What did you learn starting your business in Arvada?
The outpouring from the city was so different than other cities I’ve been in. The Chamber reached out to me immediately and I got involved with the city’s economic division. We were recognized as a Colorado Company To Watch, in large part because the City of Arvada was involved. We were recognized as the Arvada Outstanding Business of the Year and were an Inc. 500 company, all during the recession. Our whole goal was to franchise and be able to offer this to entrepreneurs around the country and be based in Arvada.
We’re so excited about this training facility you’re building here. How did that get started and what will it eventually provide?
Mayor Marc Williams knew that last year we were looking to build this very unique flood training house and make it work in the city of Arvada. Marc put us in front of city planners, fire department and key people in the community to embrace this. The warehouse in this building will have a 1,500 square-foot built-to-code residential home that will flood with 2,000 gallons of water. We’ll train our franchisees on best practices on water restoration, bringing the home back to pre-loss condition. We’ll also smoke part of the home and teach them odor-management and smoke restoration. That is a state-of-the-art facility that has never been done before in the western part of the U.S. before. There’s only a handful of them in the country.
Delta franchises are in the top 1% of all trained restoration firms. We feel that education is the cornerstone of what we do. The barriers to enter this industry are very low, but we want to separate ourselves from the competition through training.