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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)
4 Keys to Unlocking a 6-Figure Adjusting Career This Hurricane Season
Chris Stanley and Mathew Allen of AdjusterTV dive deep into what it takes to make it big this hurricane season as an independent adjuster.
This 2 1/2hr special covers most things a new adjuster needs to know to be successful including a full hour of live Q&A!
The first part of the presentation covers the 4 keys.
Then Mathew Allen talks about his program and how he helps new IA's, followed by the Q&A session.
You don't want to miss this.
Glad you guys are here. Here's a housekeeping tip before we get officially started. If you have a question like a question question not like a comment like hey, what does he mean about this? By joke that me and Matt will undoubtedly make, but like a question about adjusting that you think we need to answer live, that you would like us to address live, there is two places you could talk. There's the chat. You can say anything you want about us there, but we will read it and we will seek vengeance. And then there's the Q&A, which is actually for the questions you want us to answer live at the end.
Speaker 1:So ask your questions, your formal question, in the Q&A. We are probably not gonna do hand-raising and like, okay, josh, come up and ask your question until the end, but we would like your questions in the Q&A. So Dean Marie, which is Matt's lovely wife, who has a ton of adjusting experience herself, can answer some of those questions if they can be addressed quickly in text through the Q&A, and then she will save the best ones. D't answer them all, cause you are so good, dave, the good ones that you think a lot of people will benefit from in the Q and a. So Matt has some alley-oop to answer in front of everybody.
Speaker 1:Don't take all the easy questions from that. Uh a, layups, layups. Yeah, he can't do alley-oops anymore.
Speaker 1:We're way too past that prime. All right, everybody, thank you so much for being here tonight we're going to be talking about the four keys to unlocking a six-figure adjusting career. Now, if you don't know Matthew Allen, you probably don't watch YouTube. I would be one of those people that wouldn't know Matt Allen, except he reached out to me Because I don't do a lot of YouTubing I think that's the term, youtubing but Matt reached out to me oh my goodness, matt, it's got to be five plus years ago now and said hey, I saw you just came out with a book. I'd love to talk to you about it and maybe let you do a video on this thing I have called Adjuster TV, and so that was kind of the origin of me getting to know Matt.
Speaker 1:And we talk almost every week now, I would say, for the past three, four years, really trying to dive deep on how we can help people in this industry have an easier entrance in and take longer. So that's what the conversation really is about tonight is how do we help you guys and gals enter this industry in the context of this hurricane season that's predicted to be potentially the most catastrophic ever, if anybody's halfway right about their predictions? How do we position you guys for success, not just for this fall but as a propellant for the rest of your career. And so Matt's gracious enough to come on tonight because he has a ton more experience with catastrophes and hurricanes than I do.
Speaker 1:I've been on like one and I've handled some remotely, but my career was mainly rooted in daily claims. That's why I'm so big about daily. But Matt, he's a cat guy, so we brought him on. We're going to have a conversation between the two of us. It's going to be loose, it's going to be informal, because that's kind of Matt and I, but at the end we will have a Q&A. So put your question in the Q&A. But officially, matt Allen of Adjuster TV, thank you so much for being here, man, thanks for agreeing to come and do this.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, man, it's no problem. I mean this is super awesome. And I guess, for those of you who don't know me or know me yet, I have a YouTube channel where I talk about property claims. And Chris is right, the vast majority of my experience over my 20-year career as an adjuster was in catastrophe. 20-year career as an adjuster was in catastrophe.
Speaker 3:However, I have done almost every role as a sort of claims professional, except for the auto side, which is one of the reasons why I reached out to Chris, because I was like, hey, I've never done auto before, let's talk about it. So we kind of, you know, we talk to each other. We kind of have parallel sort of like you know we talk to each other and we kind of have parallel, sort of like you know, platforms that we have for reaching you guys. So I also did a lot of daily stuff on the property side. I worked as a staff adjuster for a year with Safeco, liberty, mut it.
Speaker 3:But I learned quite a lot and it really really kind of was sort of a signature moment in my career. After that I was like I started interacting with contractors and homeowners almost completely differently from that point on, because it was so it was a whole other story, but anyway. So I was an adjuster for 20 years and you know, we decided we want to settle down a little bit and I wanted to kind of start giving back and I realized that if I wanted to be and, chris, you probably can empathize with this, I think we've talked about this If I wanted to help people truly and be all in on it, I kind of had to like retire from claims Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I get asked that all the time Are you still doing claims? And I'm like if I was still doing claims, I would not be on the phone with you right now. No no no. It's on his truth. I couldn't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you guys may notice there's there's some other really good um, cause we're a content like claims people out there on YouTube and doing podcasts and stuff like that. But what you'll notice is is that they will. You'll see a lot of stuff from them. You're starting maybe like around Thanksgiving, through like March, april, and then they drop off and then they pop back up again and back in the fall, I guess, cause they go and they work storms or they or they, they take on claims assignments and it's you really truly it's. It's kind of a one or the other right. The claims work. I can't speak to the auto side, but knowing auto people, I think it's probably the same thing and that is is that it's especially as an independent adjuster. You are making money like per claim, so you're incentivized to be as busy as possible, and so you become as busy as possible. I mean you're working a lot.
Speaker 1:And if you're good, then it's going to keep stacking up.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's, and that's what you want.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep. So when you're good, then you, then that's when the burnout starts to happen, cause they, they want to they're going to keep pushing you and bow out.
Speaker 1:Now I have a question for everybody here. So we've got like 51 people on, so if you can find your little emoji hand the raise hand but we'll just use that for a second on Zoom how many people wish they could get to the point that they're so busy with property claims that they felt burnt out Anybody? Let's feel bad for Matt and everybody who is so sick and tired of handling claims. Right, I mean, I was there too. I burned out really, really bad many times actually, and it's why I'm so big about self-care and claiming your life and all these things. It's much more than just getting work. This is a long-term thing. But the biggest problem Matt and I tend to see is that how do you break in? So that's what we're here to help you guys do tonight.
