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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.