CORE Group is one of the largest collectives of Restoration Contractors in the US. With an eye on education, culture, and excellence in the industry, they’re mission is to provide outstanding service and industry leading support for all of their members. Diane Goheen, Vice President of Marketing and Jason Gilstrap, Executive Director of Contractor Operations join the Restoration Rundown to talk about all of the exciting things CORE is doing for the industry, including CORE University and their upcoming Collective Conference, live on Youtube and LinkedIn.
https://gowithcore.com/
Diane: It is!
Ben: So, talk to me a little bit, you know, we’re jumping around, but It’s okay. This is the nature of this show,
Diane: We do.
Ben: It’s the Restoration R undown,
Diane: So it’s a lot to cover.
Ben: Yeah. So, talk to me about, a little bit about the Collective. So, that sounds like you guys are gonna be premiering a bunch of stuff. So, tell me about the Collective. How that came about, what it’s all about? And I’ve got some info here for people to check it out as well if they’re watching on YouTube.
Diane: Sure. So the Collective Art is Core’s annual conference. We’ve done it every year. The very first one we had was core taking off, and we did a whole retro theme. So, we had flight attendants and captains. You know, it was really cool. The whole entire thing, I mean, down to like the napkins, you know, all the details you’ll see there. We had a chair that had, we even got, bought a window seat of a plane to sit next to — so, like an Instagramable moment.
Ben: Wow! Alright. Alright.
Diane: But yeah, so every year is a theme and this year’s theme is festival theme. So if you think Coachella, you know, burning Man, any of those types of festivals they’ll see here in Austin. And so it’s our annual conference and basically what we do is we just try to, again, bring that community, that restoration community, but it’s a Career and Property Restoration Festival.
So, that’s something that, again, we try to always set ourselves apart. We’re always trying to look ahead and what can we bring to our industry that they really want? So we do have a lot of carriers, our own carriers that come in, they want to come in, they love coming every year. And they sit on high net worth panels. They go and talk into sessions.
They go sit in the sessions to learn what the contractor’s learning. Sit side by side just so they can learn, hey, what are they teaching them at core? What, is it really what they say they are. So, you know, we have a number of sessions.
We try to keep it fresh every year. We try to change the faces every year because I think anyone in the industry knows you do see the same faces a lot of the time. And so even if they are some of the same faces, you see, we make sure that they always have fresh topics. We’re not talking about the same thing every year.
So, we always say, bring us a new topic if you wanna get in, so we also have a process on that. You know, you do have to submit your call for presentation and and have those sessions. So lots of educational sessions but we do have a really unique fit as well, is that we have different elements to it.
So, we have our planning, our execution, our strategy, and wellness aspect to ours so this year in our trade show, we even have a core spa. So we’re gonna have some massages. We’re gonna have you, oxygen bar,
Ben: Yeah. I’m coming.
Diane: Heavy mobile unit, I mean, you know, all the things. So,
Ben: Wow!
Diane: We do yoga, yoga every morning start the day off if whoever wants to get up that early, gets to do yoga every morning. This year, they’re incorporating sound baths to start your day. Just kind of get, you know, focused and then come into, be ready to see these. We have an amazing keynote speaker Joey Coleman this year. So he’s gonna be really neat.
We have a new edition this year which is a philanthropy piece to it. Rock solid, which is, they build play structures for kids with disabilities. I’m sorry, kids with cancers, not disabilities, kids with cancer. The owner, Eric, he actually was a cancer survivor as a child. And so that is a big passion of his. So ,we’re gonna see that this year.
And then we basically have one big party, pool party every year. But we moved to the JW this year because we grew out of our last hotel, but we couldn’t have the pool party there because we had too many people. So, now we’re gonna have it across the street at this really neat place called Fairground and set up like an entire festival.
So we’ll have bands, DJs, you know, we tell everyone to dress up in their favorite festival outfit. So every year we send out inspo ideas, let them know what they can do. Yeah, so, and lots, lots of surprises that we can’t all spill until you’re there. So,
Ben: Man, that sounds amazing! And I was looking at your lineup. You guys have 44 or so guest speakers coming in and it’s,
Diane: We do!
Ben: That’s a lot of education to be packed in a few days. I mean, that’s incredible.
Diane: It is, it is. And it’s great. I mean,
Ben: Anybody to note that we can, we can plug out there. Yeah. I mean, 44 is quite a bit. That’s, that’s, that’s great. So congratulations. I mean, it seems like this has grown. I mean, I’m now, talk about FOMO. I was already having FOMO that I couldn’t make it out there, but I’m definitely gonna have to put this in the calendar this next year.
Diane: I was gonna say next year, July. So,
Ben: I’ll definitely block it out. I’m, I don’t know. I may get a wild hair and fly out there for a couple days next week.
Jason: You’ll regret it.
Diane: You should. Why not?
Ben: I know, and maybe we can do the launch of this episode, and we will do a launch and we’ll do a live podcast out there. But we’ll talk afterwards.
Diane: I was gonna say we have that as well. So we actually have Head, Heart, and Boots, and then Michelle over at C&R are gonna have their own media pods. So they will be actually broadcasting live there. So, I mean,
Ben: I love those guys.
Diane: There’s not enough to tell you about, we’ve got so much, it’s hard to explain everything in one short timeframe. So yeah, you just have to come to experience it because there’s just literally every corner has something going on.
Podcast Date: Thursday, August 24th
Time: 9:00 AM (EST)
Collective 23 “A Property Restoration and Insurance Festival”
August 30 – September 1st | Austin, TX
https://www.thecollectivebycore.com/
Promo code IRONCLAD200 for $200 off registration
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Benjamin Ricciardi is the founder of Ironclad Restoration Marketing, A digital marketing agency that specializes in the Restoration and Cleaning industry based in South Florida. Benjamin is the author of The No Bulls**t Guide to Internet Marketing for Restoration Contractors and hosts The Restoration Rundown Podcast, a podcast that is focused on everything related to marketing and owning a Restoration and Cleaning Business. Connect with Benjamin and Ironclad Restoration Marketing on social media for the latest tips and tricks on how to grow your Restoration Business.