Watching a movie that was set in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains happened to remind me of a line from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book: “For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” I believe this sentiment to be true in business as well as in nature.

In this special Ask the Expert episode, Diana Rodriguez-Zaba, president of ServiceMaster Restoration by Zaba serving Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, shares her story and insights. She is the winner of R&R’s seventh annual Women in Restoration Award and rose to the top of an impressive list of 46 nominees.

In conjunction with our seventh annual campaign celebrating leading women in this male-dominated industry, we asked all six of the past winners, from 2016 through 2021, to answer one question: To what do you attribute your success?

There is one universal key that, Jennifer Sharpe found, will always lead to an increase of success. That is your own commitment to personal development.

In this episode of Ask the Expert, Andrew Zavodney, chairman of the board and CEO, talks about Kustom’s investment in company culture, employee value proposition, corporate governance, M&A due diligence, transparency, accountability and scaling without private equity. 

Eric Sprague and Larry Wilberton used many books to help build their cleaning and restoration business, but these four are the ones that impacted them the most. Regardless of what books you choose for yourself, Sprague’s call to action for anyone reading this article is to commit to reading to improve your skills.

Remember, good is the enemy of great. You might pay little attention to accountability standards and still find a way to grow a good company. But especially at a time when customers and employees have more choices than ever, and margins continue to grow thinner, becoming a truly great company in the long term requires 100% accountability throughout your entire organization, Scott Severe writes.

After years of putting out fires and pointing the finger at employees, Eric Sprague and Larry Wilberton learned to point the finger at themselves. Here, Sprague shares how he and Wilberton transformed their restoration company into one with high engagement, performance and profit.

Apply the same investigative mindset we teach our teams to use in water-damaged homes when you are dealing with interpersonal and organizational challenges.

Rolling it uphill requires that before we blame the team for being careless or sloppy, we as leaders look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we truly set our teams up for success.