Biggerstaff has an extensive background in sales and training, and in her interview with Cleanfax Editor Elizabeth Christenson, highlights her creation of a comprehensive 100-page sales training e-book and her focus on commercial clients for the past 15 years.

The importance of education and training in the restoration industry, particularly in building long-term client relationships, continues to grow. In turn, 911 Restoration has developed weekly restoration training sessions for partners, covering topics such as moisture mapping and readings, which have resulted in 20 to 30 clients participating each week.

The initiative has been successful, with clients requesting to send employees to the training and expressing interest in building strong industry relationships. The increase in education and training has paid off for 911 Restoration, which has grown its commercial restoration business.

Learn how the company has seen an increase in average job values, reflecting enhanced client trust and confidence in their services. Also, hear how 911 Restoration is expanding its national presence by opening more offices and focusing on the specific areas of coverage clients need most.

Watch the full interview now:

The post The 911 Restoration Sales Training Evolution appeared first on Cleanfax.

Paul Davis Restoration recently opened a second Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC)-approved training center in Salt Lake City to serve franchisees in western North America better. The new facility expands the company’s national restoration training program and supports standardized, industry-certified education for restoration professionals across the Western region.

The new facility was inspired by Paul Davis Restoration’s late CEO, Rich Wilson, who believed that education defines people’s career paths, explained Leslie Anderson, Paul Davis Restoration’s senior vice president of training and launch and the IICRC’s immediate past chair. The company built its first training center in 2009, but realized franchisees and partners in western North America had to travel far to reach Jacksonville, Florida. The second facility enables Paul Davis to serve these teams better, ensuring they understand how to follow IICRC standards correctly.

“We invest in their careers in our industry,” Anderson said. “We are big proponents of pouring into people, giving them growth opportunities, so that they have a career with Paul Davis, that they stay a long time, and that they know their value and the value that they bring to the owners.”

Anderson, who has over 26 years of experience in the restoration industry and has been with Paul Davis Restoration for 15 years, has seen firsthand how the industry is changing dramatically, with technology leading the way. New tools are constantly being developed that guide how the industry responds to claims, communicates, and undergoes documentation processes, she explained. Insurance partners in North America also have specific expectations about how their customers should be treated and how homes should be dried or mitigated.

“We have to be able to do it the right way, efficiently, with speed so that we take care of the homeowner,” Anderson explained. “Without education, you are going to fall behind in our industry if you don’t know the latest technology or meters to use to be efficient in the job.”

Moving forward, Paul Davis is focused on combining technology with education to deliver an unparalleled customer experience. What distinguishes a business is how they make customers feel through care, comfort, and professionalism, Anderson explained.

“You will see for us, the customer, regardless of the environment that we are in, they come first,” she added. “We take technology only to expedite that process through education.”

Overall, Anderson expects increased collaboration among carriers, TPAs, restoration contractors, and technology companies to drive significant shifts.

“I would say to all, educate yourselves on the technology coming your way,” she said. “It will only make you and your company better.”

The post Tech-Forward, People Driven: How Paul Davis Champions Its People appeared first on Cleanfax.

The pitch was compelling. New hires could practice in controlled environments; no weather delays, no fall risks, no liability. The technology was impressive. The company was confident.

But Healey kept circling back to one question: “Have you ever seen how a roofer gets trained?”

Because no restoration company is going to leave a new hire alone in an office with a VR headset while experienced workers are on actual roofs doing real work. Training happens shoulder-to-shoulder, in real conditions, with someone who can grab your arm before you make a costly mistake.

, Leighton Healey, CEO at KnowHow, joined Jeff Cross, Media Director at 91��Ƶ, and Travis Martin, VP of Product at KnowHow, to forecast which training technologies would be mainstream, niche, or irrelevant by 2030. The verdict on virtual reality was unanimous: Either irrelevant or extremely niche at best.

But underneath that prediction was clarity about where restoration companies should actually be placing their bets with regard to technology.