Speaker 1:So, matt, I'm going to start with a question a little different than kind of what we had prepped.
Speaker 1:I'll let you get to the four keys here, and it kind of ties in in my mind is that I think you know we've been in it a long time. To us, it's like second nature sometimes when someone asks a question like well, duh, you do this, but the reality is, you're newer, you don't know what you don't know, and so I really want to set up the scenario for them to really understand. What we're talking about is like what is some of the big things that you see people making, the big mistakes you see people making, who are trying to get their first cat property deployment what are those things that are tripping the vast majority of people up? I know on auto what they are. I see them consistently, but I want to hear from you If someone's wanting to get deployed to a cat property hurricane for one of the big companies you know, one of the major ones, who's going to potentially give them a shot? What are the big things that you're seeing, the wrong assumptions and things you're seeing people make?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's it's. You'd kind of hit the nail on the head right there with the assumptions part. What I see is that people are assuming that they can just get their Texas license or their home state license or the Florida license and then hang around and wait for a hurricane to make landfall and then start calling the IA firms and trying to get work. And the truth of the matter is is that the preparation for a hurricane season or storm season, or just handling claims in general, begins months, possibly a year or more, before the storm hits. Now, that said, obviously we're July and the hurricane peak starts in about three weeks is when stuff historically starts popping off. So I think probably the biggest mistakes that people make, really the number one mistake, is that they, they are gonna, they believe what they see on social media.
Speaker 3:Um, when people say, yes, exactly, there's the, the graphic um starts right in the middle of august and just skyrockets in the middle of september and then tapers off through into the early November, these people will say and whether the advice is well-meaning, I can't speak to the intent behind this kind of advice, but to say no, no, no, no, you don't need to do that, you know, ia firms will train you when you get, when you get deployed.
Speaker 3:They'll put you through like a little mini training and you'll be fine. Or you know, the only training that you need is to just go to the free training at the IA firm whenever they have one right or the 299 one. And the problem with that is is that this is there's a skillset that come that you got to bring with you to this work. Getting the work is and maybe this is the assumption is the getting the work is is the thing that you do at the end of the all the preparation that you need to build your foundation of skills to, to be to get yourself to that door, that doorway. Right opportunity when they do get that the work call, when the desperate your phone catches on fire in your pocket because you're getting so many texts and calls and emails wanting to deploy you, even though they've never used you before, you've. You know you just onboarded onto their roster. That's the thing that's going to save your bacon when you because getting that opportunity it's great, but capitalizing on that opportunity is really the key right.
Speaker 1:So once you get there I've heard a crazy stat. I'm going to jump in here and ask you this, Matt, because I've heard it from IA firms. It was not just in reference to auto, because I was asking in general, how many people flake out, fail, get sent home early, that are actually deployed? The number I got was like 75% of first-time IAs do not work out long-term. Is that kind of what you've seen For?
Speaker 3:sure it's north of 70% is what I was going to say easily.
Speaker 1:Insane. Like that's terrible because so many people. If you know, there's a 58 people on the call right now. So quick math, you know, if the three quarter, if everybody gets deployed tomorrow, there's going to be like 20 of you maybe that are still working a few months from now and getting calls from that same company again. Is that the math right?
Speaker 3:like that's a third pretty much even, yeah, that it's even less than that so um.
Speaker 3:so listen, there's a, there's kind of um, the. It really is about the math and and what adds up and what doesn't. Right. So the math, which is unfortunate for independent adjusters and this has been for as long as I've done this, which is the late 90s. They still do it. The last big hurricane we had, ian, the exact same thing happened. The IA firms and the carriers are and this is again unfortunate but it's true, are and this is again unfortunate but it's true they're going to throw warm bodies at these storms. Okay, because they have.
Speaker 3:There's some statutory requirements that the you know, if a homeowner has a law and they file a claim.
Speaker 3:There's there's time benchmarks that each state has that says, hey, you've got to contact it within 24 hours, you got to do this within seven days, you got to do this within 30 days, you got to do these all these things. And they will send people knowing that you have no experience and you have no idea what you're doing. You have nothing on your resume, except for you know your name written in crayon right, which honestly is enough to get on a roster or at least get on board at a firm, and they'll send you out there to get those calls made to make sure that they stay compliant with with the state right? Um, I think that they in their heart of hearts, they really want everybody to be successful, but they know that there's a, there's a math problem there and there's a clock that's ticking, and so they're prepared to for you to. If you, if you're not showing up ready for this, for the, for a property, like major catastrophe, they're prepared for you to wash out and fail and they're going to throw somebody else right in your spot.
Speaker 1:A lot of on every hurricane I've ever worked yeah, knowing that most are going to kind of hold.
Speaker 3:It's just going to be like a meat grinder, right, they're just going to keep running people through it. Grinder, right, they're just going to keep running people through it. And every hurricane I've ever worked and every hurricane I've ever heard of most I don't know if I could say like a percentage, but like I've never, I've never worked a hurricane where I didn't have many, many of the claims that I got had already been assigned to at least two other adjusters prior to me. Right, I call and I'm like, hey, I just want to call it. You know, I'm Matt, I'm your adjuster with Allstate and I'm going to Matt.
Speaker 3:Well, what happened to Jeff? I'm like, who's Jeff? I don't have any. Well, he's the last guy that called and he actually came out and he looked at our roof and then he said he was going to call us back. He called and never came out and I'm like, oh sir, I'm very sorry. He's like well, you know, you say you're going to be here at nine on Thursday and we'll believe it when we see it. Right, that's what you're getting. Right, Because people, when they wash out, those claims have to be reassigned to somebody else and those adjusters that washed out didn't get paid for that.
