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The Independent Adjuster Podcast (IA Path)
Ready to stop gambling with your career and start winning?
The Independent Adjuster Podcast is where Pathfinders like you find clarity, take action, and escape the traditional grind of the adjuster industry.
Host Chris Stanley redefines success with the EXP Free Path, teaching you how to think differently, act boldly, and claim your future without waiting for luck or experience. It’s time to build a career that works for you, one episode at a time.
The Independent Adjuster Podcast (IA Path)
Inspecting Classic Cars & Diminished Value Claims With Jim Berger
What happens when a car enthusiast, a Craigslist ad, and a passion for auto restoration collide? You get Jim Berger of CFL Auto Appraise who turned his love for automobiles into a full-time career in the auto appraisal industry. In this episode, we explore Jim's fascinating journey, discuss the challenging world of diminished value and prior valuation, and the specialized knowledge needed for classic car inspections.
Discover the intriguing tactics insurance companies use to lowball their customers to settle claims and the important role independent appraisers play in negotiating fair settlements. We also delve into the challenges of accurately assessing the value of classic cars and the need for expert knowledge to navigate this niche industry. Jim shares his experience working with insurance companies and his clients, and the impact his work has on their lives.
Lastly, we discuss the importance of marketing for public adjusters, the investments needed to build a successful career, and the need for diversification in the auto appraisal industry. Jim emphasizes the significance of having a solid marketing budget and leveraging technology to stay ahead of the competition. If you're a car enthusiast looking to turn your passion into a thriving business, don't miss out on this episode packed with valuable insights and advice from a true industry expert.
Welcome back to the Independent Adjuster Podcast guys. My name is Kobe Hearn. I'll be your host today. Ashley will not be joining me because, if you notice, I've got a little bit of a change of scenery behind me. I'm actually at my cabin taking a week off after a very long, catastrophic hail deployment. I am joined by a very dear friend, a wonderful business owner, mentor, been in IAPATH for quite a while. We've had a great relationship. We're actually coworkers now. Jim Berger with CFL Auto Appraise. Jim, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be here.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. So today, guys, as I've stated in our previous podcast, i was going to do an interview series. We're going to start with Jim. I really think a lot of Jim. He's got a ton of years of experience and we'll go over all that, but basically we're just going to have a conversation. I think he's got a ton of knowledge that he can impart on all of our viewers and listeners. So we'll get right into it, jim, if you don't mind, jim and again, we work together. We've had these conversations, but for the viewers that don't know, tell us a little bit about your background as it pertains to the auto appraisal realm, like where did you really start in auto or liking auto or doing auto? Where did that start? What's your kind of background?
Speaker 2:Well, honestly, i fell into this line of work by accident. My background in auto as I grew up with dad and uncle that were always out in the garage drinking beer and putting race cars together, so that's kind of where it came from, where it started. So having classic cars and classic trucks around out on the farm growing up that was just a normal, i guess back then they weren't really classics, they were just vehicles. But they ended up being classics And I kind of got into it at a young age. I was 16 years old. I had a two-wheel drive pickup and I decided I needed a four-wheel drive pickup. So the average intelligent person would just go buy a four-wheel drive pickup. But instead I bought the parts to bank a two-wheel drive into a four-wheel drive and figured out how to do it in my mom's garage and just that kind of stuff from there.
Speaker 2:I've been restoring cars ever since. I don't even know how many cars I've owned over the years. It's well into the hundreds, probably close to 500 cars I've owned over the years and flipped, bought and sold and never really thought of this as a career. I've always been an electrician or low voltage electrician, somewhere along those lines, and fell into this by accident. I answered an ad on Craigslist a guy looking for somebody to go out and just look at classic cars and realized in a big hurry that there was a lot of money to be made Just doing inspections and stuff like that on classic cars.
Speaker 2:And it honestly wasn't until about 2019, well, it was actually COVID when COVID hit 2020 that I realized I could take this whole thing full time because I had been doing it part time for about six years at that point. So that was just kind of how I fell into. It Was honestly answering a Craigslist ad looking for somebody to go inspect cars And really at that point had no idea that a damage appraiser existed. No, didn't really understand this line of work And I thought it was just staff insurance. People didn't realize there was independent people and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So to make it very clear, you're a car guy through and through. You grew up around it. I mean, you're a Minnesota boy originally, which, if anybody doesn't know, minnesota is a huge area for classics. I mean you can find them in everybody's yard. Minnesota is like the redneck area of the North right, like a lot of cars classics out park that probably haven't worked in 40 years. but you're a car guy. You've done frame off restorations or engine swaps. You're that dude that really you're not an ASC certified mechanic but you've just kind of figured it out. And you're the guy that like we joked about this You, your idea of enjoyment is tracking a beer and going to look online for old parts for certain vehicles that you may or may not even own.
Speaker 2:That's very true. I'm a self-coded car nerd. I all sit down just for something to do. Some people sit down and watch movies. I honestly sit down and look at car parts and then I go and see what's for sale. I just want to see where the market is. I want to see. I want to know what 69 Camarils are selling for as much as I want to know what 47 Ford's are selling for. So I'm constantly on the internet looking at cars for sale and, much to my Watching the cars watching the Metro.
Speaker 1:Christians watching Barrett Jackson. You live, eat, sleep and breathe it, And I think that's something, that's something to be said, that Jim like, look, I really love what I do, I enjoy what I do, but Jim, it's a lifestyle for Jim Like that's all you know. I see the guitars in the background. Jim has some musical talents as well, But I mean, this is one of his passions that he's actually parlayed into a full-time business, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Which is amazing. For any of you guys that love cars, that have worked on cars, that have lost money for years in cars because you keep putting more money in them, they're worth this might be the career for you, you know. So Jim actually now makes money working in this industry, finally Blowing money, which makes his wife probably a lot happier. But so, speaking of that, then you, you know, you did it for a couple of years on the side because of Craigslist ad parlayed it into kind of a full-time thing. But speaking of, you know, training wise, obviously you had no real formal training. You've been doing this forever. Besides, you know mentors or people that have been doing the same thing. You had, like your dad or granddad or family members, friends, everybody that you know. You kind of got in those circles. But then you, how did you come to find IAPath? Where did you find that in kind of your journey And kind of what did you think about IAPath as you went through it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when I decided I was gonna take this full-time, i had sold my share of a home theater installation company that I owned and said I mean this was all during COVID, so decided I was gonna take this full-time and decided I wanted to legitimize myself in the industry. Not just a lot, I mean, there's a lot of the diminished value prior to loss inspectors, those types of stuff. There isn't really a program or a federal certification that's required for a lot of that. So I decided to start looking at how I could make myself stand out from the crowd And that was part of that was getting the Florida 620 license to be the independent appraiser, slash adjuster. And from there God bless Google, it just let me down the path to IAPath And it took me a while to wrap my head around what exactly I was looking at And I had intended many times to just call Chris and go what is this?
Speaker 2:What is it? What am I getting myself into? And finally one day he had a special or something and I said screw it. And I just hit send and sent my credit card information and signed up for it, not even really truly knowing what I was signing up for, and then got into it and obviously went through it and Brad was teaching it and really, was able to wrap my head around it a lot more And then how I incorporated all that that was learning there into the diminished value world and prior to loss world, which I didn't have any clue what that was five, six, seven years ago.
Speaker 2:But being able to understand the repair process on a more corporate level the way the I mean I understand all the repairs of a car work, but when you understand it more from the corporate level the body shop, repair shop and even the insurance company how they're viewing it, it definitely helped play a role in how I address prior to loss and diminished value and that type of stuff at this point.
Speaker 1:And for you people listening, we're gonna get into what Jim actually does. Don't worry about that. I just I wanted to hit on that first that Jim's a graduate of IAPath and he's a car guy. I will be the first to tell you Jim knows more about building a car from the ground up than I will ever know in my lifetime And I know quite a bit about cars. I think Jim will agree. I know my fair share. But as far as actually being able to do it, jim's done it. Like that's the thing. Like I can say, replace fender. Jim has actually probably replaced the fender and buffed it and done all the stuff that you need to do to a fender to make it look like brand new or whatever repaired it. Like I said, the engine swaps and frame off restorations he's done, but without IAPath, with it being the insurance side of the industry and that's kind of what I was kind of hitting at.
