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Podcast Transcript:
Travis McGowin
Hey everybody! Welcome back to the Peskies Pest Control Podcast! Today we’re doing another one of our local business spotlights, where we highlight one of our local companies in the area that’s doing great things, reaching out, helping people. And today I’m excited to have on the show with me, Mister Ryan Greer, who is with ServPro of Montgomery. Ryan, how are you this morning?
Ryan Greer
I’m good. Travis, how are you? Man, thanks for having me on.
Travis McGowin
Yes, sir. Well, welcome. We appreciate you taking the time out to join us. So let’s get started. Tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe how you came to be with serve pro of Montgomery?
Ryan Greer
So I’m born and raised here in the Tri County area. I was in retail for a long time, and my daughter was born. And you know, when you have younger kids, you really retail life is very difficult on on on children. So have conversation with with her mom, and we prayed about it a lot. Asked God to open the door for us. And a couple weeks later, a friend of mine called and said, Hey, man, there’s a company here locally named ServPro that is needing someone in the Autauga County area. I know you’re from Prattville. Think you’d be great for it. What do you think about coming in and interviewing for it? So that’s how I ended up here.
Travis McGowin
Awesome. Well, sometimes same things just work out in the best way that they possibly can. So that’s great. So how long has ServPro of Montgomery actually been servicing the local community of the River region?
Ryan Greer
Yeah. So as you, as you may know, ServPro is a franchise, so there’s so we’re 2,200 locations nationwide. Our ownership group here has been in, it’s a family business, has been in the area, Montgomery, Tri County area, since the mid 80s. So coming up on 40 years now, pretty good, pretty good chunk of time. Oh, wow. So they have seen a lot of things happen in in 40 years. But that’s great to know. You know, I know you see ServPro logos and a lot of different places you see them, you know, at sporting events, you see them on the television, just in general, commercials. And it does make you think of a large company, and it is however, you still have that local ownership, that franchise ownership, that gives it that real personal touch, and that I think sets, sets it apart from some of the other, you know, larger companies as well.
Travis McGowin
So what else sets ServPro apart from from other companies? Is there anything that ServPro does to give back to the communities or to really help in local communities?
Ryan Greer
Yeah, so we, you know, there’s a lot of great companies out there. One of, one of my main focuses is actually community involvement. You know, we do anything from a lot of the local the golf tournaments, you know, there’s, there’s, we’re pretty involved with the hospitals Baptist Jackson, both. We’re involved with the Y pretty heavily involved with YMCA, really, anything that that I can be involved when community wise, is something I’m going to jump with the chance to be involved with it’s just something very close to me. So that is, that is hard, one of the wonderful things I get to do every day,
Travis McGowin
Right, and that’s a lot of great organizations and places that you listed there, so that’s really cool that ServPro is kind of has their hand in helping out with that. So for those unfamiliar with ServPro and what it does, kind of, kind of give us a list. What does ServPro of Montgomery do, as far as a range of services that you guys typically do offer to people in need?
Ryan Greer
Yeah, so we, I tell everybody, we, as far as commercially or residentially, both, we can handle anything above the slab. Of course, our bread and butter is going to be the water fire and the mold mitigation.
Travis McGowin
Right.
Ryan Greer
But we actually have a construction department here. Not all ServPros have it, but we’re looking that we have one here locally, that we can handle anything from sheet rock to paint to flooring to roofing, framing, all that good stuff. So yeah, anything above the slab we can handle.
Travis McGowin
That’s awesome. So you guys don’t necessarily have to subcontract anything out. You keep it all in house, and you get it done. And that homeowner, that business owner, is only dealing with, you know, one group, one company, instead of having to go through a whole bunch of different subcontractors and groups. I’m sure that makes a lot more easy and streamlined for the customers.