Speaker 3:Right, Because nobody gets paid until it closes, so closes, so it's you gotta, you gotta have the the to to finally answer your question. Gotta be prepared for this. You have to be prepared. You have to take your training, your preparation, your certifications, your licenses are very important on the property side. You gotta take this stuff very, very seriously, make it a priority. Um do this stuff when it's quiet, right before storm season or right now it's quiet. You've got a couple of weeks, two, three weeks, four weeks, you know um the seasons, they say it's going to be get a little bit of a late start with the La Nina. I'm not a meteorologist. Uh, it'll be what it is, um.
Speaker 1:But it's it's better to do this. We can flip a coin. It'd be just as bright as that.
Speaker 3:Yep, Yep. So so there's.
Speaker 1:It could just as easily be there's, like swarms of hurricanes in the Gulf right now, Right which, even if that was the case, we're you know, we'd still be saying the same thing to you talk to them and it and you, you, you breeze through it and like, yes, you said it, but like I just want to zero in on it a little bit more, because the pet peeve of mine is like we, as independent adjusters even though sometimes we get hired as a w-2 employee, depending on the, the way we're hired and, you know, deployed and sent to storms, even though sometimes we're w-2s, in reality we are independent contractors. That's what right independent adjuster label is, and so what I have a real problem with is getting your customer to train you.
Speaker 1:Like that never made sense to me, because I wasn't trained by an IA firm, and so I got my training elsewhere. And then when I hear people being like, well, I went to XYZIA firm and these firms are amazing for giving you low cost, high quality training. But what you don't know is that behind the scene, they're grading you and that is what crushes?
Speaker 1:people. It is an assessment. So yes, they're teaching you how to write a hail claim. Yes, they're teaching you, maybe, how to climb a roof or do this, but you are also earning your starting position on their roster. How well you are prepared when you walk through that door is potentially how good you're going to do on your overall assessment. Me into panic, I just realized that they were grading me right at the end and they actually encouraged me not to test because it would be permanent and I was doing that bad and they had no idea they're getting graded. But like, those are your customers. So I just have a problem with having your customer train. You take their training, but after you're already good, that's my sauce.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly why would you want to walk into that kind of a situation, right onto the bottom of the list Just showing up green and fresh, right For sure you know, unlocking a six figure, adjusting career, matt, if you feel comfortable sharing.
Speaker 1:I mean how many of the years and I know insulation, I mean six figures is not what it used to be, even three years ago. The way money is going. So, like, if someone does good on a storm, like hits a good solid double or a triple on a storm and it's cat property, what can they actually expect to make? Because we've all heard the stories, I've heard the stories, gosh, I've known some guys who have done it like 30 grand in you know so many months or per month. I mean I just hear craziness Like what can someone honestly expect to make? They get deployed, they stick it out, they kind of, you know, get on base, so to speak, and they're not washing out and they're making solid income. What kind?
Speaker 3:of can people expect to make in this day and age? Well, I think it's a kind of a complicated question in that there's your first storm, which is, you know, unless the stars align, even for very experienced adjusters, not going to make six figures on your first storm. We just got to have some facts and a little bit of real talk, Because your first storm is where you're getting your feet wet. You're building your processes for being efficient. You're getting your brain wrapped around, unwrapped from maybe a nine to five mentality and rewrapped around. Hey, listen, the more efficient I am, the better I am, friendlier I am with the customers and everybody. The better I'm going to do, the more work they're going to give me and the faster I'm going to be.
Speaker 3:Right, If you get deployed this hurricane season, that your first week, if you follow my method, right, your first week, you're going to be closing claims, you know, maybe a half a dozen, maybe seven or eight, something like that. Right, that second week we're going to ramp up some more and you maybe double that, right? So ideally, by the end of your first three weeks, you should have 40 or 50 claims closed, right? So let me run a little calculator math situation here. So if you make, we'll say, $350 a pop times 50, you know $17,500, right, Is that right?
Speaker 1:No, so is that possible? Your first month? If the first month good, your first month or first time person yeah, and that's not.
Speaker 3:It's not tax and expenses and anything else.
Speaker 3:Right, it's it's just no, just raw income yeah, you're making a low five figures right on your on in your first, and so that's why it's absolutely so critical for a person to have those processes nailed down so that they, a lot of times, the I firms and the carriers will be like oh yeah, you know, when you get down to you know houston or galveston, we'll have help rooms and all this kind of stuff and you show up at the help room if they they even have them. Sometimes they're like, oh, we had to cancel the help room, sorry, you're on your own. And you show up at the help room, if they even have them. Sometimes they're like, oh, we had to cancel the help room, sorry, you're on your own right.
Speaker 3:Or you walk into the help room and it's a little like you know, conference room the size of like a large bedroom with a long table in it at the Holiday Inn Express, and there's 30 people or 40 or 50 people packed into that room, three people deep around the table, and there's one or two people that work for the IA firm who are helping people. There's no way You're standing outside the room like looking in the window and you got people in there who have no idea what they're doing and they're trying to figure out how to get the wrapper off of their laptop and turn it on. And that's what the help room people are tackling, not you, who've been out there scoping losses. Um, so you got to have a foundation, you have to have a groundwork, or like a. You have to have like a platform or a. I'm running out of adjectives here you gotta have.
Speaker 1:You nailed them all, man.
Speaker 3:You nailed them all we gotta have a way that you do stuff. It's like going to, you know, like boot camp, right. They repeat the same things over and over and over and over again. And when you get out in the field you fall back on your training, right, which is what you do on your first CAT deployment. You're going to fall back on you know what you learned from the trainings that you take before you. You know, before you do any of this stuff, and that keeps you oh, go ahead. Yeah, oh, just one last thing. And it keeps you from like in case the help room is full or there isn't one, you can still close the files, because you're not going to get paid until you close the files, that's what I want to know what's the timeline that somebody, from the time they hit the ground, you said the first week they might close you know five, six claims, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:What's the timeline typically of getting paid these days? Like you know, I heard a lot of things years ago but things change. What is the timeline typically that somebody is going to start seeing a paycheck come in from the time they close their first week of claims?
