of doing business is the time you put into the file. Your pen is just the cost of doing business for that, or your Encircle subscription is the cost of doing business for that, but there’s no there’s no way that’s part of your cost of doing business. I have nothing to expound. It’s great. Alright. We can move on from that one. What’s an efficient way to tag items not in boxes? Efficient way. So I would still create a label for it and then and then put it in a bag or and then put the label on the outside of the bag or the packaging material. Chris, what do you think about the question? Yeah. Same thing. I like I like the tag like on piece of furniture. You still have a tag. If you if you had it’s wrapped in plastic, you still have the tag on there with with a label with your directions. I wouldn’t change your. I haven’t. Like the restores are doing really amazing contents work and and Barb seeing it. The way you label your items aren’t the same. It’s just what container are they going into? So it’s a box. It’s a bag. It’s on a rack and and you have attached a label to it. Mike O’Donnell, when I was at his warehouse, I believe they had they had like the same system across the board and it was it was good that you just everything got a label. Everything got the label, they got tag. There was no changing your system because once you change your system, it becomes really hard to manage. So it’s the same system. It’s just think of your box and your bags and they’re just they’re just containers and if it doesn’t have one tag goes and gets stapled to the furniture or or tied to it. Yeah. Yeah. And one one extra thing I do too is I like in addition to the label that goes on the outside, the packaging material, I will create the, the tie on label and use a, Sharpie to write on it. This stays on the furniture all through the cleaning process. It’s gonna get dirty, ugly, wet. It doesn’t matter. It’s just identification of what job it’s from. And then when you wrap the item to, you know, to go into storage and to be returned, then you create a nice fresh label, and the tie on tag gets thrown away. So it’s just insurance that assures that you don’t, lose track of whose furniture piece that is, what job it’s from. Yeah. A few people were agreeing with you in the chat about the tags, So that’s great. What is the reason for billing in stages versus one contents bill slash estimate when done, like, mitigation? Money. Money. Cash flow. Cash flow. Yeah. That’s cash is king. You you hold you could hold an estimate for an invoice six months if you don’t do it. And so but you’re also here’s the thing. Cash flow is one, and that’s probably the most important. The second one is you’re breaking the job down by task. So it’s not a forty thousand dollar invoice. It’s seven grand to move it out. It’s twenty grand to clean it, seven grand to move it back, and then you get to your number. That’s easier to digest. It’s easier for someone who’s not in our world to process in their mind. I guess why your storage is like, okay, well, you’re storing it. And and in Canada, there’s negotiations on well, the storage is free. Okay. Well, I can’t give it to you for free, so we’ll use a sub trade. But the business of restoration or the business of contents is trying to maximize your revenues on everything you’re touching, and then it’s trying to justify the value. So the pack out is a value, the cleaning is a value, storage is a value, and and you’re and you wanna have these discussions before you submit that bill. You know you’re getting paid or you find a solution that will work for them. Sometimes they just want store on-site. Okay, that’s fine. You want cold storage on-site? We’re not responsible for the resulting damage that can solve the contents. Not a problem. Not my problem. Are you concerned that an adjuster will tell you not to do a job or wait for another bid after you have done a ROM slash pre pack out estimate? I’m not because so here’s the thing. If I’m gonna run into conflict, I’d rather do it before I have costs associated to the job. So if I’m if I’m thinking that I’m gonna slide a bill in and I’m it’s going to prevent me from losing the job, but I’m going to have to defend myself after. Guys, I’ve written off lots and lots of invoices down where we did stuff like that and you’re only going to lose money once that invoice is disputed. So your invoice is the most you’re going to charge and then when you get into a dispute, it comes down from there. I’d rather know that I have a certain number at the beginning or that someone doesn’t want to use us. Do that negotiation upfront because then I can almost guarantee that I’m going get paid at the end. But if you’re trying to go with that that way of not communicating, I can guarantee you’re going to see some kind of friction at the end. I just I’d I’d rather walk away from a job than to pay somebody for the job. Right? If you you have to look at this way, if your margin let’s say you need thirty five percent on that job to pay for your cost, and after negotiations, you’re down to thirty. You paid five percent to do for work. Why would you do that? Just walk away. Yeah. Next question. We teach our customers to not only pack boxes the way you suggest, but to further pack and color code labeled by like types of items. It significantly helps with processing through the ultrasonic equipment. It takes a little longer on the packing side, but it takes it saves so much time in cleaning. Any thoughts on this? I totally agree. You know, you’re you’re spending the time at the job site to pack it properly so that you have the efficiencies at your warehouse, and that’s where you’re gonna increase your profit margin on your production. So, yeah, I love it. Yeah. It’s also you’re you’re spending the inefficiency in the pack out on time and material so that you can pick up efficiency on the box charges if you go to a unit price. And if you decide to T and M it back at the office, then you’re you’re more efficient back there. But it’s just front loading your job to so that you’re you’re effectively putting the inefficiency in the field and then you’re picking up the efficiency in your cleaning side, which is typically your skilled workers. You want them back in the field. So, yeah, I would agree. I know. You know, one thing I’d like to say about this is that some programs are requiring the contractor to charge by how many boxes they pack. So if the code rather than using the code CPSLAB for labor, they’re having them use CPS evaluate pack per box, and it includes the box. So, that code could be, like, nine dollars. It could be twelve dollars. It’s a regional you know, it it’s just with the region and with your, TPA. Well, you know, if you’re if you if you make six if you charge sixty dollars an hour and you can only get, like, nine dollars per box that you pack that includes the box, that means you have to pack, what, seven boxes or eight boxes per hour to to make your hourly rate. So I don’t agree with that code. That’s not what that code was meant for. And the reason that the carriers the programs have adopted that code is because adjuster I mean, I’m sorry, restoration contractors in the past have double dipped. So they were charging that code to pack per box while the clock was running, and they’re charging for their hourly rate on top of it. And I think the carriers kinda maybe had that bad experience. And so they said, okay. We’re gonna chop one or the other. So now they’re trying to, you know, to only allow them to use that evaluate PAC code. And I personally don’t know how you can make a profit. I think you’re losing money by using that code. So that’s know, it’s a real concern. Depends. If you put, like, a cup in a box, you become efficient. Yeah. No. It’s it’s not a it’s not a great it’s not adjusted right, and there’s no supporting evidence behind those those numbers. So when when when you go don’t have restorers like Barb helping to build that number, so it’s a it’s a vapor number, and it’s not reliable. Great. Well, thank you guys for answering some questions, and thank you to everyone who stayed on a little bit over time for this. I saw there were some product related questions about Encircle in the chat. We’ll follow-up with those people to get those answered. But thank you guys so much for spending the time with us, and thank you to Barb and Chris for sharing your knowledge with the group. We really appreciate it. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you. Great afternoon, guys. Thanks, Barb, for coming out and doing this with us. Yeah. It was great. Thanks. Bye bye.