Cross opened with a prediction: “By 2030, we’re going to see a big split. Those who are going to be at the lead of the pack making it work, and the others are going to be like, ‘I should have done something about it.’”

The $1.2 Trillion Signal You Can’t Ignore

Over the last five years, $1.2 trillion has flooded into AI infrastructure. Healey offered context: “Enough money adjusted to today’s dollars to rebuild the entire US freeway and road system twice, or you could buy all 151 global professional sports leagues and still have $800 billion left over.”

That capital isn’t funding virtual reality training programs.

“When I look at what military spending is doing on wearables,” Healey explained, “it’s not really heavily focused towards virtual reality. It’s focused towards enhancing or augmenting the real-time visual landscape.”

The distinction matters. Virtual reality replaces what you see. Augmented reality enhances it. And in restoration—where every job site is different, and workers need to respond to what’s actually in front of them—augmentation beats replacement.

The infrastructure investment is going toward visual wearables, and cultural readiness is already there. When Healey was shopping for frames, he asked whether people bought glasses without needing vision correction. The salesperson’s response: “Oh yeah, like at least 50% of our sales are people that don’t need glasses.”

The form factor problem that killed Google Glass has been solved. Meta partnered with Ray-Ban. Apple invested in wearables that look normal. “This is as bad as [the technology is] going to be in the next five years,” Martin said of current smart glasses.

The technology works, the aesthetics work, and the applications for restoration are immediate: real-time access to processes, remote expert guidance, information overlays, all without pulling out a phone.

The Restoration Arms Race Starts With a Single Box

Picture a building manager’s desk with an elegant branded container from a restoration company. Inside: smart glasses. When a basement floods, the manager—knee deep—in a CAT 3 event puts on the glasses and connects immediately to an experienced water tech who sees exactly what they see.

“Have your people move those carpetings. Power down that floor. Kill the power to that elevator,” the remote expert directs in real time.

“The question is not whether it is a good idea,” Healey said. “The question is what happens when someone offers that to the market, it catches on, and then it creates an arms race.”

That’s a new revenue stream: emergency readiness packages that create relationships with commercial properties long before loss occurs. Instant crisis support that competitors without wearables can’t match.

What Your Company Structure Looks Like in 2030

“Competence and experience will be decoupled from tenure,” Healey predicted. “Training will collapse from months to days.”

By 2030, successful restoration companies won’t organize by hierarchy. They’ll organize by function, with some functions owned by AI systems handling customer communication, receivables, and sales support, not replacing people but managing the overflow that office workers already can’t finish.

“I have not met an office-based person in the restoration/cleaning industry that does not feel like they have 40 more tasks than they have time for in a week,” Martin noted.

Technicians equipped with visual wearables will have access to expertise that previously required years of experience. Project managers will support multiple job sites simultaneously through remote visual guidance. Emergency response will shift from reactive service calls to proactive readiness packages sitting on building managers’ desks.

The split Cross predicted at the start of the webinar will become obvious. Some companies will have invested in wearables that their crews voluntarily use because it makes them better at their jobs. Others will have VR headsets gathering dust, wondering why impressive conference demos never translated to job sites.

The question isn’t whether to adopt new technology. It’s whether companies can distinguish between what looks impressive at trade shows and what actually changes what’s possible at 2 a.m. on job sites.

By 2030, that distinction will be the difference between leading the market and explaining to clients why your emergency response takes longer than competitors who can see through building managers’ eyes from the moment a crisis begins.

The post Inside the Tech Shift That Will Define Restoration’s Next Decade appeared first on Cleanfax.

“You would sit there and you would watch the people on the tapes do carpet cleaning or stretching or carpet dyeing,” she recalled. “And then you would just go out and ride along with somebody in a truck and let them show you how to do what you saw in the video.”

That system worked for decades because workers arrived with foundational skills. They’d grown up around tool sheds, worked on farms, and cranked wrenches with relatives. Training just filled gaps in restoration-specific techniques, not fundamental hands-on skills.