Speaker 3:Yeah, of claims, yeah. So basically the way it works and I don't think this has really changed a whole lot is that when you deploy with a firm, they're going to have you in their payroll, right. When you onboard, you give them your direct deposit info and all that kind of stuff, right, and you go into, they have a payroll cycle, all the invoices that come in for all the claims that are closed on week one, on final day, on Tuesday, right, they'll tell you what day is the last day to get your invoices in so you can get paid on the next payday for Friday or a week from Friday, right, something like that. It might be every two weeks and they may sometimes have I've worked for like Pilot for a long time and they were always every two weeks and then you go on a hurricane. They're like we're going to pay every week. So they change that sometimes, right, but there's still a lag between when you turn that invoice in and when you it shows up in your account, right. So it's, you can't go three weeks or two weeks or four weeks. Which is very common and this is why that 70% number happens is that people will get out in scope and scope and they'll kind of flail around and they'll act busy, but they're not being productive and they won't close any claims.
Speaker 3:When I say turn in an invoice, it's the same thing as closing a claim, right? When you close the claim, the invoice goes with it, right, and that gets processed. Homeowner gets paid, you get paid. Right. When it goes into payroll, payroll might get backed up, the computers might get overloaded and it's another two weeks, right. So it's absolutely critical to be closing claims pretty much day one, right. So it's not like I'm going to scope all day long and then stay up all night long and try to write these up, or I'm going to scope for four days and then sit around in my hotel room all day long for another four days and write them up. That's where people get. They get kicked off storms for that, right. So what's?
Speaker 1:that timeline. So roughly, if you're going a two-week pay cycle, you're probably looking at about a three-week time from the time you close your first ones to when you're going to see that money potentially start down.
Speaker 3:I would say I would absolutely have an expectation that I'm not going to be getting paid for anything that I've done on a storm for at least the first two weeks and that's with me. I close claims on site, like at the house, like day of so, and that's that's kind of how I try to teach people how to how to run claims. So you got to have you know you have to have some resources there to be able to pay for your hotels and all that kind of stuff and fuel and food and everything when you're on site before you start getting paid.
Speaker 1:So what would you budget if you're going on a storm today? Things you know, costs are what they are. I know you're driving a long way. The hotels near your claims are usually booked up or gone, Right booked up or gone right. So what's kind of the expectation of what your emergency deployment fund needs to be to accept one of these deployments? You know, if you don't have this, you know it could turn into a disaster where you have to leave and give yourself a bad name. So what should people expect to have?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I would say these days you probably at most hotels and you can shop around a little bit and you can get extended like weekly or monthly rates, which knocks the price down a little bit, but you're probably going to spend $2,500 to $3,500 a month on a hotel. You know you're probably going to fill up every once every two days or every other day, or once every two days, something like that, depending on how you know fuel economy and all that kind of stuff. It's hard to say, um, I would, I wouldn't, wouldn't want to, if I was coming into this as a, as a new adjuster, and I had Matt Allen telling me everything to do. Um, telling me everything to do.
Speaker 3:Um, I would want to show up to a cat site without access to some kind of money that exceeds about five thousand bucks and whatever way I can get my hands on it. Whether I gotta borrow it we're gonna sell a bunch of stuff whether I have to have you know I don't want to have to have a credit card, but maybe that's the only thing I can do um, or just have cash saved. It's important because if you run out of money and you're not closing claims, you're not going to make it. Speaking of which did we lose him? There he is.
Speaker 1:No, I'm still here, so that's good to know. Because like you need to be positioned, like that number 70 or higher freaks me out, like I don't want the people who are here tonight do that. So tip one, without even getting to the four keys, is just have right expectations. Okay, well, this isn't even a mad keys, that I think, I don't think but like just having right expectations, knowing these two things like one, when you show up to a training for the guy for, expect even if they aren't maybe we're wrong and they're not but expect that they are grading you. So go into that. Knowing that expectation to have some money set aside before you go to a storm so you don't run out of runway, basically, and crash at the end of it, which leaves a bad name. And then, uh, you know three have a skill set already built. So when you get there you're closing claims and you're not probably gonna see money for three ish week from the time you land. So like all that together, you're increasing your odds of success by knowing that, expecting that and being prepared for those things, um, exponentially.
Speaker 1:But matt, let's shift into, uh, now your keys, which I know they kind of stack nice on top of this. But like the four things, the four keys to unlocking a six-figure adjusting career. What are those things? You reviewed them with me quickly over the phone but like they aligned with me really well, they resonated with me on the auto side. But why don't you tell everybody kind of the four things that you've found really help someone unlock, you know, a six-figure income?
Speaker 3:You're going to make me do these from memory.
Speaker 1:If you want, I can call them out to you, but I don't have a slideshow, if that's what you mean.
Speaker 3:No no no. Yeah, let's just start with the first one and we'll just start talking about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the first one is licensing.
Speaker 3:Licensing, yes, I always get to say that. So licensing is absolutely critical. I see on social media all the time people are like, oh, you know, you don't have to get a license until they send you to Florida and then you get, then I'll just get away. Just get my Florida license. Maybe, right, maybe, if Hurricane Harvey slams into Houston and every adjuster on the planet is in South Texas and then two weeks later Irma slams into Florida and there's nobody to go work that one, then all bets are off. They're again throwing warm bodies and if you've got a ladder and a vehicle, you're going period, right, and there are emergency licenses. That's true, true, but the but, the. What we're after here is we're after, like, longevity, we're after building a career, not just, like you know, just doing one-off hurricanes here and there. You're not going to make, you're not going to make a like a solid, rewarding, six-figure career. I hate saying that. It can sound so cheesy, but it is what it is, right. You're not going to build that career just by trying to chase like storms. You have to be working really most of the year and there's so many opportunities out there for adjusters outside of Texas and Florida. Right, there are 34 estate adjuster license for property adjusters in the US and I think Canada's even got one If you have a New York license. I was looking at the storm reports from a few days ago, like just maybe three or four or five days ago, and right along the New York Thruway, right, if anybody's familiar with that or Syracuse and Albany and Utica or whatever, they had tornadoes and high winds right. There's a lot of people that live in New York State right, not where I'm talking about New York City, new York State right, and everybody's got to live in a house and there's a lot of big trees in New York, if I remember correctly last time I was there, and trees land on stuff and they break stuff. Wind blows shingles off. That's a lot of claims.