Speaker 1:What we teach is how you work as an appraiser for insurance companies. Right, that's mostly what you can go work at a body shop. With our training, you could potentially be a public appraiser. However, the years and years of knowledge Jim has versus someone like me, especially when you start getting into those higher ticketed items and classic cars and things take a lot of time to just learn. We can't teach that, i don't think, in any set class. But with that being said, what you know, let's talk about your business. Because you're a public appraiser, right. I mean, you may do some work with insurance, you do some, we work together now but your business is really molded around being a public appraiser, almost like a public defender. You're out there, you know public adjuster, for that matter. You're out there on behalf of the insurer or the claimant, versus on behalf of the insurance carrier, right?
Speaker 1:OK keep in the moment will be out, kind of about how that business looks or what you do. Because you mentioned, i want to go through the three main ones and if there's anything else but diminished value, also known as DV, i want to go through prior to loss valuation and then your pre-purchase inspections If there's something else in there that you want to include. But tell us about those different options people have to purchase from your different services you offer. That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So basically, what I offer is diminished value, like you said, and diminished value for those of you that don't understand exactly what it is, because, honestly, it took me a while to wrap my head around exactly what a diminished value claim is. So, essentially, i'll use my pickup 2014 Chevy Silverado. Kobe slams into the side of the door, runs into me. Kobe's found to be at fault in the accident. Kobe's insurance company pays for all the repairs.
Speaker 2:But even though the truck has been repaired, i have now suffered an economic loss because there's a car fax or an auto check, a brand that's going to follow that VIN number for the duration of that vehicle being on the road. So I've now essentially suffered an economic loss. I can file against Kobe's insurance company. Basically a diminished value, which is going to be the difference between the pre-loss value and the post-repair value, because, as anybody knows, you go out and buy a 2014 Chevy Silverado and it's been smashed up and repaired. You're going to be able to buy that truck cheaper than one that's not been repaired. So that's essentially what diminished value does is brings those two worlds together to recover that economic loss.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of diminished value, so, like you're saying, depending on the severity of the repair, like you know, is it just cosmetic damage that I caused into your door, like your outer panel, or did it touch the frame? Did it get into structural? But we see that it's funny because a lot of people don't put two and two together. Right Like on the car fax commercials at Fox. You have to ask your dad or ask your gym coach or whoever you trust, which one's a better car, and then you do the car fax And one of them has been in a wreck and then you see the value drop precipitously for the car that's been in a wreck versus the car that's never had a wreck correct, correct.
Speaker 2:On a daily basis I turn people away that call me. That will call and say well, i got into a fender bender. All right, let's talk about the fender bender. Better yet, send me the repair estimate, send me the final repair invoice so I can see exactly what they've done. If it's a buff job and they pulled a dent out and there was $900 worth of damage, we're not filing a DB on that. It's just not worth it. If it hits so hard that it bent the frame and they had to do eight hours of frame pull on it, it started getting into internal structural pieces subframes and anything like that Floors, trunk floors, rocker panels, aperture, that type of stuff That's anything structural. Obviously, that is going to play a big role in how much diminished value you get back on.
Speaker 1:And on diminished value. It depends on state law, right, or what's allowed, like some states. If I hit you, you're able to go after my carrier for DB, but if it's like something where, let's say, you get into a wreck and nobody like it's a no fault state, there's no fault. Some states I think there is a state out there that allows you to go after your own carrier for it. It's very rare, right. And then there's something that even lets you go after hail, damage or whatever. I mean.
Speaker 2:Speak to that a little bit. There's a few states I'm based out of Florida. I basically work Florida, minnesota, georgia, texas, north Carolina. Those states basically say that you can go after your, after the at fault party. When people call me and say, well, i backed into a tree, i'm not bothering with it, it's that was your fault, that was something He doesn't have insurance. Exactly Any comp claim like that. I generally just tell them, sorry, it's just not worth pursuing. So generally when I'm doing DV I'm going after the at fault parties insurance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're just going to try and again to understand more, and I want to make this clear You say you're going after the insurance, but really it's money that's already owed to that customer. They just don't know it or they don't know, how much it should be, because you don't even have carriers. I'm sure that have offered a client. Oh, i'll pay you 1500 bucks for the DV on this right. They offered it up front but it should have been 9000, not 1500 bucks.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and a lot of these insurance companies, without naming names, don't understand it any better than the general public understands it. There's one large, large insurance company that everybody knows the name of that I do tons of work for, because they don't know how to calculate DV in order to they want to, so they farm it out to me. So there's a lot of these insurance companies that they'll lowball people on the diminished value claim and we can negotiate it out, but nine times out of 10, when I talk to adjusters, they don't know anything about it, about diminished value. So it's a little bit of a Wild West. It's a little bit of an ungoverned, unsanctioned thing that has federal mandates behind it. So it can be interesting at times, it can be challenging at times and we just keep going with it.
Speaker 1:And there's some subjectivity to it, right? I mean, there's not one formula that gives you the exact amount of DV. That's why you have a carrier offer lowball, you may come in much higher than what it even maybe should be, or what you think top dollar is, because that's your job, and then if they get me involved, then we find somewhere in there. That's a fair amount, but there's never one. It's not black and white, right.
Speaker 2:It's subjective. I mean it's just like doing damage estimates. You can take the same exact car sitting out in the damaged lot out in the junkyard And have two different estimators come up and write a CCC damage estimate on it Nine times out of 10, you're not going to get the exact same number out of it, even on the same car, looking at the same damage. You're just not.
Speaker 1:So I don't know any one shop that'll write the same estimate for the same damage on a car, exactly Just because, again, some of them, every clip, everything is going to get replaced, versus some want color sand and buff. Some don't even include it or know to include it. Again, there's some black and white there, right, there's always black and white that, hey, there is DV here or there is repairs that need to happen here, but what the cost of that is, especially when it comes to repair hours. Certain things are subjective, whereas part pricing is part pricing, right. But even then we can get into the aftermarket or LKQ stuff and debate what's the best and most cost effective part for this vehicle.
Speaker 1:So we talked about the damage value Let's go to prior to loss. This is a big one for you. I think it's a big one on both sides of the aisle, because for anybody that does appraisals now, ccc one's obviously the leader. We run values through CCC one. They value it for us. But have you ever wondered, if the customer doesn't agree, what they're going to do to get their valuation or how they calculate it? So, jim, speak to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean the Mitchell valuations, the CCC valuations. I've got hard drives full of these things from customers that don't agree, and sometimes once again on a daily basis. Just today I told two people take the insurance companies, offer, there's nothing I can do for you. You get people that are emotionally attached to their cars and they think it's worth more than it actually is out in the real world. So I have to turn those people away. But also just today I had two or three cars that came in that they were severely undervalued by CCC We're talking four to five grand undervalued. And those are the ones I tell people we can do this. We can go after and get that money In everybody's auto policy.
Speaker 2:Go look at it. I just looked at mine the other day just because I wanted to refresh myself. It's in your declarates in your insurance policy. If I remember right, it's in part D, the appraisal clause, and basically, when you are in a total loss situation and you disagree with the amount that they're going to give you for that vehicle, you can invoke the appraisal clause. Part of that is you have to hire a certified appraiser CFL auto appraise And the insurance company is going to do the exact same thing Nine times out of ten.
Speaker 1:the insurance, the insurance is forced to hire an independent appraiser. They cannot use one of their staff guys.
Speaker 2:Independent Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just to back up on that, jim, the appraisal clause and that was the part I was going to get to That's really a lot of your business, right. The appraisal clause doesn't only encompass the prior to loss valuation, but that's diminished value potentially, right, that's part of that.
Speaker 2:North Carolina specifically, it falls under that.
Speaker 1:And if you don't agree with the repair estimate, insurance is paying right. Anything that you don't really agree with when it comes to the repair value well, diminished value, anything with the value or repair that need to be done you can invoke the appraisal clause in your contract and that's where you're independent appraisers.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Just an example. A couple of months ago a lady calls me as a 2015 Mercedes. I don't remember which model it was, but low mileage car It was a 2015,. I want to say like 70 or 80,000 miles on it. She calls me and says they're totaling this car.
Speaker 2:I went and actually looked at it, excuse me, and I looked at the damage estimate that they wrote on a 2015 car. This I'm not going to say the name of the insurance company, but this staff appraiser used all OEM parts on a 2015,. Made no sense to me When I started digging through the damage estimate. Even harder. He was doubling up fenders and doubling up parts all over it. He ended up writing a $22,000, $23,000 estimate on this car. She sends it to me.
