The Confidence Trap

In the cleaning and restoration industries, experience is one of the most valuable things a company can have. It can also become the reason a business stops improving. The longer someone works in the field, the easier it is to assume the methods that built that success will keep working forever, even as standards, customer expectations, documentation practices, and the equipment itself keep moving.

That tension sits with three Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification (IICRC) leaders who discussed how seasoned professionals can stay sharp, remain teachable, and keep growing without losing the hard-won wisdom that made them successful in the first place.

The panel brought decades of combined experience to the table:

Leslie Anderson serves as senior vice president of Training & Launch for Paul Davis Restoration in Jacksonville, Florida, and is a past chairman of the IICRC, and now chairs its education team.

Mark Gibson of ASD WaterWorks earned his first IICRC certification in 1993 and has watched the industry transform across more than three decades.

Darren Foote runs LearnToRestore.com, an IICRC-approved training facility in Salt Lake City with a flood house and online training, as well as MitGear, which supplies equipment to the restoration and cleaning trades. Foote also sits on the IICRC board of directors, serves as vice chair over restoration standards, and serves as the Water Restoration Technician technical advisory chair.

Signs of standing still

Confidence is an asset in business, but it can also become a blind spot, Anderson noted. When she onboards new people, she pays close attention to how they approach their jobs.

When evaluating new team members, Anderson asks herself: “How are they setting up a job to dry? Are they always setting the same dehumidifier and the same air movers? Perhaps they always move directly to demo.” The better approach, she explained, is to assess the structure first, consider what materials are present, and choose a drying methodology grounded in the current standards rather than habit.

For Anderson, one tell stands above the rest: “What is their openness to technology? Because we’ve moved into that world where we’re using it for mitigation and we’re using it for documentation and notes.”

Foote sees the same pattern in his classes. Too many professionals are working from information that expired years ago, he said.

“We see so many people who are posting things or saying things about the standards that are dated. They’re old,” Foote explained. He added an important clarification about how the documents evolve: “The standards don’t get updated. They get replaced. In essence, they get updated, but it’s a new version.”

Resisting change

Gibson offered a theory about why some of the most experienced people in the field refuse to change. Part of it, he claimed, is simply how the industry is wired.

“The industry attracts people who want to be mavericks, who want to set their own pace, and they don’t want someone telling them how to do it, even if it’s doing it better,” Gibson said.

The deeper issue, in his view, is how correction lands. “When you tell them there’s a better way to do it, they’re not looking at it as instruction; they’re looking at it as correction,” Gibson explained. “They’re not saying this is a better way. You’re saying I’ve been doing it wrong.”

He pointed to the sheer pace of change as the reason why standing still is so risky. “The industry has changed so radically, not in 100 years, but in the last 10 years,” Gibson said.

Anderson agreed that change is hard but framed it as an opening rather than a threat. “If you’re looking to grow your business and you’re open to change, big opportunities are on the horizon,” she said.

Where the standards fit in

Foote argued that standards are the key to successful businesses. Years ago, he explained, the IICRC committed to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) process, a demanding path to becoming an accredited standards-writing organization, and that process is built around a simple question: What are qualified, prudent members of the trade doing right now?

He drew a comparison that resonates with anyone who has ever sat in a waiting room. “I sure hope my doctor’s not using his textbook from ten years ago just because it’s comfortable,” Foote said. The people who trust a contractor to walk into their home or business deserve the best solution available at that moment, not the one that happens to feel familiar.

Gibson added that standards not only inform, but also protect the industry from bogus solutions. He also offered a line that has circulated in training circles for years: The only thing worse than training someone and watching them leave is not training them and having them stay.

For Anderson, the payoff of IICRC standards is consistency, and the customer benefits. “That means if I do a job, Darren does a job, and Mark does a job, we all are going to see it very similarly,” she explained. “The customer [wins].”

A healthy balance

Plenty of companies wrestle with how to honor old-school practical knowledge while adopting newer systems. Anderson believes the answer starts with the team and good leadership. She explained to take what they know and marry it in a team environment to achieve the best possible practice.

Foote illustrated the value of that progress with a story from early in his career. “The first equipment I had for extracting water was a three-gallon Thermax carpet cleaner and some air movers. And we didn’t know about dehumidifiers or meters back then,” he said. Getting the process right, he noted, does not just produce better results. It makes the work itself easier.

Gibson has lived through the shift firsthand. When he first took a water damage class roughly 25 years ago, he said the room was full of carpet cleaners, and the entire focus was on floating carpet and tossing the pad. Twenty years later, the same class was packed with contractors and centered on structural drying. “It’s a completely different industry than it was 25, 30 years ago,” Gibson said.

Advice for seasoned pros

Professionals who feel they have already arrived, the ones, as Foote put it, who say: “I know how to dry. I know how to clean. I’ve been doing it for 38 years. What else is there out there?”

His advice is to make learning manageable and even enjoyable. Break it into small chunks, he said. Visit equipment manufacturers’ websites and YouTube channels. Listen for the terms used a million times, like dwell time on an antimicrobial, and ask whether they could really explain them. And spend time with the standards themselves. “Read a few pages of the standard that affects your industry. Look for the shoulds and the shalls and say, ‘Am I implementing these?’” Foote said. He also offered a warning for the social media age: “Everything on the internet is not true.” Still, he insisted, growth need not be too painful. “It can be done incrementally and in productive and enjoyable ways,” he said.

Anderson framed her advice in terms of her own career. “It gave me a stepping stone to learn more, experience more, be a part of standards,” she shared.

Her hiring advice followed naturally: Build a team of people who have a thirst for learning. “Hire people for your team who want that, who desire that, to improve not only your business, but themselves and the team they manage as well,” she said.

“Knowledge is power,” Gibson added. “Knowledge is also confidence. And in our industry, knowledge is a continued income.” He added that it can become a legacy of income that carries on past any one career.

The alternative is blunt. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, your business will die because somebody else does know what they’re doing,” Gibson said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cleanfax produces this media program in partnership with the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification (IICRC). The program, Unscripted, features what the IICRC is doing, what the industry needs to know about IICRC Standards, certifications, events, technical tips, management, marketing strategies, and more. If you have a topic you would like to see featured in a future edition of Unscripted, email Jeff Cross, ISSA media director, at [email protected].