Secrets of Successful Mold Businesses

Can you imagine showing up for a mold inspection at the home of someone like Pamela Anderson, Kevin Costner, Nicolas Cage or Jay Leno? MoldTech® Mold Inspection Software was created by the owners of the most successful mold inspection company serving the lucrative Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Santa Monica markets. On a daily basis they walked into multi-million dollars homes where they were met by teams of lawyers, business managers, realtors and staff who assessed their quality and professionalism through every step of an inspection. The lawyers and business managers would then read the resulting mold inspection report looking for any nuggets that could be used in a lawsuit in order to further justify their usefulness to their wealthy and famous clients. Tough crowd. Would you be up to that kind of challenge?

The secret that they discovered is that you better walk on to a job site looking and acting like a qualified professional. But be careful: being a professional isn't the same as being a know-it-all. Be very clear about the scope of your services and deliver exactly that. Resist the temptation to give advice about things outside of those areas. If a client wants advice about how to fix their leaky roof or, worse, about how their medical conditions might be related to mold, learn to feel confident saying, "I'm not a roofer (or a doctor), but your roofer (or doctor) should be able to provide you with a recommendation for that issue." Your client will respect you for not "winging it" in areas in which you are not qualified to address. Remember they hired you to assess their property for signs of water damage and microbial growth, they don't really expect you to diagnose their medical problems. So don't feel as though you should.

Another key to appearing professional and competent on a job site is your personal presentation. Climbing out of a dirty car in jeans and a T-shirt, juggling a clipboard with stacks of carbonless forms and a disposable camera will make your client doubt the quality of your work, no matter how good you actually are. Showing up on the job in a clean vehicle with your company name on it, even if it's a magnetic sign, is a good first step. Wearing a clean, professional-looking uniform, something similar to a pair of Dockers or Dickies and a solid-colored shirt with buttons is essential.

It is just as important is is to show up with respectable tools. Shuffling through a set of paper inspection forms piled on a clipboard can make you appear sloppy and disorganized. Documenting the job with a disposable camera will give the client the impression that you are an amateur. On the other hand, walking through the property inputting inspection data into a handheld computer PDA (personal digital assistant) and a digital camera tells the client that you are organized and efficient. It also shows that you have made an investment in your business. After all, the last thing you want to do is to appear to be "fly-by-night."

Presenting the client with an neatly formatted, well-written report is essential to establishing yourself as a professional. Your reports should be clear and concise. A quality report should convey the basic facts about the issues documented in a way that informs the client without inflaming the situation. For instance, if you are documenting a mold inspection for the buyer of a home during a real estate transaction, it is not your job to convince them not to buy the house if there are signs of mold. It is your responsibility to provide them with the information required for them to make an educated decision about what to do next. Rather than dropping the purchase, they may decide to negotiate a credit on the selling price to remediate the problem themselves. It's their choice, not yours.

A professional mold inspection report should inform, not influence. If you notice that, after reading your reports, your clients regularly call you in a state of hysteria about the results of your inspections, you should consider changing the language in reports so that the information is presented in a way that is less inflammatory. It's like they used to say in Dragnet, "Just the facts, ma'am." You may want to have an attorney review some of your reports and advise you the right language to use to inform without causing panic.

In summary, the key to growing a successful mold inspection business is professionalism. Answer your phones in a professional way. Look like a professional when you show up on a job. Use professional tools. Like any confident, experienced professional, be an expert in your field, but be clear about your boundaries. Don't be afraid to defer to experts in another field when confronted with questions that are outside of the scope of your established services. Provide your clients with a professional-looking report that presents the findings of your inspection in a way that is intelligent and well-written. Your reports should provide information, not inspire hysteria.

In the brutal market like Los Angeles, where mold inspection companies drop like flies, the makers of MoldTech® Mold Inspection Software not only survived but built a very successful and lucrative business by constantly re-evaluating their business to maintain the highest level of professionalism possible. It doesn't matter where in the country (or the world) you are running your mold inspection business, you can increase your level of success (no matter how successful you already are) by training yourself to constantly be aware of how the client is seeing you. By making sure that every aspect of your presentation is professional, you will guarantee that your clients will respect you and the job you are doing and, most importantly, will refer you to others.

The possibilities are almost endless, but the bottom-line is: yes, mold has been around forever, but mold IS a very real problem today and needs to be addressed in a serious, professional way.