Speaker 2:I go and inspect the car, came back, wrote another, my own CCC damage estimate on it. I struggled to get to $11,000 using LKQ and aftermarket. There's no reason to be using OEM on that. Basically, what we did then is we went to another independent shop and that independent shop wrote his damage estimate and he came out within a few hundred dollars where mine was. We took that car from being forced into a total loss situation into forcing the insurance company to repair it. That's another example of being able to invoke your appraisal clause. It's not just its total loss They're going to cut you a check. At the end of the day, we can force a repair job too.
Speaker 1:Of course, also the fact that if insurance says they're only going to pay five grand for this repair and it really needs 10 grand then to be repaired correctly, so you're not left with unaddressed frame damage or structural damage or paint's not going to match because again there's no brake line. I mean there's a million different reasons why that may happen. But that's where you have to get independent sources, force insurance to get an independent expert. The insured will be responsible for their own independent expert. You We discussed like they could hire me on the insurance side. It's not like me and you go at it fighting right.
Speaker 1:It's usually a pretty pleasant conversation 90% of the time. Hey, this is why I came up with Jim What do you got? Okay, i agree with you. Can we meet here in the middle? Great, awesome, your customer wins I probably say insurance a little bit of money here and that works. We'll get into the brazil clause a little bit deeper, but yeah, there's a lot of scenarios for that. Back to the prior rule to loss valuation kind of talk more about how you approach that, what that looks like value. You don't have to give your secret sauce a formula. But how does that kind of work in an overview way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically, you're in an accident and just the easy version of it is the way I would say 80% of these appraisal clause claims happen is by 2014. Silverado, once again, kobe hit it so hard that it's totaled now, but they came back and they said it's only worth eight grand and I say, no, it's worth 15 grand. That's where you go in and you invoke your appraisal clause, like we were talking before. The insurance company is then forced to hire their own appraiser. They'll hire somebody through an IA firm. Do it that way. They'll. I've been hired before directly by insurance companies to represent the insurance side of things too. I know you've done it before too, kobe. It's other things that can come along with the IA firms that you're on their roster, they can send you these as well.
Speaker 2:Basically, like you said, you're negotiating against another appraiser and all you're really doing is going out and looking at market data. You're looking at Kelly Blue Book and NADA and all that information, and then you're finding comparable cars out in the market, trying to find ones that have similar options and mileage, and looking at the values of them. What are they selling for? The one thing I tell everybody is NADA and Kelly Blue Book are not the Bible. They are. They are a guideline and they're wrong. Sometimes They're just dead wrong. Sometimes There's no way around it. That's why you have to look at comps.
Speaker 1:You have to look at actual, can't comparable vehicles and not just take the the Bluebook version of it and that's what, and that's what CCC one and Mitchell are doing technically or what they're supposed to be doing. But I think, as you found and as we preach at IAPath, options matter. So you take one comp in that group that doesn't have a sunroof, doesn't have navigation, doesn't have on-star, doesn't have four-wheel drive, it's you know it's. They put it listed as a two-wheel drive truck as one of their comps. I Mean that will skew your entire data and it's not that CCC one is purposely doing it But at least I don't believe so or Mitch or whoever. But they're getting a bad comp or comps in there or they're just not able to find something comparable and It ends up skewing the data and they're not really double checking or triple checking to say, oh yeah, this is not a accurate value.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of times what happens I I see it a lot between three-quarter ton and half ton pickups. For some reason, when you start getting into one ton pickups, yeah, it's, it's crazy. I've seen Contrary try to compare a half ton to a three-quarter ton pickup. We'll go buy a three-quarter ton pickup right now. Compared to a half ton, they're insanely expensive. So I see a lot of times where they are not comparing apples to apples. There's one in my head that I always think about and I think it was. It was either a BMW or a Mercedes And it was one small little letter. It was the luxury trim package on this thing. It was a I Don't remember what kind of car it was, but it was a BMW and it had an L behind it. Well, the Ccc valuation didn't take into account that luxury part of it. That was a five thousand dollar difference on this vehicle Because it had the luxury trim package on it. So it's small stuff that I think slips through the cracks every now and then that that caused this to happen.
Speaker 1:I want to make a note for our viewers here, especially on the independent side. You may never get into this prior to loss and you know appraisal clause type stuff, but it's very important to understand that every option you miss or you check that's not there again. Obviously, checking options that are not there should not happen and you're costing insurance money, which they're gonna figure that out sooner or later. But if you're missing options, you're not only costing the insured money, but in a lot of instances you're going to end up costing the insurance company money in this way. Number one You're gonna have a pissed off customer, so they're gonna stop paying premiums and go to a different carrier. Number two They're gonna call Jimbo Jim, jim the burgers, a hamburger and he's gonna come in and absolutely slaughter insurance With a massive difference in value. But the insurance company then has to pay for their own independent.
Speaker 1:It could even go to an umpire which will be, Which costs more money, more time, more resources and guess what. You know, the appraisal clause is really meant to keep it out of the courtrooms and litigation But, as Jim knows and he's been called in on a lot of them So there's quite a few that do get put in courtrooms and then they gotta pay Jim for like four hours minimum To be there. They gotta pay another guy, they gotta pay lawyers and court fees. Um, and look, if your name is the one on that estimate that didn't check all these options or missed a two-wheel versus four-wheel drive truck, i'm gonna be hard-pressed to not say that. They may not come out and tell you, but I guarantee you that carrier's telling that firm Hey, we don't want that guy on our files, if at all, because again You're causing heartburn, and heartburn for a carrier, for anybody, is not good.
Speaker 1:And maybe you're sitting there thinking, well, hey, if the values way less I'm saving to carry your money by screwing these up. You're really not, because you're screwing over a customer and if you just pay them what's fair and equitable, everybody's happy, right, the customer stays paying premiums. It's a good process for them. I mean, yeah, jim may be out of a job. I highly doubt it, though, because that, even if you do everything right with your options and mileage and conditioning Now, you still come back. Well, i know, jim seen it, everything's been perfect from the appraiser. It's still. It's just wrong.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, i see it all the time It's. You can do everything right. You can check all the right boxes, just as you said, do everything perfectly. I see him come back and they're. Another big one I see is the the condition condition report from the appraiser. Sometimes you got to take a little bit of I Would. I don't want to say slack, but just one. That happens on a very regular basis, as you'll get a condition report. The interior had a white residue all over. Well, let's, let's think about this logically is, if anybody's ever been in a car accident, what happens when the airbag goes off? it lets white residue all over the car. That wasn't a prior issue, that wasn't something that was there prior to this accident. So, docking money off of there because there was a white residue all over the car, it was airbag residue and I've seen this multiple times.
Speaker 1:I think people sometimes look too hard for things. It's gotta be clear and obvious. Like if the fenders rusted out, yeah, the sheet metal is not good, it's a swirls all through it Or it's chipping and flaking off not good, right, glad windshield is broken, but and it better be a rear impact, because if it's a front impact I'm gonna give some leniency there because I don't know what may have hit it. You start getting into the interior, you know, especially in a really bad wreck with, you know, maybe Biohazard, blood, things like that It's average, it automatically goes to at least average.
Speaker 1:But but again, if there's nothing that's going on the cab and I get in there and it looks like, you know, you threw four hobos in there and and had a smorgasbord, we've got a problem, right, like, yeah, holes in the headliner and the seats and they're ripped. But but you, i think you're better to err on the caution of not Dinging the customer, right, you'd rather ding the insurance company and say, yeah, this is above average, you know, because you know it's an oh six Honda, but the seats are immaculate. Give them that right, then you're not gonna have as much of an argument when they say, yeah, my interior was rated exceptional. I'm not saying to rate that all the time, but you gotta use some common sense too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another thing I see quite a bit is the, the tread depth, which I don't put a whole lot into tread depth on tires. It just it doesn't equate too much. But what I see a lot of times is, if you don't understand what a low profile tire is, low profile tires have a different tread Range than a regular tire does. Like.
Speaker 1:Profiles are usually on high profile vehicles, if you get my drift, like you don't, low profiles are put on cars. They're usually juiced up with new engines and exhaust their low riders Again, they need more clearance in that exactly well. So, yeah, i know exactly what you're talking about, because yeah, yeah, i've seen it a lot where they get.
Speaker 2:Well, it only had 430 seconds, so they're calling it less than that. The tires were basically shot. Well, look at the date code. If you don't know how to date code a tire, you can just type it into Google and there's all kinds of resources on how to date code tires. If the date date code comes up and says, well, this tire is from 22 or 23, that means it's a fairly new tire. I would say use some logic with it instead of digging it up tires. Use logic with it and Well, just look at it.