But most restoration companies still use that same system while hiring from a workforce where many have never held a wrench.

, Hastings joined Leighton Healey and Travis Martin of KnowHow to discuss why this mismatch is killing employee retention, and what smart companies are doing about it.

The ‘unhandy’ generation

Leighton Healey, CEO of KnowHow, who’s built and scaled multiple people-powered companies, has watched the workforce shift dramatically. He jokingly called the incoming generation “the unhandy generation.”

“Not a lot of young people growing up today [have] parents with tool sheds, or head out to the farm or go work or crank wrenches with Uncle Nick,” he explained. “That’s becoming more and more uncommon.”

These aren’t inferior workers. They’re digital natives whose brains are wired differently based on the technology they grew up using. Generation X learned through step-by-step instructional videos, so they prefer structured, sequential content. Millennials came of age Googling everything—they think in keywords and search terms.

Generation Z grew up with Siri and ChatGPT. “They don’t think in keywords. They think in questions because they’re used to talking to artificial intelligence,” noted Travis Martin, vice president at KnowHow.

Try to train a Gen Z brain with Gen X methods, and the training fails. Not because the worker is lazy, but because the delivery method doesn’t match how their mind processes information.

The accelerating technology disconnect

This mismatch is getting worse, not better. Tech companies are spending trillions on AI infrastructure that will further reshape how young people interact with information. “What used to come every five to six years, a significant transition, the pace is going to be so accelerated that there will be a game-changing technology introduced probably quarterly if not at least biannually,” Healey warned.

Young workers will regularly ask about new tools and technologies, and companies that .

Training as a recruitment tool

College enrollment has dropped significantly over the last 15 years. Smart people are choosing skilled trades because the economics make sense—better pay, less debt, tangible skills that can’t be outsourced.

But these workers evaluate opportunities differently from previous generations.

“People are coming into the job interview or they’re searching job postings to see what type of education, continuing education, professional development, and even personal development is available,” Hastings observed. “They need to know that they are going to receive something in exchange for their time and their effort.”

. Companies with strong development systems attract higher-caliber candidates. Those relying on outdated methods get whoever shows up.

This creates a vicious cycle: poor training attracts weaker candidates, who struggle more with inadequate systems, reinforcing the belief that “workers today just aren’t as good.

The personal cost of poor training

Poor training doesn’t just hurt recruitment; it also traps you in your business. “What is downstream of not having a sufficient training program?” Healey asked. A business that is highly dependent on a small number of people. Your health, your marriage, your family, all of them are experiencing the strain of businesses that are too dependent on you, he said.

When you can’t develop workers who execute consistently without constant oversight, you become the bottleneck. Every vacation gets interrupted. Every evening includes work calls.

Effective training creates independence—workers who can handle standard situations without escalation and systems that function when you’re not there.

The nicrolearning solution

The answer isn’t fighting modern brains. Instead, it’s designing training that works with them.

“Don’t stick them in a room with a TV or a computer all day and have them watch videos for eight hours,” Hastings warned. “They’re not going to learn anything.”

Her solution? Create short, focused content that can be absorbed quickly. “Keep your videos small. Keep your learnings short. Have little knowledge checks in between, but change it up because nobody has good attention spans these days.”

Start by documenting what you know now that you didn’t know when you started. Ask current crews what they struggled with in their first 30 days. Mix delivery methods throughout each day: Hands-on practice, team discussions, brief online modules, and written materials.

Most importantly, build clear advancement paths. Show new hires examples of people who started where they are and where those people went over 18 months.

What hasn’t changed

The core services remain the same. Restorers still deliver service through people’s expertise and effort. Customer service still matters. The equipment functions the same way.

What’s changed is how people expect to learn and develop. Companies that adapt their training to match how today’s workers actually process information their competitors can’t match.

The choice is clear: Evolve your training systems to work with modern brains, or keep losing workers to companies that do.

Hastings’ VHS tapes worked for that generation. The question is: What will work for today’s worker?

The post From Binders to Bytes appeared first on Cleanfax.