Ryan Greer
Yeah, it seems to. Now we do, we do sub subcontract, some things. We’ve got people in house that can handle, you know, the flooring removal and all that. But like you said, you know, it’s very important to to be involved through the process the entire way. We don’t have, you know this company that that comes in and and, you know, the customers got three, four or five different people they’re dealing with. They deal with us, and we handle everything from top to bottom, from beginning to end.
Travis McGowin
Awesome. Well, what are, what would you say in your experience of working with ServPro, what would you say are the most common types of emergencies that you have seen you know in your work there.
Ryan Greer
Yeah. So day to day, like I mentioned earlier, water mitigation is a huge part of what we do every day. Unfortunately, there are a number of water sources coming into your home that people just don’t realize anything from a hose on a dishwasher or a refrigerator line that that creates all that ice that we just can’t live without. You know, of course, your your shower pan leaks, your and more in the summer, we see air conditioner leaks where the drain may get clogged and and, you know, overflow and kind of flood. And that’s the water part’s going to be what we deal with more than anything else.
Travis McGowin
Okay, so walk us through that process. So you you receive a call from someone who’s having that type of issue, whether it’s their home or whether it’s their business, and you know from the time that they pick up the phone and they call ServPro of Montgomery. You know what’s the process from the timing start to the time that whole situation is is done?
Ryan Greer
Yeah, so I’ll just take, for instance, if you call me on my phone, first thing I’ll do is I’ll get some information from the homeowner, as far as just basic information, do you know where the water is coming from? What kind of flooring is involved? How many rooms has it gone into? Has the water source been stopped? That’s that’s one thing. It’s very important, because I’m not going to send a a crew out, not going to dispatch a crew out the water source hasn’t been stopped, because it’s not going to do me any good to start, you know, sucking up all the water and drying everything out when the water continues to come in, they just, it builds a bill, and it’s just, we choose not to do it that way. So we want to make sure that water source is cut off first. And then the next thing I’m going to do is, I’ll, I’ll call one of our I’ll either call our office. Kind of tell them what’s going on. I’ll speak to our project managers, give them a heads up on what’s happening, so they know what to load on the vans, and we’ll go out to the home and assess it that way and get our eyes on it. That starts the whole process to go from there.
Travis McGowin
Awesome. All right, so I know you mentioned, you know, when we were talking earlier about some of the service offerings that ServPro of Montgomery has fire, water, mold remediation, that sort of thing. What are, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about the mold. So what are some common misconceptions that people have? You know, maybe they’ve discovered that they have a mold problem in their house. You know, is there. There’s some things, mistakes, maybe, or misconceptions that people have about it. I mean, obviously we know molds not healthy to be around, right?
Yeah,
Ryan Greer
Yeah. One of the most, I think, one of the biggest things that we that we see, is somebody will see some microbial growth, and the first thing they do is they run to Home Depot and they get a certain product that says, You know what? You know, it handles it 100% effective and all this. And come to find out, they, you know, they spray it on there, and they wipe it down, and they come back a month later, five or six weeks later, and not only is it still there, but it’s come back, and it’s come back stronger than it did before. First thing we want to do is, you know, call the professionals, kind of just so we can come out there and get an eyes on it and kind of go from there. That’s got to be the the biggest misconception is, you can just spray whatever you want on it, and it’s going to go away and everything’s going to be fine.
Travis McGowin
We have that same kind of misconception on our side in our industry with pest control. There’s a lot of times where folks go to a chain store, whether it’s Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart, and they go to the pest control aisle and they see something that says, you know, eliminates cockroaches. And if you’ve ever had a German cockroach infestation, which I’m sure in your work with ServPro, you’ve probably seen some pretty nasty ones here and there, but you I always tell people, yes, there are things on the market that will kill cockroaches, but should they be used to kill cockroaches? No, they shouldn’t. And I’m sure that pretty much every industry that has any portion of a DIY market has that same problem. We see it a lot, though, but, you know, other than than those main, like you said, bread and butter type things like firewater, mold remediation, are there? Are there any other specialized, more, like niche services that ServPro offers, you know, biohazard cleanup, stuff like that.