Speaker 1:If it looks bald, it's bald right. If it looks, if it looks brand new I mean big thick tread, right, yeah, profile, then It's, it's gonna, it's gonna start lesser than your in your normal tires anyway. So it's you know. But again, low profile also has a lesser life too.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:Remember used to burn through those every 30 40,000 miles. Yeah, but Like I said, I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't put a lot of energy into tires, but I see a lot of these CCC Evaluations come back and they somebody gets dinged for a few hundred dollars over tires. I generally just roll my eyes. It doesn't really matter. At that point. When we're Thousands of dollars difference in value, i don't really care about a set of tires.
Speaker 1:Well, you know. And then the last thing you do, jim, just so we touch on it. It's something that you're kind of, i would say, working out of or not doing as much of anymore, but like pre-purchase inspection. So I Remember always thinking of you sitting there like front-row at me come, or a Barrett Jackson or something, looking at cars for people. It's kind of how I always interpreted it.
Speaker 2:But to give your in-depth though, oh, what a pre-purchase inspection is, what those kind of are, and Maybe even give the reason why you're kind of getting away from them, Yeah, so I that's that was my main bread and butter for a long time was pre-purchase inspections and the way I really Sold it to people is well, you live in Minnesota and you want to buy a car. It's in Florida but you don't have the time to get down here to look at it. Number one does the car exist? because there's a lot of unscrupulous people in the world, unfortunately, that will sell you that car and then never sell you it, never deliver the car. So one of the things is just asset verification making sure the car exists, making sure there's a clean title, getting pictures of all that.
Speaker 2:But I've I started taking it to the nth degree. I I do five to ten minute videos on each section of the car the engine, the drivetrain, the interior, exterior, undercarriage And basically narrate as I'm walking around the car. I'll spend two to three hours with the car when I'm doing a pre-purchase inspection. I probably take close to 200 pictures of it and then it ends up being about a 30 page report that I put together. I do a test drive. I'm doing everything. I've always said it's really tough to teach somebody how to do this because I've been living this life for a long time. I've been buying and selling cars for a long time. I know what I'm not saying that I'm the end, i'll be all of it But I know what I'm looking for when it comes to the pig in lipstick or an actual, good, solid car.
Speaker 1:Well, the great example was I called you because I was interested in maybe buying a Classic, you know, and I always thought the stingray bodies of Corvette's or. You remember this conversation And the first thing he told me to check and that you can't even check unless you have a lift Is the bird cage. And if you don't know what the bird cage is, basically the framing you know in around the engine And if it's rusted it's basically a paper. Week is what Jim told me. It's not worth anything, but you check that until you get on a lift. And I was like, well, screw that, i don't want to spend any of that time doing it, but that's what Jim would do.
Speaker 1:Jim would make sure that, and he know that's just what's crazy Is the knowledge Jim possesses just on every car of what you need to be looking for, like that's the biggest. It's not about doing an inspection, it's about knowing what you're looking for in that inspection, because there's certain types of cars, have certain types of very particular issues that you do not want. If you're spending 30, 40, 50, 60, well over a hundred grand on cars or more as a asset for you, if, if they've got something wrong with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so it's like I said it's. It's a hard thing to teach because There's just so many in your intricacies of so many different types of cars. You can get a 69 Camaro that's got a 302 DZ motor. Dz will be stamped into it. Well, anybody knows anything about cars. And you say the 302 motor, most people associate it with a Ford, but GM for a couple years made a 302. So it's one of those things where how do you teach that?
Speaker 2:And then, like you said, every car has their own little thing that usually went wrong with them. You start getting into GM F bodies, which is the Camaros and the trans Am's. They always rusted out right above the wheel. Well, the frame rails rusted out right above the rear wheel. And if you don't know to look for that, i've actually seen the cars split in half because they rusted. I've been in a car that's done it. So you, there's small things you always want to look at on all these cars. And then you start getting into the world of numbers matching, knowing where to look to find those numbers on engine blocks and transmissions and rear ends, and Having a case of mirrors and flashlights.
Speaker 2:So when I don't have a lift, i'm the fat kid rolling on the ground trying to figure out how to get a number off the side of a transmission, and it's it that's, that's to the, that's to the level of the passion, right like.
Speaker 1:I don't think that can be taught, and maybe it can be, but the amount of knowledge you just have to know on the fly. Even if you did, you know the hours and hours you would spend on each car Researching of what the issues are and trying to find what to check for, where to find it. I, i don't think it would be profitable for anybody else. I think you have to be a car guy To do these. You know, those are very specific.
Speaker 2:The base knowledge has to be there. And don't get me wrong, i don't have all this stuff memorized. If I'm going out tomorrow to look at a 1970 Chevelle LS6 car, i'm gonna take the time the night before to sit down and remind myself what to look for on an L6 LS6 car. It's got to have the upgraded suspension, it's got to have a 12-bolt posi rear end, it's got to have a few different things and a lot of those things can be easily Put it onto the car after the fact. So it's knowing what to look for Exhaust hangers and all this little stuff.
Speaker 1:So I have to go back and look to, but you just refreshing, versus somebody that has to try to find where to search and what to find. So again, and. But you're kind of moving away from those, because I think, even for a guy like you, what it's just so time-consuming Is that it's time-consuming.
Speaker 2:I'll probably still continue to do the meekum auctions, the one here in Kissimmee I'm literally an hour away from so. It's a good two weeks of good work. I'll continue to do that and I'll continue to do the ones I enjoy, the ones that Are the one-off high dollar stuff. I'll continue to do that. But, yeah, i'm not focusing on that as much because it is time-consuming and it is Well, you don't make any friends.
Speaker 2:Let's just say that when you're in the classic car dealers around here. They've nicknamed me the deal killer. Well, I'm not killing your deal. I'm just trying to present the car to a buyer The way I would want to present it to me if I was spending that kind of money.
Speaker 1:No, i think that's great. I think that that's something to be said to Jim. Jim works for both sides. Jim's taking work from the insurance companies. He's taking probably more work from the insurer's or claimants, because that's really how his business started and what his business is, and he's starting to take more and more from insurance.
Speaker 1:But I don't think he plays favorites It's case. He takes it case-by-case basis, like yes, you're right, no, you're wrong, like it just it's a it's. It's black and white in the sense of the numbers. It may be subjective of how you get to those numbers, but Jim represents his clients, whoever. That may be the best that he can. Or, like Jim said, it'll just tell you look, it's a fair offer, or I can't help you here, like there's nothing I can do to help you here. And I think that's something to be clear on.
Speaker 1:Which I found, in property at least, the differences public adjusters and and the insurance adjuster. They don't, they don't really mesh well. You're either public insurance And now some of them work really well together, but for the most part you hear a lot more about the budding heads, whereas, like me and Jim, even if we didn't know each other, if we end up on the same claim on the different sides. It's a pretty friendly conversation. Here's my report. Jim says me his report, we discuss it, you know whether it's DB, prior to loss, whatever, and again, jim will even tell you on pre-purchase inspections. You know he may look at it and say, you know, this car is perfect and worth this in my opinion. Or yes, i would buy it, and I'm, you know, not me. But someone else may look at it and say, hey, i'm kind of concerned about the transmission or whatever, like there's some subjectivity about Cars in general. There's always gonna be that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and especially in pre-purchase. Just an example I had a lady call me a few months back wanted a 56 Chevy Nomad. So she sends me out to look at this one. It's an $80,000 car. I look at and go I'd love to have this thing, this is beautiful. But I started going through it with her and she's. I find out after talking with her She's not looking for an $80,000 car, she's looking for a hundred and $80,000 car. She wanted it to be so pristine, so perfect that I told her this isn't the car for you, even though I'd love to have it and I'll never own anything like that. But This isn't the car for you. You're that next level up that you either need to commission somebody to build you what you want or you better go Somewhere else because this isn't what you're looking for So I find that guy that's got in his garage somewhere the tad at his whole life and never dream, basically.
Speaker 2:They're completely restored. That you see on the, the TV shows, on the YouTube channels, the stuff like that. So it's there's a buck for every seat. But it's just We'd name out for people is what the pre-purchase thing into being so?