The problem isn’t your people. The problem is basic human psychology.

on gamification, Steve Glozik from FP Property Restoration joined behavioral engineer Gabe Zichermann, Jeff Cross from 91��Ƶ media, and Travis Martin from KnowHow to break down why cash-first tactics stall, and what actually gets crews to lean in when the work is hard and the hours are long.

The habituation problem no one talks about

Zichermann cuts straight to the uncomfortable truth: “Do you remember your very first paycheck? You felt rich, right?”

That $50 from bagging groceries felt like a fortune. Your last paycheck—probably ten times larger—doesn’t produce anywhere near the same rush as the first.

“The psychological satisfaction that comes from an expected reward is not as great as the unexpected reward,” Zichermann explained.

People habituate to expected rewards. Your first paycheck felt oversized; the hundredth lands as routine. Predictable compensation becomes background noise. In the restoration industry, where you’re constantly asking teams to go above and beyond, that motivation gap hits exactly where you need engagement most.

The four-letter framework that beats cash

Instead of constantly upping the monetary ante, Zichermann developed the SAPS framework—Status, Access, Power, and Stuff—as a substitute. Most powerful to least powerful, he said, “also, conveniently, cheapest to most expensive.”

Status costs little and hits hardest. Example: A tech passes a certification. Don’t stop at the Slack/Teams shout-out. Have a leader send a short, direct text: “Saw your certification. Proud of you.” The unexpected, personal note lands far harder than a generic post.

Access means first pick of routes, gear, or training slots; all the things other people wait for.

Power gives control, like choosing time off windows or piloting new processes.

Stuff like cash and gift cards, which should be used sparingly since all rewards eventually lose their punch.

Because habituation hits every reward, non-cash levers let you increase motivation without endlessly increasing spend.

Cross’ Friday afternoon breakthrough

Cross discovered another scalable technique while running his own company: “It was like a Friday at noon. [The person] had a good week. I’m like, ‘Just take off.’ That meant a lot because it was [a] spur-of-the-moment [decision].”

Small, unexpected recognition creates more lift than the same gift card on the same day every month. Zichermann called this “surprise and delight,” and it’s pure gold because a little bit of surprise and delight goes a long way in motivating staff.

Glozik saw this first-hand with a six-figure earner in his company who fell into a funk. The solution wasn’t money. Instead, it was getting him to a training event outside the office, around peers who challenged him. For once, as Glozik explained, he was challenged and didn’t feel like the best person in the room, and that single experience reignited the employee’s engagement more than any raise could have.

The foundation that actually keeps people

Here’s what Glozik and the other panelists won’t let you skip: you can’t sprinkle leaderboards on a broken culture. Respect, fair base pay, and visible progress have to be in place first. If people are worried about the basics, gamification reads like window dressing.

But when the foundation is solid, the results are clear. revealed something every owner needs to understand: salary mattered when choosing a job, number one for Gen Zs, and number four for millennials. But once inside the company? Salary dropped to fifth place.

What kept people was the team culture, growth opportunities, and the opportunity to gain new skills. As one expert put it in : “People come for a paycheck, [and] stay for a purpose.”

Pay opens the door, but development opportunities and a feeling of belonging keep people in the company.

Your first 3 moves

Run a quick pulse and lock the cadence. Use a simple survey to ask what your team actually wants and how they prefer to learn. Share the results. Set a small budget. Put recognition and check-ins on a calendar so they don’t vanish when jobs surge.

Pick one company metric and make it social (not overly competitive). For the next quarter, rally around one team goal. Post progress where everyone can see it. Celebrate weekly movement. Add a light, friendly layer: rotate a traveling trophy between offices or departments.

Turn training into status, not a chore. When someone earns a certification, announce it publicly and send a short, direct text from a leader. Favor portable credentials issued in the employee’s name. During training, find a low-cost way (like a quiz/leaderboard) to keep people engaged. Pair the top contributors with the bottom quartile to coach them up.

