Soap Warehouse Blog

This year GCE is planning to hold educational training classes for our customers and other contractors at our Norcross, GA location.

Here is the tentative list of classes. Dates TBA.

Jan - Making a Business Plan, Budgeting and Pricing.                   Scheduled for Friday Jan 18th

Feb - Pressure Washing 101/ Troubleshooting Equipment.

Mar - Ready Seal - How to use class and hands on demo.

Apr - Seal n Lock - How to use class and demo.

May - How to choose chemicals for cleaning and understanding pH.

Jun - Social Media Marketing; Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

Jul - Lift Training - by Sunbelt (this will be a paid class with certification).

Aug - EaCo Chem - Class and demo covering their range of products (repeat of Nov 2018)

Sep - How to set up OSHA training for your business.

Oct - OSHA training class - GHS labels and SDS's.

Nov - Maintenance repairs and winterizing equipment.

Dec - Chemical Safety, DIY Spill Kits.

In our new location we have a very nice conference room to hold these meetings that can comfortably hold around 24.

Most of these will be free classes, some we may ask for a small deposit to help us guarantee attendees that sign up show up especially for classes with out of town speakers. The deposit amount would be given back as in store credit for use with the event or later on.

Most classes will only take up a morning of time usually on a Friday so we are not interfering in the busy time of a contractors cleaning weekend. And having classes early in the mornings still frees up the rest of the day for work.

The class we would like to have for Lift Training would have to be a prepaid class but we would be getting a discount from Sunbelt for less than if you took the class direct from them. This class will also have to be an all day class as there are both classroom work as well as the hands on training on the lifts themselves and a completion card from Sunbelt that would be given for taking the class. This card also grants you rental discounts with Sunbelt.

We will ask that contractors sign up 2-3 weeks ahead of time and classes may be canceled if not enough sign up, so if you are interested in a class at all please sign up. We will put out sign up forms online from our Facebook pages, posted on other places online and have a sheet in our office.

If you are interested in a topic not listed please let us know and if one is not proving popular we may substitute a suggested one instead. These classes are for the benefit of our contractor customers so let us know what you want to learn about in this coming year.

Happy New Year.

Growing up I am sure all of you knew what flash cards were. And I am sure your teachers or even parents used them with you. These days classrooms call these same type cards and others "Task Cards" and they have evolved to cover more than just spelling and math problems.

Task Cards are now being used to help kids with social problem solving. These same ideas of using Task Cards are now moving into the adult work place as well. So when and where could Task Cards ever help your business?

Task Cards can be made and used for team building, for OSHA and office training, to reinforce or teach a task to an employee, to allow an employee to confidentially bring up an issue to be discussed, to set or correct the moral climate in the work place and many others.

Here are some examples of Task Cards;

You can make your Task Cards to fit your business and employees specific needs. You can also choose when to use them; to start off your daily work meeting, only for training classes, or just when a situation comes up you want to address non confrontationally. I feel the more you use Task Cards the easier and more open your employees will be when answering the questions or discussing the situation with the group that the card brings up. You could start with only using them for training, for how to use a product, how to handle a job situations only and later move on to the more difficult to discuss moral situation question cards.

You might ask why do the moral cards at all? It is strange to me how those that work in a group can all know what sports teams each of them pull for but not know who they feel they can trust or who in the group will support them. Members of a work group need to feel they are thought to be competent, valued, and trusted by the ones they work with in order to get the work done quickly and well. Discontentment between employees can quickly slow down and bring down the performance level of the group as a whole. I am sure you have noticed when a team has worked for a while together and has a certain repore then a new person is added or someone is replaced it will take a while for that group to be up to the same performance level they had as the former team. Of course it may prove that the new group works even better than the original but it will always take a little time to get there. Using a pre set pack of Task Cards with the new formed group before they go out together can allow the old members to learn what the new person knows or can bring to the team or can clue them in to what they will have to teach or show the new member to get work up to the business standard of the company. I hope some of you will consider and try to use Task Cards with your employees this year. And if you do, let us know how it worked out.

The weather may have been dreary outside but those that came to the UAMCC Atlanta event didn't mind.

Soap Warehouse and Iron Man Pressure Washers hosted this event on Thursday March 19th at the Fairfield Inn & Suites at Gwinnett Place. Most came from the local metro area, but there were also contractors that came from out of town, from Augusta, GA, Palmetto, GA, Greenville, SC and as far as Fort Pierce, FL.