Speaker 1:so, and then, to kind of sum up this part in your business, the appraisal clause, right, basically, what again with the disagreement, understanding that the customer, not the shop, not the carrier, not his buddy, the customer, the insured or the claimant has to invoke the appraisal clause. Okay, that is how you start the process of Jim getting involved. Jim can invoke it. Well, technically, jim can be hired on your behalf to represent you and he could potentially invoke it, but technically speaking, you are the customer that signed the contract with insurance, would invoke the appraisal clause, which would then require Insurance gets a appraiser, independent, and you, the insured or claimant, get an appraiser, which would be Jim.
Speaker 1:And Then they Do their reports, which, again, i've seen vastly different reports, some of them pretty crazy, some of them very standard and make complete sense and very simplistic. But then they share information, they have phone calls, discuss and then the last step In that if they cannot agree on a price, then they go to what's called an umpire, which is another independent appraiser that is licensed. That's basically Both sides, the insurance carrier and the insured, or Jim for that matter would send the list to each other and say here's the list, who's on the same list? Let's pick this person. They come in independently. Review both reports, make a final decision, correct, jim? and that decision is final Included in court of law. That is binding, correct?
Speaker 2:correct.
Speaker 1:So that's the process for the appraisal clause. So you understand it. But something else I want to clue you in on Jim. You know his rates are his rates and we're not going to get into what Jim charges Versus someone else, but what I will tell you on the insurance side, if you're looking to do these, it's time and expense You get paid for every minute. You have that five right.
Speaker 1:So the moment they send it to you, if you make a call to Jim, you doing the report, if you have to go out and take photos and scopes of the vehicle, the windshield, all that stuff will add up in time and expense. And And honestly, you're probably wanting to buy Jim a beer if he sits there and kicks his feet and Takes four or five phone calls to agree with you. Or You know y'all have to go back and forth or look at the car or even meet in person potentially, which doesn't happen much, but if it did, you know the more The harder it is to agree, the more money you make. Now you want to agree, you want to find that space. But again, if it's, if it takes, if it's more complex, the more complex to claim is the more money you can potentially make. Jim may set a set fee for that insured right because the insurer doesn't want to sit there thinking Jim is Belting him for hours and hours and hours of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i just do a set fee right off the top and I know there's a couple companies out there that will do two Percentages and I don't agree with that. That, that business model. They'll basically they do all the work for free, upfront, and then, whatever the settlement offer ends up being, they'll take a percentage of that. Well, to me That's a conflict of interest. That's why I just do a set fee and then The insurance company has to pay their appraiser. But keep in mind, if you don't, if you can't come to an agreement, it does go to an umpire. That umpire not only cost the insured, the vehicle owner, more, also cost the insurance company more. There's nine times out of ten the what your policy states is if it goes down, fire, that umpire fee is split equally between The vehicle owner and the insurance company. So it's in everybody's best interest to just Play ball and figure these out before going to an umpire and not the dumpers are bad.
Speaker 1:But again, then you've got one guy coming in and making a binding decision, which is Which is final Again, depending on how you read your ports. I'm not saying it's gonna go in a bad way, but it's better if two people can work together that are experts in the industry And find some kind of common ground. Now, again, on the insurance side, i will tell you I've done enough of these to tell you that the firm and the carrier Do not relinquish complete control to you. They may tell you this is the formula. If you cannot get close to this formula with the other person, then it will be turned in as Basically, go to umpire or whatever right that You don't have complete autonomy, even though technically you probably should. But if you're on the insurance side, believe me, when it comes to their money They're still somewhat overseeing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have a feeling I've. I've only had a handful of ones that have gotten sent to umpire Over the years and the most recent one honestly just got. I just got the results back here a few weeks ago. We were literally eleven thousand dollars apart my appraisal, the insurance appointed appraiser We were eleven grand apart. I assume his hands were tied and he didn't want to play ball. When the umpire finished he Found within about four hundred dollars, or I was at, so the insurance company in the end still ended up paying Where I was at, but that could have went the other way for me too.
Speaker 1:But, like you're saying, i think I think in this situation, the assurance of insurance appointed adjuster, appraiser His hands were tied and wasn't able to in a lot of cases It does happen that way and just so you know too, they can also throw both the umpire to come in, throw both reports out and rule He can come in and literally not look at if he really wanted to come in and say I award the insured thirty thousand dollars And Jim could have said he only won five. That's the danger of an umpire, and I'm not saying it's it's bad. I will say nine times out in the umpire usually favors the public side, typically speaking. But yeah, they can throw stuff out and and they can go way higher. So insurance really doesn't want it to go there. But I do think some firms may force it there or They're getting there's conflict. They want you to keep the dollar amount down as much as possible, but I don't think they want to go to umpire anymore than the next person.
Speaker 2:Nobody wants to go to umpire. It's honestly, it's a pain, it's more time, it's uh, it's really. On my end of it. I'm, then I'm having to set it, set the expectation, with the, the vehicle owner Telling them well, we either take a low ball offer and move on with it or we go to umpire. Just keep in mind, the umpire could come in way up here, or the umpire can come in way down here And there's nothing we can do about it.
Speaker 1:So it's just a whole another Ball wax to deal with so now that people understand what you, you know What you do on the public side and things like that, you think, and again, just with everything you do in auto, now We'll get to kind of what you're now doing with me and some other things you've done, but do you because you know we didn't you didn't really go into your background too much as it did not pertain Maybe the auto, but I think it does. You know, you've ran your own tour bus company, you. You, you're in a band, um, you ran the home theater company. You've had a multiple other businesses. How do you think your prior business experience has helped you in this industry in particular?
Speaker 2:Well, it's just having that, that uh business owner mentality Really stepping into the independent, the jester, independent appraiser world. You kind of got to take the employee hat off and put the business owner hat on, and I think that's where I see a lot of people failing is They still have this nine to five mentality when it, when you're a business owner, it's never nine to five, it's it's 12 to 12. Every day You have to, you have to live it, and I know that's part of the thing that IAPath touts is having the ability to walk away from a busy schedule. But you still got to be there maintaining your business, and I think all the businesses that I've run in the past has helped me Wrap my head around how to exactly do this. And I have my hours set on every website, every google, if you want to look me up, it says nine to five. Ask my wife when I take phone calls, it's seven to ten. I'm talking seven in the morning till ten at night. When that phone rings, you hear money, don't you?
Speaker 1:It is it's, it's, it's money. So you answer the phone when the phone rings.
Speaker 2:No matter what you set for hours, you answer the phone. I'll answer the phone at seven o'clock on a saturday night, when nine o'clock, seven o'clock on a saturday night, when i'm out with friends Guess what? that's money in my pocket. So it's having that mentality of Just being there for your customer number one and If you don't answer the phone or your phone doesn't ring, you ain't making money.
Speaker 1:Well, in parlaying that into for people thinking I can do what jim does, i can be a public adjuster, i can do this and we've talked about it like I've thought about you know, and I've worked with jim on on a few cards or something like that and we've even Discussed about and jim can do it nationwide. Now, thanks to Technology and virtual he can. He can do things basically national on national scale. Potentially He does have his states He works in more than others. I think that's because it's more prevalent.
Speaker 1:But a lot of people you know may think they can do what you do, right, do the public side and get away from insurance, and that's all fine and good. But Could you shed a little lighter? What would you say to them If they think they can just flip a switch? because I know with the experience I have on the insurance side, i don't believe I could do what you do not Successfully. I think I could do it and fumble through it for about five to eight years and then maybe I'd make it. But what would you kind of say to people they're thinking about doing it?
Speaker 2:Have a big nest egg to fall back on. Be prepared to spend more money than you're bringing in for a long time. Like I said, i started all this when I was Basically managing a home theater installation company here in Kissimmee, florida, and this was just a part-time thing because that's just how my brain operates I have to be moving and I have to be doing something all the time. So this was my Saturday and Sunday thing And it was a hobby because it was playing with cars, so it was fun to me.
Speaker 2:But have a large nest egg. I mean, there was years and years where I just threw money at this And never made anything. Yeah, you, you have income, but when you figure out at the end of the day what you're, what it cost you to get that income, you weren't making any money. When I finally took it full time, i was shocked at how much money I made the first year. But you know, it's a struggle. It's it's it's a constant struggle of if I showed somebody my marketing budget, we probably both cry. I have that written down here.
Speaker 1:If you wouldn't mind sharing What is your monthly marketing budget and you don't have to give an exact number, but tell us, is it a hundred dollars, is it Five thousand, is it over ten, like, give us kind of a ballpark range or what you're spending a month To do what you do, um to put it in the track customers.
Speaker 2:That's the difference, right.