You can’t buy sustainable effort. You have to intentionally design it.

Lead with status, access, and power; keep competition friendly; make progress visible; use cash last. That’s how “above and beyond” becomes repeatable instead of just expensive, and how your teams stay engaged even when the emergency calls hit at 2 a.m.

The post Why Your $100 Team Bonuses Aren’t Working (And What Actually Motivates Workers) appeared first on Cleanfax.

After three years of standout work, Ken Carlson, general manager at Alpine, helped her land a promotion. It was a significant opportunity: A role as an adjuster with a major insurance company. Better title. Better pay. A step up.

A few years later, she walked back into his office, shaking her head. “I hate this. I’m not happy,” she told him.

She didn’t want the prestige or fancy title. She just wanted her old job back. “I just loved what I did,” she said.

Carlson shakes his head at the memory. “I didn’t understand her,” he admits. “I thought money was her solution, when it wasn’t.”

That moment captures what most restoration companies get wrong about retention, and what Alpine gets right.

In a recent Cleanfax + KnowHow webinar on building training programs that drive retention and career growth, Carlson joined executive coach Zac Johnson from Cultivate Advis and KnowHow’s Leighton Healey and Travis Martin to break down how companies can transform from six-month turnover cycles to multi-year retention through intentional training and career building.

The six-month graveyard

Most restoration companies live in what Healey, CEO of KnowHow, calls “a vicious cycle.” High turnover creates a mentality where managers think: “I can’t take my best people and constantly be pairing them up with someone who is only going to be at my company for six to eight months.”

The logic seems sound. Train minimally, get productivity fast, and accept that people will leave. Rinse and repeat.

The result, Healey said, is “a perpetual state of chaos and panic”—what he calls “learned helplessness,” where leaders stop believing anyone will stay, so they stop trying.

But as Carlson puts it: “If you’re having high turnover, you need to look in the mirror.” At Alpine, even technicians stay for years. Managers stay for decades.

The difference? as if they’re going to be around for years, and the people end up staying around for years.

From paycheck to purpose

Skill-building matters. But skills alone don’t make people stay.

“There are a lot of young workers in the trades who are super skeptical of traditional employment,” Johnson said. “People come for a paycheck. They stay for a purpose.”

That purpose is directional. It’s knowing where this job could take you, and what it takes to get there.

“You don’t need to want a career to grow one,” Johnson explained. “You just need someone to show you what’s possible.”

The problem isn’t that young workers lack ambition—the issue, he explained, is “perceived optionality” without real roadmaps. Johnson uses what he calls “the coffee beans procedure” as an example: many young people say they’d like to run a coffee shop someday, but can’t answer basic questions about espresso machines, point-of-sale systems, or supply chains.

The same applies in the trades. Big talk about “someday” doesn’t stick. But specificity does.

“Companies, especially in the trades, that actually have [training] broken down as optionality with internal case studies do incredibly well,” Johnson said. “Instead of vague promises, it’s: ‘You could be like Joe—Joe was in your shoes two years ago.’”

That’s how Alpine does it. Through a structured technician advancement program, they provide individuals with a clear path to visualize progress and move toward it.

“It’s clearly defined,” Carlson said. “These are things you need to know, this information and this information, how to handle this situation. They check that off with that manager. Then they jump into the next criterion.”

Hurricane-resistant training

But how does structured development survive an industry built on emergencies? Mike Tyson’s famous quote applies perfectly to restoration: “Everyone’s got a plan till they get punched in the face.”

In other words, everyone has the perfect training program until a CAT event or a storm comes along over the weekend.

, but also a technological one. “Having this database where you can search all of Alpine’s procedures,” Carlson explained. “That’s been huge.”

He’s talking , the tool Alpine uses to document and deliver its SOPs, role expectations, and jobsite processes.

“I can’t go ask Google or Grok, ‘Hey, what does Alpine do in this scenario?’ They don’t know what we do,” he said. “But KnowHow does.”