Ryan Greer
It’s funny. You mentioned that. Yeah, we actually, we actually do offer biohazard cleanup. It’s not one of those things that that people may realize or maybe sometimes don’t even want to talk about, but unfortunately, the time comes when, when that sort of material will need to be cleaned up. We can handle that. We can handle board ups in case of you know. Somebody tries to break in or anything like that. So we can hit on the board ups. We do, we do have a roofing department as well that can, that can tarp it in emergency situation. You know, tree falls on your home. What do we need to do? We’ll get out there. We’ll get that tree taken care of. We’ll get your roof tarp. We’ll get your home secured, and kind of go from there.
Travis McGowin
Now, what about, you know, someone has a large issue with a fire or water in their home, and maybe it gets in their office. They’ve got important, you know, documents, pictures, things like that. Do you guys do any work on that sort of thing?
Ryan Greer
Yeah, we do. We do. So we document drying. We have a process, a very, very specific process, to clean out those to dry out those documents. Sometimes we have to send them off to a warehouse in another area to that, you know, but it is a ServPro warehouse to try it out. We can clean the duct systems. That’s important, too. A lot of people don’t understand, or they may not realize, when you have a fire and your air conditioners on, your air conditioner grabs that soot and it’s pulling it through that return and it throws it into every room in your house. So that’s another thing we do as well, as we offer that dryer, dryer vent cleaning and the air conditioner duct system cleaning as well
Travis McGowin
Cool! So, you know, we talked about all the problems that ServPro, you know, mitigates for customers, for homeowners, for business owners, but does ServPro do any type of work with, say, you know, commercial or homeowners insurance policies.
Ryan Greer
We do, we do. We work very closely with the with the number of insurance companies, really all of them. I’ve been with the company six and a half years, and at one point or time we’ve done the work with all of the insurance companies, which little fact that a lot of people may not know, the insurance companies actually set our prices for us. So that’s part of what I get to do, is I get to speak to insurance companies on behalf of ServePro, learn how they want to do things, and just kind of fill in that gap between ServPro and the insurance companies.
Travis McGowin
Awesome. Okay, so what would you say, you know, in the time that you’ve been with Sir Pro, what do you feel like is the most rewarding aspect of the work that you get to do.
Ryan Greer
I’m glad you asked. So what I like I mentioned earlier, I grew up in this community, you know, Prattville, Montgomery, Wetumpka. You know all that I grew up here. This is this is my community. This is where I was raised. I still live here. My children are being erased here. And the fact that I get to do something that gets me not only involved with the community, but I can help the community situations. It’s very, very rewarding for me, and that’s one of the reasons I love my job.
Travis McGowin
So what advice would you, you know, would you give to a homeowner, a business owner, that’s facing a disaster. You know, what are some things that you’ve seen people do? Like, maybe they waited too long to call? Or is there, is there any, like, tips or things that you know after the length of time you do been there, that you know some things happen to repeat over and over again, and if you could tell those customers, like, hey, you know, like, don’t wait call now. Or, you know, is there any little tidbits of things you could offer?
Ryan Greer
Yeah, exactly. Be proactive. Be proactive. You want to try to catch things before they happen. Check your hoses on your refrigerator, your dishwasher, you know, pull your dishwasher out every month or so and or every couple months, and check that hose to make sure everything is intact. Look under your sink to make sure you’re not seeing any drips. Get your air conditioning system service regularly. Make sure your house stays climate controlled. And if you do run into something where you see a little bit of water, call us. Let us come out and look at it. We’re not going to charge anything to come out and look at it. We’ve got the we’ve got the equipment to tell you exactly what’s wet and how wet it is. We go on a number of calls where someone thinks they have moisture in their home, and we go out there and we run our meters on it, and we check everything out just dries a bone. But I would rather that than a customer call me after they had a water damage two weeks ago, and now they have a funny smell in their home, because that turns into a whole different situation
Travis McGowin
Well, I think people underestimate just how fast something like that can can spiral out of control. I mean, just, it doesn’t take long before, you know, mold or mildew, things like that, start to just grow, especially in in enclosed, you know, you might see something on the surface, but enclosed spaces behind a wall, void or or somewhere like that. I mean, it just can, can get out of control really quick.