Speaker 1:Like we, we get on the firms or go direct to a carrier. We don't have to advertise. Even if we did, geico's not calling me tomorrow, they're not calling you advertising But for you you have to educate and and get the customer to trust you And have them then pick up the phone and call you. Right, exactly, so I that marketing was something I wrote down like please Enlighten people of how much we're talking about spending just in marketing bubble.
Speaker 2:If I didn't have a marketing bill, if I could take all of my marketing dollars every month and invest it in something else, i could easily be driving a Brand new Corvette. Right now It's my monthly marketing budget Is being used to the market Is probably A Corvette. Honestly it's. I look at it and it's ridiculous. But if I don't spend it, i don't have any customers. And it's exactly what you said. There is no IA firm calling me going. Hey, this guy needs help. This guy needs help. It's spending money on Google AdWords. It's spending money on Facebook and all this other stuff.
Speaker 2:The website I mean, put together a website And it's it's. It gets to the point of being draining when you sit down and you look at about. I've just implemented what's called a CRM customer relation management. Well, there's more money a month because I got to spend on that And you just get nickel and dime every time you turn around. But I've gotten to the point where, if I don't have some of these things in place, i can't remember what I'm doing on a day to day basis, because there's three 2022 Jeep Rubicon sitting on my desk and I can't remember who it belongs to.
Speaker 1:Well, well, just even to clarify further, right, But you fine tuned your marketing over the years, right, Like this has not been. Oh, I just decided, Oh, I'm going to spend 10 grand this month and I've just got customers Like there was some expensive errors made And I think this happens in anybody's business. But expensive errors made on what? Google AdWords? what word should you be targeting? What your website should design? What phone number they should be calling? Should it be local or should it be my out of state number? Yeah, I mean, there's a million little things that death by a thousand cuts if you're not careful.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's exactly that as death by a thousand cuts so that don't start bleeding for two to three months. So to find out what that keyword was that worked in March, I don't know until August.
Speaker 2:It's so yeah, it's the most depressing thing to look at in the world. It's honestly why I now have the world. For the last couple years, i have my SEO lady and I pay her very handsomely to do what she does, but she gets results. So it's one of those things that you have to farm out. It's just like accounting. I'm not doing my taxes at the end of the year. You kidding me? I'd be in jail if I had to do my own taxes, so you have to farm that out.
Speaker 1:Well, that may be for other other reasons that we're not going to do. But yeah, i mean outsourcing what you don't know, or what exactly? well, no matter what business it is, accounting your marketing again, an independent appraiser world where we're working carriers, marketing is not that big of a deal. But even each segment of this market, of this industry, demands and commands a different level of devotion or potential expense into these different categories. Right, like you know, if you're running a small, your own independent appraisal company, you may be able to get by with going with Turbo tax free, you know, and doing your taxes. You might be able to. But when you start running a larger business, like for instance me running 20 to 25 contractors, now that I've got to pay out and I've got my wife's business and we've got other things going on, i'd be nuts not to have somebody review it. Or I'm going to get hammered by Uncle Sam saying with marketing.
Speaker 1:I don't need marketing. I don't need a website, don't want one. I don't want people calling me. Honestly, i'm trying to get rid of people calling me How many find my number? I don't need a word, but Jim, jim wants people to find his number, like when you think about the public side and prior to law TV. He wants you to think of him first and something just to mention, talk about. I mean, is this a massive industry, jim? Or can you probably name what? The name of the top 10 players, top five players that you talk to all the time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, off the top of my head, yeah You don't have to name them, i'm saying No, it's about five guys.
Speaker 1:It's a close knit industry. There's not a lot of people doing this.
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of people. I just honestly had this conversation a few weeks ago with a guy out of Texas that basically does what I do And we were just sitting talking about it going. I bet there is less than a hundred of us nationwide And out of those hundred there's probably less than probably 40 that really do what we do. There just isn't that many people out there doing it. So when you say it like that, it sounds like all this work, all this work. Well, yeah, It's just, it's hit or miss. It can be feast or famine, So it gets a little scary sometimes.
Speaker 1:So let's say that, like because I don't want to discourage people from doing it, but there's a reason why there's probably a hundred people or less. Very tight knit industry, same old people, same names pop up over and over again. I mean there's what high barrier to entry with cost of what you're going to have to spend to get your name out there because nobody knows you. Number two the experience factor. Right, like, i think you have to have a passion for cars. That's just my opinion. But you've got to know cars. You can't walk up to a guy with 1970 CUDA and not know what's on that CUDA or what. You know what motor it had, what intake chassis. You know when you start talking cars and you know you've got to be able to talk cars with these guys because they know everything there is to know about their car. And if you can't talk that level or at least sound like you know, you're burnt on classic.
Speaker 2:If you're, if you're getting into the classic world and you want to really earn some distrust with your customer in a big hurry, walk up to a Mopar guy and ask him how the 350 small block is doing. and as Mopar doesn't exist, mopar Dodge never made that. So you got to know what you're talking about on classics, because if you're going out and talking to these people, they already know.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like and those guys can spot somebody that's. And this is where you can get in trouble with the. You know the feeling of fraud we talk about in this industry. You're not a fraud when you're starting out as a newbie.
Speaker 1:But if you try to approach a classic car expert or a guy that owns classic cars, have sold and traded in that market, forever, grew up rebuilding cars, there's questions they're going to throw out there that are traps, i 100%. It's kind of like me asking if you want to go snipe hunting in the south. If I get you to say, yes, I know you're an idiot and you're not from the south, okay, like there's certain questions you know, like the Canuta valve and you know those are jokes I make as just a semi car guy. Can you imagine Jim asking you well, yeah, you know, do you think this is a 355 small block in this Mopar? And you say yeah, i'm pretty sure it is.
Speaker 1:And, jim Turner, he says they don't, they never made one for Mopar. Then you look like an idiot and that's on the classic side. But as far as reeling it back in to getting into this industry, i think that would you agree with me, jim, that it would be best to try to get experience doing the auto damage, maybe putting other tools in your tool belt with RVs and specialty heavy equipment, and once you've kind of mastered that or got a real good firm grip, maybe then go to firms and say, hey, let me start out on the insurance side of doing DV and prior to loss, like those are a good place to start versus getting out on your own right, don't you think?
Speaker 2:100%. I would never in a million years advise anybody to get into this the way I got into it. I did it backwards.
Speaker 1:But you're a car guy. If you grew up, maybe a car guy your whole life, maybe you've got a fighting chance, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that's the only thing that saved me, honestly. And then in the end, when I decided to go full time, I got into the IAPath and did the same collision course that everybody did. Well, that helped me in a whole nother realm, because now I'm signed on with municipalities and leasing companies. I do all the local police shop for different cities around here. I do all their damage now, which I would not have been able to do before. So I would suggest everybody, after you get done with auto damage and you want to move on to the next thing like you and I have talked about heavy equipment RVs get into hail. I mean, obviously we're going to talk about some stuff here coming up, but get into hail. There's more money, Don't worry about DV and prior to loss and classics and all that stuff right off the bat, because Don't worry about money as the least path in the distance and build from there right.
Speaker 1:Then, maybe at 10-year mark, 15-year mark, maybe you've learned enough, gotten enough mentors that, hey, you built a name for yourself and your community as the car guy that's worked with big insurance, worked with all these different types of people, gotten to see hundreds and hundreds of classics by now. Have some knowledge, have some respect and then you can jump out on your own and do public. You don't have to change your business because Jim does both. I speak about it all the time. But, jim, tell me how important it is for you to have different streams of income and not just be reliant on oh, i'm just doing pre-purchase inspections only or just prior to loss or DV, but you also can do RVs and heavy equipment and collision riding and hail.
Speaker 2:I do. I mean, if you want to go through the whole list, real quick pre-purchase inspection, diminished value prior to loss, total loss disputes then we get into fair market valuations. And where that comes into play is I work with a lot of law firms doing divorce, bankruptcy, state probate people just wanting to make sure that they know what their trade-in is worth before they take it in.
Speaker 2:Finance so many of these institutions. Banks won't lend anymore without an appraisal on some of these cars, so a lot of that stuff. And then we get into the world of agreed value, replacement value, guys that take a 57 Chevy and they invest $250,000 into it and the insurance company comes back and says we're only insuring it for $60,000.
Speaker 2:Well then I have to go document it. We're doing an agreed value, but on top of all that I still know how to do auto damage. I can go write damage estimates heavy equipment. I don't do as much of that anymore because I'm so busy on the other side. But that's all stuff that is in my back pocket that I could fall back on for work if I need to, but I've seen you do these for valuations for RVs.