The difference is company-specific knowledge. Alpine isn’t just storing general knowledge. It’s making its way of doing things accessible—on demand, in the field, no matter what storm just rolled in.

Having the right tool means your people don’t have to guess, and training doesn’t rely on perfect conditions. When you combine that kind of consistency with the culture Alpine has built, the investment pays off fast.

Carlson estimates that their weekly all-hands training—with 100 people clocked in—costs the company a significant amount of money. “We’re getting that money back within a day or two on productivity and lack of turnover,” he said.

Your first three moves

For companies ready to break their retention cycle, all three experts recommend starting small:

• Create airspace first. “Start by creating airspace,” Healey advised, “Use that airspace to outline what competent looks like for the two to three upcoming roles you’re planning to hire for.” , freeing up management time to focus on developing people instead of constantly putting out fires.
• Know your people. Carlson’s lesson from his returning technician: “You got to learn you got to know your people first. What are their fears, and what are their loves, and what do they like to do?”
• Start embarrassingly small. “Record less than you want to begin with and train less than you want to begin with,” Johnson recommended. “Don’t go whole hog out of the gate.”

The real ROI

That technician who came back? She’s proof that when you invest in people as whole humans rather than just workers, they remember. Even when they leave, they often realize what they had.

As Carlson learned, sometimes the best promotion isn’t up the ladder—it’s deeper into work they already love, with people who invested in helping them excel at it.

The post What Most Restoration Teams Get Wrong About Training appeared first on Cleanfax.

You probably didn’t go to college thinking you’d end up in water mitigation or fire restoration. Most people don’t. And that’s exactly why Dr. Jake Avila, associate professor at MTSU—and a restoration veteran himself—is taking bold steps to launch a Restoration Industry Management degree program at the university.

From the field to the classroom

“I grew up in a restoration business in Southern California,” Avila said. “I spent nearly 20 years in the field before I ever thought about teaching. Then I filled in for a college class one day, and I got hooked. I came home and told my wife, ‘I don’t want to do anything else for the rest of my life.’”

Since then, Avila has made it his mission to bridge the gap between academia and real-world restoration. And he quickly discovered that publishing academic papers wasn’t enough.

“Academic research tends to stay between academics,” he said. “But I wanted to do something that spoke directly to the industry.” That’s why he started conducting targeted studies—on everything from family business dynamics to employee burnout in restoration—and sharing results at industry events.

The response was overwhelming. “People kept coming up to me saying, ‘Thanks for the research, but what are you doing to help bring more people into the industry?’” he said. “That’s when the idea for a degree program started taking shape.”

Why a restoration degree now?

Think about the last job fair you attended—if you even had time to attend one. Now picture this: MTSU hosts 175 construction employers every year, but only one is a restoration company.

“That’s an enormous, missed opportunity,” Avila said. “Restoration companies say they need workers, but they’re not even showing up where the talent is.”

This new program isn’t just about training students—it’s about changing the industry’s visibility. “Young people don’t grow up dreaming of drying out flooded basements,” he joked. “But if we show them the scope of what we do—fire, storm, commercial, catastrophe response—and the business leadership opportunities that come with it, it’s not a hard sell.”

A proven blueprint for success

This isn’t uncharted territory for MTSU. The university launched the Concrete Industry Management (CIM) program 25 years ago, and today it’s a national model. “It started with a similar need—industry leaders wanting to build a talent pipeline,” Avila explained. “Now there are five CIM programs across the country, with 100% job placement and some of the highest post-grad salaries on campus.”

What does that mean for restoration? It means there’s a proven template. “We’re not inventing something from scratch,” Avila said. “We’re adapting a successful, scalable framework for a much larger industry.”

While the concrete industry generates an estimated US$119 billion annually, conservative estimates suggest the restoration industry could be twice that size. “And yet, restoration doesn’t have a single dedicated degree program—not one,” Avila said.

The curriculum: Grounded and hands-on

The proposed program will combine general education, construction management, and a specialized six-course sequence in restoration. “We’re talking everything from industry dynamics and insurance basics to estimating, project management, and marketing,” Avila said.