Speaker 3:If you have a New York license, they're going to call you right, at least when they do a search. When State Farm calls up Alacrity and says, hey, listen, we need 50 adjusters with a New York license to go to New York for these windstorms we had yesterday or whatever it was, alacrity is going to jump into their computer and they're going to sort their roster by everybody who's got a New York license. They're not just going to like, pick you and be like hey, bob, hey, listen, you know, we were just wondering do you happen to have a New York license? Do you want to go to New York? Do you have that license? They're not going to do that.
Speaker 3:You're just not going to get called unless they run out of people with New York licenses and they have to start digging deeper into the roster which, you know, with a New York license it's not that popular. I don't know why. Because you could work your rear end off in New York, new Mexico, arizona, california 38 million people live in California, washington, montana, right. Every time I talk to my partner firms, I in montana, and they're like hey, you sure you don't want to take some claims up there? I'm like I'm not. No, because they can't find anybody to work up here.
Speaker 1:Right, I have these licenses so big like the you know I talk a lot about putting the odds in your favor, like don't treat this as an adjuster lottery. Right, like the adjuster lottery, literally sitting and waiting for someone to pick you out of 20,000 other people who have a Texas license and saying, hey, we have the opportunity, the rare opportunity that there's an emergency declared in New York. Would you like to go work it and apply for that emergency license? And no, you want to be the one that's pulling up in the report. Matt's talking about where you're the first. You're given first option. You can't make the first call list, as Matt says, if you're not showing up in these lists. It's impossible.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. So licensing is absolutely critical. I kind of you know, because as a cat adjuster you do work in a lot of states where they don't have a license requirement and I worked in a lot of those states. I kind of poo-pooed the whole licensing thing for a little while, especially if you watch some of my early videos.
Speaker 3:But anymore, especially these days, with remote desk work, it's even more important Because if you live in like Denver, right, colorado does not have an adjusted state adjuster license and you want to do remote desk claims of any kind, file review, you want to be a claims examiner, you want to do anything remotely, right, be the writer, part of this, the scoper writer, you know, thing that everybody's doing these days. If you, if they have an event in Arkansas or Oklahoma or New Hampshire, a little small event, right, and you don't necessarily even need to have to do like cat stuff, right, it's just whatever claims that they have, they're not going to give you that work in those states, right? So it's even more important as a desk adjuster to get as many licenses as possible. I would say get all 34, right, alaska, hawaii, you know Hawaii gets high winds.
Speaker 3:They got fire right, we saw a wildfire there. It was devastating earlier last year, it was earlier this year. So licensing is absolutely critical and we start this list of you know the important things for building your career with licensing because you got to start now, immediately, yeah, so I got a really cool graphic for this and this will.
Speaker 1:You might be going. Well, matt, chris, which ones? Which one did I get? Like, that's all fine and well, and, dandy, well, I found this graphic in preparation for this event. That's not even the one I wanted. Oh, my goodness, let me grab another one. That one's one of the one. This is the one. This just blew my mind, okay. So if you want to know, like, where will put me in the best spot to receive work, here you go. Here's the percentages the US probability of major hurricane impact in at-risk counties in the 2024 forecast. So there you go, there's your odds. Buy those lottery tickets? Okay, if we're sticking with that analogy, yeah, of those lines. I mean, look at Florida. That's ludicrous, but look at.
Speaker 1:Texas, it already got hit this year, right. So it was in the 10 to 27 percentile in that area where it already got hit. They nailed that one. Look at Louisiana, it looks like it's going to hit, which would also mean, what Alabama gets hit, right, mississippi, they're going to get hit. So, like you could see what states need to focus on, first, it's the coastal states.
Speaker 1:Right now we're in a hurricane season. Um, one more stat and then I'm gonna get matt on to the next key. Uh, that just blew my mind. Like I get that. Like this is gonna be a bad season and all, but this stat, just it's not even right. Are you freaking, kidding me? I live in Florida. On a sailboat. I ran not because of this stat, but because I knew this was what they were saying. We have a 96% probability of a named storm hitting Florida, 75% chance of it being a hurricane this year. So if you're wondering if you don't have a Florida license and you want to work this hurricane season, get a dang license. It's a good bet, okay. So there you know what states to get. Get to coast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, shortlist Everything from Texas all the way around Florida and up the East Coast. Right now there's other ones to get for later in the season, fire season and everything else, but for right now focus on the coastal states, on the Gulf and Atlantic.
Speaker 1:That peak season, the graphic we showed earlier, the timeline September's where it's going to spike, which that might not be when you get work. That might be when everyone else gets used and you get the next storm.
Speaker 3:So end of September.
Speaker 1:That's true, so you might not be. I think Irma was like close to October when everybody got deployed, wasn't it Like it was Harvey in September that took everybody out, like sucked all the resources out, and then Irma and Maria came in at the end of September and October and it was like every person with a license was working at that point. So it sometimes is that second or third wave in September into October that a new person is going to get a shot. But hopefully we can get you prepared for not being on the second or third wave and get you further up the list.
Speaker 3:So, matt, get you on the first tier.
Speaker 1:yeah, that's it the next key. So get your licenses Key one. That way you're eligible to get those storms. Number two he touched on it earlier, but we're going to let him go more in depth here. You got to have the skills yeah, well, yeah.
Speaker 3:So training, I mean it's, it's I don't know what else we could really say about that. Um, you know, adjust your tv. We've got training. Mo cats got great training. Um, veteran adjusting school guy has retired from that, so you don't have that option anymore, unfortunately.