Speaker 1:I saw you look at a Peterbilt this now more of a show truck You can do or look at anything. And then last, i guess, is Hale correct. I mean we've gotten into Hale now.
Speaker 2:Now I'm a part of the Kobe and Ashley team, so we've been traveling the country like rock stars doing Hale. I missed out on Colorado, but it sounds like I missed out on getting sick.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that was a rough deployment.
Speaker 1:Jim is more of my field guy for any of you that don't know, but before we get into the Hale because I really do want to talk about that, to wrap it up, but understand that, see, everything Jim listed and I think there's even some things he's left off is streams of income and diversification to where, if one of those or even two or three of those gets slow or no longer profitable or the industry as a whole changes, jim may feel it, but it's not crushing his business. It's like, oh, that kind of sucks, but I'm gonna pivot over here and that's where I'm gonna put my time And then, once that gets going again, i'll pivot back or I'll start adding more streams of income versus. I'm just gonna depend on this one or two things And the moment that firm loses that carrier or guess what, virtual takes over the collision auto world and we're no longer needed, which I don't think is gonna necessarily happen completely. But again, or it's not profitable anymore for you or makes sense. You can't pivot without having these different streams.
Speaker 2:It's just one last thing on that topic. I have other streams, i have other. I'm a firm believer in multiple revenue streams. Rich men didn't get rich by just going to work for 40 hours a week and working for somebody. And I'm not saying I'm a rich man by any means. What I'm saying is I have multiple revenue streams. I have other revenue streams that have nothing to do with cars and insurance and all this stuff. So it's having multiple revenue streams. And I'm not saying that everybody needs to go start a bunch of businesses, but I'm just giving some background on where I'm at. The reason I can do what I'm doing and make a living is I have multiple revenue streams coming in.
Speaker 1:Revenue streams, businesses. It could be investments, it could be property, whatever it may be. But if you're gonna get out of the nine to five, 40 hour a week mindset where you're always on the hamster wheel, that's the mindset you gotta have. Where's my next income stream? What's my next opportunity? What can I do to insulate myself even further? Because Jim and I are neither one of us are rich by any means. I don't think anybody would look at us as if we're rich. I think we have rich and rich lives. I think we live very comfortable and I think Jim and I hop on the phone by a week later, monthly and say, yeah, we're done. Like I've said it I don't know how many times, jim, over the past couple of weeks yeah, i'm done, man, and I guarantee you I'll get a call here in a week and I'll be right back out that door for deployment. Or again.
Speaker 1:Other opportunities come through, because when you become a business owner you also have to, kind of, like I said, love what you do. But I'm a little paranoid of when the work may shut off and I don't know if our work will ever shut off the way we run our businesses, but we're always a little paranoid that that faucet of drenching us with work is gonna cut off and, yeah, we may have to find other work. We can do that but make hay while the sun shines. Well, we feel like Jim and I talk about every year. We always think the sun's gonna stop shining or we're gonna get a cloudy day or cloudy week or month. It doesn't really happen for us, but we always are worried that it is so we never take we actually have more of the opposite problem of not taking enough vacations or breaks when we should or when we probably earned it.
Speaker 1:Because I think Jim and I both discussed this and I have no problem sharing it We could probably stop for the rest of the year here in June and be fine for the rest of the week, will we? There's no way in hell Jim stops. I know that for a fact. He won't stop. I know I won't stop, but I think we are making a concert of effort together to take more time to not be working or talking about work. So hopefully this is one of our last conversations, because I know he's gonna be taking a vacation up here to my neck for the woods in Minnesota to visit and I'm trying to take some time off in the north woods, in the cabin, obviously in this video. But with that said, let's get into the last part of this. Jim, so now with what you're up to now, you're still running CFL Auto Appraise. What year are you in now with that?
Speaker 2:Full time. I'm going into year, let's year three, year three or four.
Speaker 1:And you've been doing it. Total for what? six, seven, eight years?
Speaker 2:Oh, six, seven, eight. This will be my ninth, eighth year of doing it.
Speaker 1:And you've been in classic cars your whole life, so technically, that's what I was a kid doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah so, but you've been doing all that. But then Jim is to give you an idea, i'm now running Catastrophe Cales, one of my streams of income. It's what I do, i love doing Brought Jim in because he's in Florida where they, until this year, really don't get Hale And even then they didn't get a ton. But I brought him in to be my field guide because of the way he's got his business set up. He doesn't have to be there every day, and I just make that point because I think you have more opportunity the more you're able to pull yourself out of the business day to day. You still may have to work on it, like he said, but it allows you to open up to other opportunities.
Speaker 1:So Jim came on thanks to the IAPath relationship, which I think is another kudos to IAPath with the networking right, the we network. I saw your expertise from the get go. I wanted to make a connection with you. I thought you know you could help me. Maybe I could return the favor someday. Finally, here I am returning the favor, but Jim runs Hale with me. So me and my wife deploy, they call me and my very next call is to Jim. If I have enough claim, i've got to have at least 150 to leave the door. That's my number for Jim. I think it's, depending on location, somewhere around 80 or 100 for Jim if he's going to go out there with me. But let's talk about that. How's your first year running with me being kind of a greenhorn Hale? How's that been for you?
Speaker 2:You know, the first one we did was where were we in Atlanta?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I thought it went good. I thought it went well, i enjoyed it. It kicked my butt a little bit compared to what I'm normally used to doing on a daily basis, but I drove away from Atlanta going yeah, i can do this And the next time you called me, i had basically had 24 hours to get my butt all the way out to St Louis, which is a 17 hour drive for me.
Speaker 1:So that was a five AM on the road, I think in a few days. You just didn't have any time You had no time I made it into a yeah. Don't put it on me like I gave you 10 hours notice.
Speaker 2:Well, the St Louis one. Yeah, i left Orlando at five in the morning, i rolled into St Louis at nine, i knocked on you guys' hotel room door and we basically talked for an hour and we hit the both. Kobe and I hit the road. But five, 36 o'clock in the morning, and we ran hard. We ran hard all over St Louis and Southeastern corner, wherever we were, and that one kicked my butt. But there's a lot of other things that happened. It was a bad country song for Jim.
Speaker 1:Let's see his car. They just had a new transmission in malfunction. Jim crew is back out his dog misting. He's going home, i mean.
Speaker 2:We had a cracker barrel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a really worst experience I've ever had at cracker barrel. Food was I mean it was just it was. But it was fun, like it was an experience. I loved doing it with Jim. My wife just thinks the world of Jim just because he's a no nonsense guy. If you ever get to meet Jim, he really doesn't like people, so make sure if he likes you it's special, but more so Jim's a no nonsense guy kind of like me. So it was, it was fun. But but yeah, jim, ran, ran two. We had two big deployments together that I brought you.
Speaker 2:I feel like it's going good. I enjoy it for the most part. Obviously, by the end of the day, you're ready to get away from looking at hail dense when you're on these big deployments like that, but the system that you and Ashley have put together, i mean I don't know how else we could do it. It to me it's. It ends up being a well-oiled machine. The way we're all three tackling this and and what we did in St Louis, i was shocked what we pulled off there With no drive through. I was shocked that we pulled that off in the timeframe that we pulled it off in. I don't know what the numbers were in the end, but we did a lot of cars.
Speaker 1:We didn't write at 300 claims in about was it nine days? eight, nine days, jim, do you remember?
Speaker 1:that I think I was on the road for nine days, so I think it was more like seven days of hard but, I think we stayed one extra day, didn't we From Missouri, one or two finishing up, yeah, but but all together I think it was like eight, nine days somewhere in there, and we ran over right at 300 claims. Jim hit his mark, i hit my mark, we were all happy. But how we were set up, just so you know, ashley's the writer, you know this. But if you listen to us, she writes everything. We bring in Jim to scope and I scope, so I would do 20 to 30 a day, Jim would do 20 to 30 a day and Ashley, bless her heart, would write all 40 to 65s. But that's what we're geared to do. We also we took two days before we even deployed, called, had everything scheduled, lined up. Jim didn't even have to make a call. You're probably thinking, well, what did Jim do? Well, he did it quite a bit. I mean, he had to run really hard. But yeah, we called, made sure everything was scheduled, gave it to Jim. We're even fine tuning it, because it's the first time we've ever brought in a second person and we're finding some things that can make it even better for him, for us, for everybody. But you know, that was something that, where we went in and again everybody made a lot of money and was very happy with it.