And this won’t be a sit-behind-a-desk degree. Students will be required to complete hands-on internships and earn certifications through RIA, IICRC, and more. “We’re making sure they graduate with more than just a diploma—they’ll have real-world experience and industry credentials.”

An advisory board made up of restoration professionals is helping shape the curriculum to reflect the needs of actual contractors. “This isn’t ivory tower academia,” Avila said. “It’s a program built with the industry, for the industry.”

The investment—and the opportunity

To get this program off the ground, MTSU is seeking $3 million in industry support. The first $1 million will launch the program. The remaining $2 million will go toward student scholarships and industry exposure, helping future students attend conferences and earn certifications that would otherwise be out of reach.

Here’s the kicker: MTSU has agreed to take zero overhead from the funds. “That’s unheard of,” Avila said. “We worked hard to make sure every dollar goes directly toward helping students and building the program.”

A call to action

So, what can you do? First, show up—at career fairs, trade schools, community colleges. Just being there puts restoration on the radar of thousands of young people.

Second, consider supporting the program—financially, as a mentor, or by offering internships. “This initiative isn’t just for Tennessee,” Avila said. “It’s a model that can grow nationwide.”

And finally, if you’re tired of scrambling for qualified hires and watching inexperienced competition flood the market, be part of the solution. Help build a talent pipeline that’s trained, motivated, and ready to lead.

“We have a chance to change the trajectory of this industry,” Avila said. “We just need to get to the table.”

How to help

Learn more by

Credit card donations may be made, by clicking by entering the amount you want to give, clicking the dropdown menu under “What would you like to give to?” and selecting “Other” before typing in “Disaster Restoration” within the “Other” comment box.

Checks may be made Payable to The MTSU Foundation and sent to P.O. Box 109, Murfreesboro, TN 37132 with “Disaster Restoration” in the memo line.

Contact: Dr. Jake Avila,  615-898-5715, or Jacob.avila@mtsu.edu

The post MTSU Plans for Restoration’s Next Generation appeared first on Cleanfax.

So she did what any self-respecting professional would do: she walked out.

She eventually returned (after the owner’s profuse apology), but that moment made something painfully clear: in restoration, even good intentions get buried under the urgency of the day. When no one has time to prepare, follow through, or reinforce what matters, new hires end up forgotten, long before they ever get a chance to contribute.

“I vowed no employee would ever experience what I did,” says Lisa, now a restoration training professional with two decades in the industry. Yet this exact scenario still plays out in most restoration companies every day.

In a recent , Lisa joined Leighton Healey (CEO of KnowHow), Travis Martin (VP of Product at KnowHow), and Davin Sullivan (Learning Program Manager at BluSky) to break down why most training fails and how to make it stick.

Why most training doesn’t stick

You’ve seen it: On Monday, your tech flawlessly performs moisture mapping during training. By Thursday, they’re botching placement zones and misreading moisture levels.

“We hit them with the fire hose,” Leighton explains, “then act surprised when they drown.”

Trainers overwhelm new hires with procedures, protocols, and every paperwork requirement imaginable. Under this information assault, learners retain just one thing: relief when it finally ends.

This isn’t your techs’ fault. The brains of today’s incoming workers are search-oriented: we remember where to find information, not the info itself. That means unless training is reinforced, it evaporates.

The four horsemen of retention

After watching countless orientations fail, Lisa discovered something transformative: people don’t remember what they hear once, and everyone learns differently.

Her solution? The IDEA method:

• Instruct: First, clearly explain the process, why it matters, and what success looks like.
• Demonstrate: Next, physically demonstrate because watching someone do something activates visual learning centers.
• Experience: Then, let the learner perform the task themselves to create muscle memory.
• Assess: Finally, provide specific, real-time feedback to the learner.

Each pass through the material cements the learning, Lisa emphasizes. Crucially, all these accommodate different learning styles and build stronger connections in the brain.

