Good Day,
This past Saturday I received a call from one of my partners at GlowZone 360 letting me know that our Mississauga location was flooding. I dropped what I was doing, grabbed the three large floor fans I have (you will understand why I have those in a moment) and headed to Home Depot to see if they had any industrial carpet cleaners and/or dehumidifiers to rent. They did not. Instead, I purchased the biggest dehumidifier they had, along with two large floor squeegees and four mops, and then headed to the location.
It was 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and our location was shut down. By the time I arrived, all of the birthday parties had been notified (with as many as possible being accommodated at our Brampton location), our website and Google had been changed to reflect the closed status, and we had also put information out through our social channels. All of the staff who, minutes before, were entertaining guests, switched into disaster recovery mode. It had been less than an hour from the time I was told about the flooding until the time I arrived and all of the surface water had already been removed. We spent a few hours using the squeegees to push the water out of the carpets and onto the tile floors where it was then mopped up and removed from the building. As we cleared each section, another staff came in behind with our large carpet cleaner and sucked the remaining water out, only slowed down by the ridiculous amount of times it had to be emptied because there was so much water. Another two staff grabbed the box with the new dehumidifier and said they would figure out how to put it together and get it working. And yet another staff found working plugs (we had turned the power off in some areas because of the water) and set up the fans to start further drying the carpets. We opened at 10am Sunday morning.
I had the fans because my basement flooded during that other big storm on July 16. I was braving the torrential downpour in Vaughan with Sara from our team and Ashley from Tourism Vaughan. We were scouting locations for our 2025 Tourism Symposium when I received a call from my oldest saying that there was water in the basement. I told him to grab the shop vac and try to get as much as he could out of the carpet. We finished up and I headed home. Gavin was the only one home and was trying to suck the water out of the carpet. But there is a lot of carpet, and there had been a lot of water. The storm drains had backed up and filled the basement with water – as high as five inches in some parts. The water had been so deep it extinguished the pilot light on my hot water heater (which Trish realized later that night when she went to take a bath), and got into the circuit board of our furnace. Everything that was on the floor and bottom shelves was soaked.
I called my youngest son, who was at a friends’ house, to come home and help. The friends also came along and they started pulling everything from the floor and bottom shelves in the storage room and bringing it out to the back deck to start drying (by this time the rain had stopped and the sun was out – crazy weather). I called the insurance company and then went to my buddy’s place to borrow another shop vac. Gavin and I spent another few hours sucking gallons of water out of the carpet while Trish, now home from work, Patch and his friends continued to try to save as much of our stuff as possible. After at least four hours, the carpet wasn’t squishing out water when we stepped on it. I went to Home Depot to try to rent fans and a dehumidifier and was almost laughed out of the building because so many people had been in asking for those items. Instead, I resorted to purchasing new fans because we wanted to keep the air circulating so that mold didn’t start forming.
Two days later, on Thursday, the insurance company had a restoration company come out to survey the damage and on Friday they were back and ripped out all of the carpet, the subfloor, two feet of drywall, our sectional, sleeper sofa and a few other things. They then placed seven huge industrial fans and a large dehumidifier to really dry the basement out. The following week they were back again to determine what things were going to be salvageable and what had to be replaced. That Sunday, an insurance adjudicator (from Calgary because there were more than 1300 claims in the GTA) came by to review everything that had been done. He asked me how many hours were spent trying to mitigate the damage on the day of the flood and, between Gavin, Patch and his friends, Trish and I, I estimated it between 25-30. He told me that they would calculate that time at $20/hour and take that amount off our premium.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Why would you pay me to do something that needed to be done to rectify or mitigate the situation? It was what needed to get done to try to save as much of our stuff as possible. I don’t expect to get paid to do that.”
He responded that because of all of the effort we made to remove items from the basement and get everything dried out, we probably saved them thousands of dollars because of the amount of items that were saved. I still didn’t get it. “Doesn’t everyone work to fix the problem and save as much as they can?” I asked. His response shocked me. “You would be surprised how many people just wait for someone else to come in and fix the problem.”
I am telling you this story because that one comment shook me to the core and is so transferable to the success of a business. I always assumed that everyone is proactive in times of difficulty – doing everything they can to mitigate the circumstances to have as positive an outcome as possible. If you are a business owner and things aren’t looking good, the only person that is going to save you is you. Cost of goods getting too high? Get on the phone and find new suppliers. Not getting enough people through your doors? Reach out to your neighbours and work together to increase visitation. Or try a new marketing program. There is no one to wait for. It’s on you. Your town, your BIA or Chamber are not going to make you successful. You, your efforts, and proactively seeking out those that can help, could.
Central Counties can be one of those calls. We probably aren’t going to be able to fix your problem. However, we will be able to help you figure out some ideas, make some introductions and point you in the right direction so that you have the tools to fix it yourself. By making that call, you are being proactive because, unless you do, we have no idea that a) you have a problem in the first place and b) how we can help you get back on track. Use the resources you have at hand to be more successful. And, if you are really proactive and make those connections when times are good, there is a good chance that you won’t have as many “bad times” and, when you do, will be able to mitigate them quickly.
I get that a flood or other natural disaster is different than revenues and expenses, but both affect your bottom line. We could have closed our doors in Mississauga and waited for the insurance company to send in a restoration company. We have business interruption insurance, so we probably wouldn’t have lost that much money. Instead, we worked very hard to get open the very next day. So, when the insurance company puts a value on the work we did to lessen our deductible if they decide the carpet, some of the video games and tile floor need to be replaced, we will gladly take it because we saved them tens of thousands of dollars by being open. And we got to continue welcoming all of our guests instead of them coming to a locked door.
Think about how you would react in the face of an unexpected disaster. I bet almost all of you would step up and do everything you could to fix the issues and get things back on track. If your bottom line isn’t where you want it to be, face that challenge as if it were a natural disaster and mitigate it.
Have a great day!
Chuck