It was a fast past packed full day of sessions mainly focusing on marketing and OSHA compliance. With sessions shortened to only 30 minutes each, a lot more focused material was covered, which kept the day moving and so no one could be uninterested for long. Sessions covered: Linda Chambers from Soap Warehouse gave talks on Inbound Marketing, Why you should use Videos, and Referral Programs.

Soap Warehouse gave away a 60 second professional video as a door prize after the Why use Video session and Todd Reese of Georgia Power Washing won.

Three speakers came in to cover Outbound Marketing with Online Yellow Pages and Adwords. Then Arrie Parker from Iron Man had a session on Occupational Health followed by a healthy lunch of Subway sandwiches, fruit, chips and drinks.

Things went so fast a few extra sessions were squeezed in. After lunch Nichole from UAMCC discussed the new revisions of their certification program and other benefits of membership. Arrie gave again a session on Cold Calling he gave at this event last year, which was followed up by Linda giving how to set up OSHA training, after which Soap Warehouse gave a way a $50 product gift card and Ryan Fox of Outback GutterVac won that door prize. Ryan is on the right.

Next was Spill kits why you should have one and how to make one, ending with the hands on OSHA Spill kit training at the end of the day on how to put together your own DIY spill kit and actual spill kit practice inside in the hotels pool area simulating a small spill of a potassium hydroxide concrete cleaner.

The event finish just before 4:00 allowing everyone to get on the road to try and be ahead of some of Atlanta's well known traffic. 

Thursday March 19th is the date and the  will be the location for our next UAMCC free event. (Free with ticket, see bottom of post on how to get yours)

At this location we will have a larger meeting room then our last event,

for those that come and stay over, there is a special room rate for some very nice rooms,

 a very good free hot breakfast, 

and indoor pool.  For those that are local and just come for the day, coffee and danish will be available in the meeting room starting at 7:00 am during registration until we start the meeting at 8:00.

We plan this time to have more topics with shorter 30 minute siessions to keep things moving and keep everyone's attention. The 15 minutes after each presentation will be for Q&A for the speaker and for anyone that needs to, pop out to the restroom or to grab some more to drink or eat what is available. Lunch will be 45 minutes, provided by the sponsors on site.

Right now the topics to be covered are:

What is Inbound Marketing, Why you should use video to promote your business, which will include at the end our giving away a free 60 second, professionally made video, for the business of one of the attendees, a talk on Referral programs, a video and discussion on Occupational Health, an additional session on Marketing of which I have not been given the title as of yet. A talk from the one of the UAMCC staff about their benefits and their certification program. Why you should have a spill kit followed by a hands on spill kit OSHA training class that you can learn and take back with you to be able to use to train your own staff. We are also working on having a representative and one or two lifts from Sunbelt rental on site to either give a talk about their services and hopefully actual lift training at the end of the day.

Lunch right now is planned to be catered cold sandwiches, chips, fruit, soft drinks and cookies. But if we get enough people to register we might make it a hot catered sandwiches like BBQ instead. See schedule.

The Fairfield Inn and Suites is right off the I-85 North Interstate, just up from the Gwinnett Place Mall

with restaurants of all types for dinner the night before and after the event. Bahama Breeze is just across the parking lot and has a full service bar and if enough attendees are staying over I would suggest we all meet over there Thursday night to continue networking and getting to know other fellow contractors.

If Sunbelt can not come we may add one extra session but the plan right now is to let the local folk be able to head out if they want by around 4-4:30 to get a jump on the Atlanta traffic. But we will have the room until 6 for those that want to stay and Network or even get a roundtable discussion going on about any topic of choice. Will also be a good time to continue speaking with any of the speakers or sponsors or if not yet a member join the UAMCC.

The sponsors for this event are Soap Warehouse and Iron Man Power Washers (equipment leasing)

To get your free ticket with a number to use in the registration call either Soap Warehouse 1-800-762-7911 or Iron Man Power Washer 1-855-662-8171.

To register for this event Go Here

To book a Hotel room call the hotel directly 1-678-924-1023 and mention UAMCC event.

Prices are $96 + tax for King or Queen and $120 + tax for Suites. This rate includes a hot breakfast.

I hope to see you there.