Ryan Greer
You’re exactly right, exactly right.
Travis McGowin
So, you know, we’re getting kind of close to the end of our conversation here. But you know, you mentioned earlier, ServPro is a is a huge company. It’s a national company with a. It’s kind of small, more customer service oriented. Feel locally, but you guys have a disaster response team, right?
Ryan Greer
We do! Yeah, actually, at our locate, not all ser pros have. We’re lucky to have a disaster recovery team here locally in the Montgomery area, which means if we get a call from a property owner. Yeah, they may have a property here in Montgomery, but they may also have a property in Atlanta or Indianapolis or anything like that. We have the capability to load up our tractor trailers with as much equipment as we can put in it and hit the road and be on site within a certain amount of time, we can start that drying process in a, you know, maybe a 20 story hotel. That’s like I said, in Atlanta, we can load up and we can be on site. Very short amount of time to start that process, to knock it out for them.
Travis McGowin
Now, are there any other, you know, unfortunately, disasters happen all around the world at any given day or time. Are there any notable cities that you’ve been able to travel to in your time with ServPro?
Ryan Greer
Yeah, yeah, we’ve done so in my time. I know we’ve done work in in one of the bigger, one of the bigger towns in South Carolina. We do a lot of work in Charleston. We have a franchise in Charleston. We do quite a bit of work in Charlotte, because we mentioned we’ve done quite a bit of work in Atlanta. We’ve been as far west as California. We’ve been as far north as Indiana, Illinois, of course, in the Florida, Mississippi, you know, areas around here. But yeah, we’ve been, we’ve been nationwide since I’ve been here.
Travis McGowin
It’s really cool that you know you’re sitting there in disaster strikes, and it’s just nice to know that you have that that company able to respond quickly, like you said, boots on the ground in your back pocket, so to speak, like you do have someone to call, and I know disaster strikes, and it can feel like the most hopeless situation for a homeowner or a business owner, but just knowing that there is someone there that’s able to quickly respond, that does know what to do, that does have that experience that makes all the difference in the life of somebody who’s going through what quite possibly could be the worst moment of their life, right? So, if someone were to need to contact ServPro of Montgomery in an emergency, what’s, what’s the best way to reach you or or to reach ServPro of Montgomery,
Ryan Greer
Yeah, the best thing to do is actually Call me. Call me on my phone. You touched on it earlier. One of the great things about ServPro, we are national. There are 1,000s of franchises, but we are locally owned and operated. I have a, you know, I keep my cell phone here. I’ve been in line at Disney World getting ready to get on the Peter Pan, and I got a phone call about somebody’s house, you know, flooding, and I was able to get everything put in, and we, we were at the house within, within two hours, getting everything drying out. So that that would be, that would be my recommendation, uh, quickest way is just to call me. Like I said, that phone stays on my hip. 24 hours a day, seven takes a week. I love it.
Travis McGowin
Right, alright, is there any other, you know, websites or social media areas where where people can learn more about ServPro of Montgomery, if they wanted to go and take a look at, you know, all of the service offerings, things maybe we didn’t touch on while we were talking today.
Ryan Greer
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can go to, you can go to sirpro.com or you can just Google “ServPro of Montgomery, Alabama” because there is a ServPro of Montgomery in another state as well. So ServPro of Montgomery, Alabama, takes you right to us.
Travis McGowin
Awesome. Okay, well, Ryan again, thank you for taking time out of your day today to really enlighten us on your involvement with ServPro, and what it is that ServPro does not even just locally, but nationally. We really appreciate it’s been great learning a lot more about the company that you work with.
Ryan Greer
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on I really appreciate it.
