Meet Stephanie Sage of Sage Restoration

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Sage. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Founded in 2010, Sage Restoration is a woman and family-owned and entrepreneurially-led business that is dedicated to helping property owners recover from very stressful situations. Stephanie’s professional journey began as a sales representative in the mortgage banking industry.

She decided to leave the corporate world in 2010 to start Sage Restoration because the real estate market was floundering. She knew she wanted to work with homeowners, so she hired a business broker to explore her options.
Stephanie could have chosen an enterprise in a much different business category, however, the restoration business model really appealed to her, as did the idea of helping people get their homes healthy and livable again, or their businesses back on track after a disaster.

When Stephanie decided to launch Sage Restoration, she began taking training courses and was the only woman in attendance. Restoration is a male-dominated industry in terms of men performing the services required and it was said by several men that she would never be able to “do the work.” Proudly, she has proven these naysayers wrong and herself right!

Her husband and business partner, Alan who has a background in the corporate world, came on board full time with the company in 2012. Years later, there’s little doubt she made the right choice in starting Sage Restoration. She and her husband, Alan Sage, have turned a one-person operation into a competitive small business that specializes in restoring homes and businesses damaged by water, mold, fire, and odor.

In twelve years she’s moved from bootstrap beginnings of being a one “woman show” juggling on-site restoration clean-up, marketing, sales, and operations utilizing part-time and contract employees, to a company with 10 full-time technicians, and 2 project managers. a business development manager and an office manager.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As a start-up, I realized how hard it was to butt heads with the “big guys,” so I decided to look for options for new business. I decided to establish a presence in residential real estate.

I discovered that when a homeowner is considering selling their home, they may need to have the mold removed or other problems corrected before they can list it. They often turn to their Realtor who will then suggests a company. I began setting meetings with Realtors and introducing my business to them.

I also entered the residential property management market and I have had much success there with leads and referrals. To this day, I have very lucrative and profitable relationships with some of the top real estate agencies and property managers in the city. This marketing strategy served me well and helped my business grow and expand in the early years.

In addition to being a woman-owned restoration contractor in a male-dominated industry, one significant challenge for me was learning how to outmaneuver larger national franchises operating in our marketplace. Many of these franchises have major contracts with insurance carriers and adjusters. They have large advertising budgets, and they have a strong foothold we must contend with.

I am confident that Sage is just as qualified and capable as they are, and will continue to succeed in securing future projects. Although it has taken several years to build our brand and reputation as a quality and trustworthy restoration contractor in Kansas City, we have been successful in being added as a preferred vendor to a variety of TPA and insurance programs.

As well as securing work directly from insurance adjusters which have been advantageous to our growth. We are able to work with all insurance carriers on behalf of our clients and have the resources and equipment available to us to handle any size of commercial loss.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Sage Restoration provides emergency and non-emergency services to both residential and commercial properties that include water damage mitigation; fire and smoke damage restoration; content and textile cleaning; mold clean-up, inspections, and testing; odor removal; hoarder clean-ups as well as biohazard and biological decontamination clean-up work.

No matter the job, Sage employees often walk into a family’s life at one of the most stressful and shocking times. Yet this is where the team excels. We take time to talk to the homeowners, listen to them, remain patient, and offer a caring, supportive hand. We are in the business of helping people with their properties. That’s really what we’re selling.

What defines our business and sets us apart is that we combine our sense of urgency with care and compassion and over-the-top service. We act as a guest in residents’ homes and owners’ places of business and always clean up after completing our work.

We show up when we say we will and do what we say we are going to do and more importantly we call if we are running behind schedule. It’s about respect and common courtesy of the value of our customer’s time.

We take great pride in what we do every day to get our customers’ lives back on track after a disaster and train our employees to work The Sage Way which is a part of our company culture.

What do you think about luck?
I believe good luck is created in the way you manage your thought process which is by living day by day with a positive mindset that you can achieve anything you put your mind to. I am a think outside the box entrepreneur who believes there is a solution to any challenge that comes my way or my company’s way.

I also steadfastly believe that you must overlook the naysayers and believe in yourself even when others don’t. If I would have listened to the men in my training class that told my husband that I would never be able to do the work let alone grow my business, where would I be today?

In the beginning, I knew that my learning curve was huge with no experience in the industry so I instinctively knew that I had to find other ways of securing work to prove myself and learned to capitalize on getting work in any way that I could. You also have to take advantage of “lucky” breaks when they do come your way or see opportunities that competitors may overlook.

One of my first “lucky” breaks came one day when I was sitting in my office on a Saturday doing paperwork. I happened to scroll to the very bottom of a newsletter I was reading and found an application to the ScaleUpKC program. I only had a day or two before the deadline to apply.

It was a mentoring program for entrepreneurs. I applied and was accepted and still credit this program for being truly implemental in the scaling of my business and am forever grateful I found this program. This program provided me with vast knowledge of the skills required to expand my business but also opened my eyes to the power of public relations and what it could do to build my brand awareness and visibility.

I firmly believe that there are no coincidences and only opportunities presented to you to take advantage of if you have the mindset to do so.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.sagerestorationkc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sagerestoration/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SageRestorationLLC
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4Z5bSu33bYfrM7BPgCuHww
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.sage032763