Build a stronger business after a disaster - YouTube

23 years in the business it's August of 2005 and we had a rather unprecedented

event occur some people call it Hurricane Katrina others call it the

federal flood of 2005 what happened was there were breaks in our levee system

which allowed water to pour in and New Orleans is like a bowl and the problem

is is when that bowl fills up there's only one way to get water out of the

bowl and that is through pumping systems the only problem was is that the pumping

systems none of them worked when all of that happened which is why the water sat

there for three weeks we were not able to move back to the city for four months

because there weren't any places to live

and during that time I couldn't make contact with my clients my staff had

disappeared I didn't have anybody I was working on my own I was finally able to

start contacting people via email eventually people were getting in touch

and said you know my numbers now this Houston area code or this Lafayette

Louisiana area code or some place in Florida whatever we were all finally

able to start communicating again which was so important eventually after about

five months of working I found someone that I could hire it took that long to

find somebody to hire because there wasn't anybody or ahem so what do you do

how do you begin to build a business again when you're not really sure if

your city is coming back you go back to the basics the same thing I always did I

went right back to them when in doubt go back to basics so I began to call all of

my clients again and find out how they were doing what

their businesses were like half of my clients were still living

for instance in Baton Rouge they had moved their businesses there so I was on

the road all the time eventually it all kind of moved back but when you

encounter tragedies or challenges like that how do you know you've been

successful the way you know is did your clients trust you before and now are

they gonna trust you now I wasn't going anywhere and I said look I'm back in my

building I am up and running what do you need what help do you need from me I

wasn't out to make sales I was out how do you help other people

now what can I do to help you very simple things this is what being human

is all about is how can I help you well I found out I'd built my business the

right way because I had clients I never have had a customer in my life my

relationships with people are client relationships and from there we began to

rebuild and over time we actually began not only to rebuild but to do the

better

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