Speaker 3:Um, so those are, you know, really the kind of the main ones these days, and again, again. I mean, if the only thing you can do is go to to, like the Eberls thing or Alacrity's ABCs, and one, two, threes of adjusting, that's better than nothing. But again, those are recruiting, slash assessment trainings. They're teaching you the pilot way, the Alacrity way, right, it's not just like you know, they're expecting you to show up with a little bit of knowledge. So, skills, the key skills, you know, if we drill down a little bit on this, you have to I would say more than anything, you have to, um, have some basic chops and exactimate right, the exactimate still. Even though symbility is kind of making some inroads here and there, exactimate is still king of the hill when it comes to everybody's using it Right. So if you can get training up to even just a level one, user certification, that puts you light years ahead of the guy that just shows up and is unboxing his laptop at orientation on the hurricane, Right, If you can and just you know the thing that you If you can and just you know the thing that you know you think about this. You're like, oh well, how hard could it possibly be? The problem with Xactimate is that it's basically been relatively unchanged the interface since I started using it in 1999, right, it looks pretty much the same. They've changed the navigation a little bit or whatever, but everything else is pretty much exactly the way it was.
Speaker 3:The thing that sidetracks and kind of wrecks adjusters people who don't have any experience in Xactimate is that finding things in Xactimate can be very, very challenging, especially if you don't know exactly what the thing is called. Xactimate has a lot of tools and resources in it for helping you to be like some vent. I've got a picture of it here and you can dig around in Xactimate for hours and never find it right. I mean, when you're calling somebody trying to figure out what, you don't know what to call it, right, there are tools in Xactimate that can help you find that in seconds. Right, and if you have training in Xactimate, if you've got a little bit of practice, you've got in there and you've like done some practice estimates, then you're starting to build some muscle memory with that repetition and that's going to serve you immensely when you get on site.
Speaker 3:And those skills they can kind of evaporate right. Even when I was late in my career, if I had a long break between cat deployments and then I showed up on a you know maybe six months, and then I show up on you know the next spring on a storm, I'm like, oh, where is that an Xactimate again. I gotta like refresh myself. And so I'm spending time trying to figure out what oh, that was it yeah yeah, you, yeah, yeah, you can lose it.
Speaker 1:There's a crazy stat that says, if you don't use what, you've learned something new. So let's say you go learn Xactimate for a week or two week boot camp or whatever. If you don't use it, within six days 75% of it is gone. Because there's no permanent groove in the brain. 75% of what we learn is gone within six days. And so we teach over at IA Path. About software especially, you have to be constantly using, do practice claims over and over. If you're not working, you better be doing practice claims every week or it's going to leave. And, like Matt said, that muscle memory is actually it's not only what's going to make you close claims comfortably and, you know, not freak out, but that's what's going to get you to six figures. Is you're?
Speaker 1:not having to think about where every little thing is, because you already know, your brain knows it's on autopilot, I know where to the gutters to go. Oh, I remember how to do that. Yeah, that's this, you know short code, like whatever. Like those things are what make you in auto or property, that's what's going to make you really good at your job. So those skills. So, matt, what about? We kind of got Xactimate? I know there's other softwares for property. Are there any that people should be considered? Or just not on the first storm, don't worry about anything outside of Xactimate.
Speaker 3:Well, I would have said that two years ago. But because Liberty Mutual and Safeco went over to Simbility, corelogic, mobile claims, or whatever they call it, you kind of need to have some familiarity with that because that opens up a lot of doors. Because Liberty Mutual is a top 10 carrier and they have national exposure, right, so they're going to be. You know, they're a big client of a lot of these companies and if you have some stability training, that's going to go a long way. You know, the software stuff is can't be underestimated. It can't be understated that, because that's how you're showing the work that you. You know that's the, that's the work product basically comes out of that.
Speaker 3:Right, and it's a difference between getting through an estimate in 30 minutes and 90 minutes. Well, how many estimates can I do in 90 minutes? Right, if I can do them in 30 minutes? Well, I can do three instead of one, right. And again, like we said, we're only getting paid by the claim, right. So I'm going to get paid 350 per right, so I'm going to make 350 in 90 minutes, or I'm going to make whatever. 350 times three is in 90 minutes, right, that's 1300 bucks, whatever it is right. That's the difference. So why would you want to go and live in a hotel and eat TV dinners and sit in traffic and, you know, have to scrape love bugs off the front of your vehicle for less money, right? You kind of have to think about it in terms of what's going to make me faster, what's going to make it easier for me to close these claims and software knowledge is top of the pyramid on that for sure.
Speaker 1:So, outside of software, what do people need to know they're showing up to a storm, what should they already have in their mental tool about?
Speaker 3:Well, the more the better. I would say that it's not going to be possible for somebody to know everything when they show up Right. I was learning stuff even in the last year that I was in the field. I was like oh.
Speaker 3:I haven't seen that before. That's really interesting. I talked to the contractor what do you call that then? Right, really interesting. I talked to the contractor what do you call that then? Right, so, having the absolute, the fundamentals of claims handling, and knowing the claims process, kind of start to finish, is going to, is going to go a really long way because, if you can, it's kind of like starting to see the matrix, I call it, where once you close one claim right, it might take you six hours or eight hours to close that first claim, but your next claim will take you half that time and the next claim after that will take you half that time because you're starting to see the claims process. If you show up already having seen the claims process, right. So the claims process being they're going to give me claims.
Speaker 3:What do I do with the claims once they give them to me, right? Well, I have to sort of process them. I do a little admin stuff to them. I have to build a schedule around where they're all at, how big they are and what the damage is on the map. Then I have to build. You know, what am I going to do every single day? How many am I going to do every single day. Right, so you're scheduling, you deal with something we call claims recon, where you're kind of like going to satellite image or street view or whatever just to look at the house and be like, okay, well, that's a two-story and it's a super steep one, I'll have to get somebody out there to help me, or whatever. Right, so you do a little bit of that. You're not surprised when you show up. So, and then contacting the homeowner, right, Then what do I do with that information?