Speaker 1:But talk about it, jim, from your perspective. If you could explain. You know we've got a great system, don't get me wrong, but what does it feel like? Like try to give someone that's never done it what they're getting into. Like if I called somebody tomorrow for deployment, what should they be ready for? How would you describe it?
Speaker 2:Well, first thing I'll say is, if you're a homebody, if you're somebody that doesn't like to be away from home, that you want to go home every night, cat deployment is not for you. Like Colby said earlier, i used to run a tour bus business, so I'm used to being on the road. I was the tour bus driver for rock bands, so I would leave on anywhere from 30 to 90 day tours across the United States, so I know how to pack for a long deployment. I've always been able to do. I enjoy it. I enjoy driving across the country.
Speaker 2:So if that's not something you want to do, cat deployment is not for you. Be prepared to leave in a hurry. I mean basically, i think on the St Louis one I think you called me on a Wednesday or maybe on a Tuesday. I was on the road by Thursday and we were running claims Friday morning. So it's not like, well, you got a week or 10 days. No, you literally got 48 hours to wrap up what you're doing and get all your stuff into your pickup and drive halfway across the country to go run claims.
Speaker 1:So, and then what was it like when you were there?
Speaker 2:Be very open to fitting in with the local clientele. We were in a interesting area for a while. It's like anywhere I mean as long as you can just put your head down and work, you'll be fine. But you got to really know your surroundings and really understand who you're dealing with. We were dealing with an interesting client base, more in St Louis than we did with in Atlanta. Atlanta was a little bit I don't want to how to really say it politically correct, but it was a more affluent community that we were in in Atlanta. In St Louis You just kind of had to adapt to what we were your surroundings there.
Speaker 1:So and you like. What was your typical day? What's your typical day look like?
Speaker 2:Basically I'm up at five, five, 30 in the morning, regardless. So up in the morning, get ready to go for the day, have it all, basically have everything planned out. So you've got all your sheets and you know where your car, what, what, what cars you're going to look at. And have it all set in your phone so that your maps you're not searching it, you just go to the next one on your phone And then basically we were running till six, seven, sometimes later at night. So we were putting in I would say anywhere from 12 to 15 hour days while we're out there. And it's a lot of driving. The way we're doing it It's not like the drive through which you guys were doing on Colorado, but we're driving all over. I didn't check my mileage to see what I put on on that St Louis trip, but you're going to be invested into a lot of gas. And then obviously my transmission went on my pickup.
Speaker 1:But that was under warranty. Yeah, so that wasn't so bad, But yeah, I mean it's when you have to find food which, let's be honest, depending on where you're at, options are not always plentiful where you're staying or where you're at.
Speaker 2:Invest in a Yeti cooler. Invest in a good cooler and put it in the back of your pickup. And go to the grocery store is what I do And buy decent food. Otherwise I end up eating crap and then you don't feel good because you're eating junk food.
Speaker 1:Or if you have any kind of stomach issues or you're sensitive to certain things, or you're a vegan and again I'm not getting into politics here, but you're a vegan, or you're a paleo diet or keto diet, you better pack your stuff with you Because I'll tell you right now there's no way in hell you're going to be able to accommodate that and not start to death, and most of the time, but yeah, but yeah, anything else you want to share with your ship. Jim, it's been great having you on. I just want to make sure that I miss anything. Is there any tips you give to people getting into the industry, people that are struggling right now? What you know, whether it's hail related or what you do or just overall you know, i think we gave some great takeaways in this episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think it's a great industry. I don't. I think it's an industry that moving forward is going to be really touted as the recession proof industry. I think it's true. I don't. If we, if and when we go into the next economic recession, i don't know how badly we're going to get affected will be affected, but I don't know if it's going to just completely die out for us. So I think it's a great industry to keep moving forward. In.
Speaker 2:As far as doing hail If that's the kind of thing you like doing there's a lot of money to be made and it's it's. It's rewarding. At the end of the day, you look at it and, man, i did 25 cars a day and my feet hurt, but it's pretty rewarding. And most of all, this is when you get somebody for $5,000 back on a car that got really undervalued in a total loss dispute. It's rewarding When you go out and find a pre purchase inspection and find that the car is completely rusted out and nothing works on it and you just save the guy 50, 60 grand. It's pretty rewarding.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of things about this industry that are rewarding and and are fun to do. You don't have to be a car guy like me. It helps. I think it helps a lot, but you don't have to be. You can learn this industry and excel at it, and there's always money to be made in this industry And if you're not making money, you just got to. I don't want to say, call Kobe, but Kobe has a lot of good answers.
Speaker 1:So well, i appreciate that, but I think you're, i think, a better way to put it. If you're not making money with the abundance of opportunity in the industry, you really need to seek out more opportunity and try it. So you're not doing something right And maybe you do need to call Kobe, maybe you need to call Brad or Chris or find somebody. Don't put yourself out there on the island, but you need to find a better, a better widget. Let's put it that way find a better way to make your widgets. But no, jim, it's been great having you on. I think it's been a pleasure and a blast working with you, and I would even like to finish on the fact that Jim's a car guy. He's passionate about what he does, and I really want to drive on the passion part of it, right, because, like he said, yeah, it helps being a car guy, but I think more so it helps with the. You've got to have a passion about your business And I think anybody that's truly successful in running a business is passionate about what they're doing. Chris Stanley is a great example. He is truly passionate about helping people in this industry, specifically in the auto space. I am Brad, is Jim, is Chanel, eric. A lot of our everybody that's involved in IAPath is passionate about helping people in the space And for Jim that's what it took, or what it takes, to run his business successfully.
Speaker 1:I'm very passionate about doing what I do, working for a midsize carrier, direct, doing hail, that heavy equipment RV, that's kind of my thing. For you it could be light auto collision, but again more streams of income. I think that's another takeaway here. But just know that you don't have to be a car guy at all. It does help. But I think it's being passionate enough to want to always learn.
Speaker 1:Like I've never been a gym. I'm never going to be a gym, but I watch Mecham auctions, i watch Barrett Jackson because I'm just interested in my craft, because I do get classics. I've got a 1970 Dodge Super B that I got to go look at tomorrow. That's nice, hopefully anywhere from 30 to 100 grand car. And if I don't know what I'm talking about with this guy that just has training, drop out and tear up the whole undercover or undercarriage, i'm going to look like an idiot. So I have the passion and I have the desire to at least provide a quality service And that has always paid me back 10 fold, and I think that's the biggest point Obviously you know, if you want to be a public appraiser, i think that's great, but I think there are levels to it.
Speaker 1:And if you didn't start out as a car guy from birth with you know Coors Light in your bottle I won't say Bud Light, put Coors Light in your bottle watching your dad rebuild a transmission or an engine or something then you probably want to take the baby steps of doing you know auto collision damage, then into your heavy equipment and RV and hail and flood, and once you get that down and then you can start branching out into insurance handling for insurance side, for firms, dv, total loss, things like that.
Speaker 1:Then I think you've got enough body of work and experience. At that five to 10 year mark Maybe you start branching out and trying to grab your own customers, you know, in a public space. But even for people that I know are veterans in the IAPath they're not getting enough to live on if they cut off the other side of their business. They're doing it but it's kind of like a side extra stream of income that they'll get a couple of months or something great. But again, the amount of money and time and experience you get and invest into it, that's a huge wall to overcome, but just know that it's out there. There's a million markets like that in our industry. So, jim, i'll let you have final thoughts before we close it out. Anything you want to share?
Speaker 2:No, it's been great getting to work with you and Ashley and just meeting everybody through IAPath. And when I say call Kobe, it's because Kobe's, like I said, got good answers. You can try and give me a call and send me a text message. I'll answer questions too. But yeah, it's just been a good experience And I guess I'll see you two next time at Hales.
Speaker 1:Perfect man. I look forward to it. Ashley says sorry she couldn't see you. Love, sirston, jimbo, for all you listeners out there. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Independent Adjuster podcast. Should you want to get in touch with me or Jim, the best way to do it is find us on LinkedIn, jim Berger or Kobe Hearn, or you can also sign up for the Mighty Networks IAPath community. If you just wanted to talk to us, ask more questions, understand the industry before you take a head first dive, it does cost something. It's not much. It's like maybe 300 bucks for the year and you get to ask a ton of questions to all of us. That's a great place to start if you're thinking about the industry. Besides that, it's been another great episode. Thanks again, jim. We'll see you next time. Keep walking your path and claiming your life.