The knowledge bottleneck holding back growth

Every restoration company has at least one employee who knows everything. They’re invaluable, respected, and paradoxically, they’re suffocating your company’s growth.

“Our mitigation director was brilliant,” recalls Lisa, “but he created this massive bottleneck. New team members would wait days for his guidance while watching generic videos that didn’t address our specific processes.”

The solution isn’t cloning these unicorns. Rather, it’s teaching them how to teach others.

“Instead of being the hero who swoops in to fix everything, we trained them to become people who empower others to solve problems independently,” Davin explains, referencing her first-hand experience with a similar scenario.

This shift builds internal bench strength. It turns tribal knowledge into team knowledge. And it means fewer late-night panicked calls to supervisors.

From reactive scrambling to ready response

Most restoration training is reactive. Someone fumbles a Category 3 water loss, and suddenly the whole team gets “urgent” black water protocol retraining.

“We build band-aid trainings,” Davin admits. “We’re reactive, so we rush something together without considering the bigger picture.”

Leading companies flip the script. They use training tools (like KnowHow) to stay one step ahead of recurring challenges, proactively delivering lessons before mistakes happen and not after.

They also track behavior change through 30-60-90 day check-ins—not just to measure retention, but to catch problems before they become expensive rework.

The result? Fewer callbacks. Fewer surprises. And more confident operations.

The one place to start today

You don’t need to revolutionize everything overnight. All four experts agree on one simple starting point: Organize what you already have.

“Most restoration companies already possess 80% of what they need,” Lisa says. “It’s just scattered across random binders, hard drives, and employees’ heads.”

Creating a central, searchable knowledge hub means your techs can find answers precisely when they need them most, at 2 a.m. on a water loss site when no supervisor is awake to answer frantic texts.

And Leighton’s surprisingly effective bonus tip? “Have great snacks during training.” It sounds trivial until you realize it signals something profound to your team: their comfort and experience matter.

After all, retention isn’t just about keeping information in heads. It’s also about keeping valuable people on your team.

The bottom line

Training fails when it becomes a one-way dump of information. To make it stick:

• Design for search-oriented brains: Assume they’ll Google later, so make answers easy to find.
• Reinforce skills with the IDEA method: Instruct, Demonstrate, Experience, Assess.
• Measure real outcomes through behavior change, 30/60/90-day check-ins, and time to confidence.

Lisa Browning eventually returned to that empty conference room on her first day. But countless restoration professionals permanently walk away from companies because training failures signal a deeper truth: if you can’t remember them on day one, you probably won’t value them on day 1,000 either.

Fix your training, and you might just fix everything that follows.

The post Why Most Restoration Training Fails—And What to Do Instead appeared first on Cleanfax.

The study found that regardless of whether workers said they need it, 51% said they have received training in the past 12 months, while a similar share (49%) said they have not.

Among workers who say they need more education and training, 28% said learning on the job would be the best way for them to get it. About a quarter said completing a certificate program (24%) or getting more formal education (24%) would be the best way.

Among workers who need training but didn’t get any in the last year, many point to time and resource constraints as major reasons for not doing so. More than four-in-ten (43%) said they couldn’t find the time, while 38% said they couldn’t afford it, and 28% said their employer wouldn’t cover the cost.

Regarding income levels, 41% of workers with lower incomes and 43% of those with middle incomes who said they need but did not get training said they couldn’t afford it. Only 11% of upper-income workers said the same.

The post Most Feel They Have the Training to Get the Job Done appeared first on Cleanfax.

Learn how small actions, professionalism, and confidence can win customers over in the first 30 seconds, and get practical tips for training employees, ensuring consistency, and building lasting relationships from the very first interaction.

Whether you’re a business owner or part of a team, this video is packed with strategies to help you stand out and succeed.

For more video content by Cleanfax, check out the Cleanfax Video page and start learning invaluable cleaning and restoration tips today.

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The post The First 30-Seconds: How to Impress Cleaning Customers From the Start appeared first on Cleanfax.