Speaker 3:Then, how to scope the house, how to move around a property efficiently. You know over, through, around and around the. You know going, looking at multiple buildings. How do I do that in a way that I'm not backtracking a whole bunch and having to redo it? Or like I'm going to go take pictures of everything and then go back and start over and measure everything. And then go back and start over and write. You know my scope sheet. You know what's the best way to do that? Right, there's a, there is a best way and most a most efficient way to do that. And then writing the estimates.
Speaker 3:You know it's not enough, Like when we talk about Xactimate and stability training. It's not enough to just learn where all the buttons are and how to use the search functions in Xactimate. You have to know how to use Xactimate as a tool in that overall process, because you're going to be dipping into Xactimate you know we're just going to and stability, but you know we'll just primarily say Xactimate. You're going to be dipping into there at every step, every step of the process, so you have to know how to. They say well, we need you to do a diary entry or we need you to do a preliminary report, we need you to give us a statement of loss, right? Well, how do I even do that? Right, At each part of the claims process, you have to know how to use all the tools that are available to you. Right, Construction stuff is absolutely important, but you don't have to be a general contractor to get started doing this.
Speaker 3:A lot of this stuff is not really rocket science. Right, Drywall, it's painted with paint. Right, Drywall paint it's painted with paint. Right, you know we've got a baseboard and we have some glue down carpet tile in this room. Right, If you can identify those things, then you can use Xactimate, especially with the tools that they have these days in there.
Speaker 3:With the XactExpert. It'll suggest other things that you could add to that estimate, right? So you do have to have a little bit of foundational like ability to look at stuff and be like, okay, that's a, that's a door and it's, uh, insulated, it's a metal door, right? Maybe you got a little magnet in your, in your tool lag and you stick it on the door. That's a metal door, right? So you put that on your scope sheet. Um so long story short in understanding the whole claims process and how all the tools kind of fit into. That is what I talk about when I talk about that kind of like foundational sort of framework that you use when you show up on a cat site Claims process and then using your tools. Final answer.
Speaker 1:Final answer Love it. All right. So the next one is a fun one and I've got a pretty good story that aligns with it. All right, so the next one is a fun one and I've got a pretty good story that aligns with it. This key is what got me my only hurricane deployment and it is connection. So connection in our industry. And Sandy came through.
Speaker 1:I was on my sailboat it was like our first sailboat, I think and we were in basically around New Bern, north Carolina area and we were deciding whether we were going to get called for this storm or not. We were focused mainly on hail. We'd never been on a hurricane but we'd been to all the pilot stuff. We thought maybe they might call us if this hurricane hit. We listened to everybody saying they'll call you if they want. You, don't bother us that kind of thing. And we heard nothing for like three, four days and we were like I don't think they're going to need anybody, just based on our own rookie assessment.
Speaker 1:And so we leave on the sailboat, we start heading south and my friend, a guy I met at the pilot orientation, calls me. He's like you got to call pilot right now. I just got deployed and I told him I know other people that would be great, can they call you? And they said please have them, call us, we need so many people. So I called in to the hotline whoever he talked to and got deployed and I said, hey, my in-laws and uncle also went through your orientation and got them on. But, like, we would have never made that call if it wasn't for the connection, and so a lot of times you're sitting around waiting for the IA firm when they're deploying people and they're just trying to find willing people at that moment and your friend can be like, hey, you should call them.
Speaker 3:Yep, exactly Right, exactly. So networking is absolutely critical, you know, and a lot of times when you go to these trainings you'll see people and you should. I think you should do it right during the break or right, you know they take a break for lunch and people will walk up and they'll start like kind of chit-chatting with the instructor or like somebody who is like a team manager or whatever, and kind of chatting them up, which is great. I think that's awesome. And networking is, you know, going to National Association of Catastrophe Adjusters Conference which is going to be in Little Rock in February they moved it back this year Absolutely critical and that's an easy one to get to. It's not in Vegas anymore, but networking with your peers is at least it's probably honestly based on that conversation that you had, that story you just told that is so common and that is probably more productive for getting deployments and getting work than you know talking to the team manager or the instructor at the training right, or going and talking to some you know operations director sitting in a booth at a conference. Get to know the people around you because they're going to be the ones that you know they may get deployed before you or you may get deployed and you're like, and they may say, hey, do you know anybody else? Oh, yeah, I know, I got some friends and you guys are just like, you're doing reciprocity back and forth, you know, calling each other up to say, hey, listen, they want, they need more people, call in, right, hey, did you know that? I just, they just called me for hail in St Louis and they asked me if I knew anybody. You want to go call in, right? It's, it's really as simple as that Making those connections, you know, and and when you go to like MoCat, right, and you're going to be sitting in there in a classroom and you got people sitting on either side of you, in front and back of you, talk to those people, right? If you guys, if you decide to do that, get to know everybody around you as much as possible, exchange contact information, friend each other on Facebook or whatever, because you know that, know, chris's program, our program, we have, uh, healthy communities of people online where you know, when a group of students comes into my, my program, um, we, we send them right into our, our community, our like online community, where they can ask questions and get news and get job opportunities and all that kind of stuff from me as well as from each other. So absolutely important. You know, I don't.
Speaker 3:I, for a long time in my career I kind of like I got so busy and I was usually the first guy called you know, humble brag, I guess, but I had figured out a few things right that made it to where they kept wanting to put me to work, and it wasn't just the IA firms, it was the carrier who was like well, this Matt Allen guy is really taking care of our customers the way we want our adjusters to take care of our customers, and so he's on the first call list, right, the first call list is held by the carriers, by the way. So I'm getting called and I'm got my head down, I'm working, and then things kind of changed a little bit, right, you know, maybe the management or the leadership at the carrier changes and they change stuff up and that account goes away. Right that I've been working for a long time.
Speaker 1:I don't have. You know, I have adjuster friends so I have to kind of really like work that small network that I had, but it really kind of came. The phone the other day is like you know how many people here in this room? What do we got Sixty something, sixty six people on. Go ahead, use your little emoji hand on this question as well. If you would love it, if you had an uncle at Pilot. How many wish you had a relative who was in a high ranking position at one of these major IA firms. Go ahead, raise your hand. Like anybody, anybody at all. Like just sounds like that'd be so nice. I wouldn't have to fight with against 20,000 other IAs in this position. My uncle would just step in and get me on the list right. Like everybody wants that. No, you don't want that, matt. Like, come on.
Speaker 3:No, I do want that, but it's not like a magic door to get walking you right into it. If you know the uncle at Pilot, the uncle at Pilot is going to be like you need to take all these trains, you need to go to that event, you need to go do this thing over here, you need to go ride along with that guy. So you're like jumping and hustling with your uncle at Pilot Right, jumping and hustling with your uncle at pilot Right. So that's that's what the uncle at pilot gets. You is inside track on the short list of things that you absolutely need. You got to get these licenses. If you don't have this license, we can't put you to work.
Speaker 1:Isn't that what we're doing here tonight? Just saying.
Speaker 3:Kinda, we're trying to be your uncle, not in a weird way.
Speaker 1:Matt, your uncle, matt. Not in a weird way, matt, your uncle, matt, your uncle. Now, you know, when I got into this industry I had a mentor and my father-in-law brought me on and you know, it just sounds like so easy, like, oh, I have a relative who's walking me in, and it was. I would have never been in this industry without him. I didn't even know about it. He told me about it. He made me do it almost, um, but like that was shadowing him for six months without pay. So, like anyone who's like, I just wish I had a relative who could get me in the door.
Speaker 1:it isn't always that simple like matt is saying. It really isn't, and you know, some of the cool things that we can do now with technology and the internet and with Matt's program, with what IA Path does, is we literally can be your mentors from wherever and do those same things for you. And that's what I love about what we've been able to create with our different communities and things is that you don't have to have an uncle at an IA firm anymore to get this information. We're making it public, we're doing it here tonight, we're walking you through the process, and so, other than mentors and peers, are there any other connections people should be worried about? I have one in mind, if you can't think of it, but I'm just wanting to know. Give you the layup.
Speaker 3:You know, when you go to the conferences this is one thing that you'll notice especially if you go to more than consecutive, you know, especially the NACA conferences, the National Association of Catastrophe Adjusters is that you'll see our boy, Andrew Price, sitting at the pilot booth right every year for two or three years, and then the next year he's sitting over in the Sedgwick booth, like, oh well, that's kind of interesting, right Every year for two or three years, and then the next year he's sitting over in the Sedgwick booth Like, oh well, that's kind of interesting, right, and he's a recruiting director at Sedgwick now, right, and he was working for Pilot for a long time.
Speaker 3:And the leadership and sort of like the mid-level management and up, they tend to bounce around between these firms and a lot of the people at those especially those conferences will be are store managers or they will, you know, in a director's role, the director of operations in particular.
Speaker 3:They're going to, they're going to know a lot of the adjusters and they're going to know who the superstars are, at least, and they're going to hear about the people who fall down on their face or cause giant messes, right, so they're going to have kind of, they're going to kind of know this, this sort of thing, and a lot of times when they they bounce from this firm to that firm, you may get a call from them saying, hey, listen, you know, I just you know I had to go. I've got a better deal over here at this other firm and I really like what they got going on and I I recommend it to maybe you know, if you're not on the roster already, that you do it, you know. That's. That's one thing I could think of. I don't know what you got in mind.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm thinking it's really fundamental. That's why we haven't said it, but it's really something that must be done, just like licenses. Is you actually have to get on boarded with the freaking firms? Like I can't tell you how many people I talk on the phone? I'm like, hey, you want daily auto claims? Like, yes, that's what I want. All right, which firms are you on with? Pilot and Alacrity? I'm like that's great, but they do very little daily claim work compared to other people, and that's not enough firms, you have to get on with more companies. So how many companies would you say?
Speaker 3:let's just say that you recommend to your students how many people how many firms should they be trying to get on if they want to be ready to the September for a big hurricane? Yeah, so I would say there's a point of diminishing returns with with the firms, because there are hundreds of them. But there's kind of a there's a short list and then there's a short short list, I think, of like kind of prime movers that we're going to have like the most opportunities for people right out of the gate. You know you can go and get on like the little, like mama pops, um firm's roster that only serves like the tip of the panhandle of florida or whatever, and can you can get work from them and they may put, they may keep you busy for a long time. But the pilots you know there's by short short list has about 10 or 12, uh, major firms on it.
Speaker 3:Nine of those are, um, our partner firms for fast track to deployment, um, but those are, I would start with, kind of like the biggest of the biggest, because it really isn't like you know how you start out. I mean it kind of is you got to start out off, you have to have a good start, but once you get into your career then you can start to diversify and expand. And you know, the more experience you get, the more you're going to find some boutique firms that aren't just like Joe Bob's. You know, florida Panhandle guys it's hey, we only do a high-end commercial right and that's a firm that you cannot get on as a brand new person right. You have to have experience for those guys.
Speaker 3:So I would say it's kind of the 80-20, you know sort of a situation where it's like you get 80% of your benefit from 20% of your efforts. Well, let's look at the firms that are going to have the most opportunities. The firms that have the state farm contract, the all-state contract right, the Liberty Mutuals, those are the major firms and those are going to be the ones that when a hurricane hits, or windstorms in New York or hailstorms in Denver or wherever they're going to have, they're going to be the ones that have the most claims and they're going to need the most adjusters for those. So short list has about 10 firms on it, 10 firms.
Speaker 1:You better get on with 10 firms and if you don't know which ones, go to Matt's website, see who he says he partners with and go pick them off. And get on those nine and pick one more big one, you'll figure out.
Speaker 3:We'll talk about those a little bit later. But yeah for sure and again I can't be stressed enough I will absolutely repeat this Do not wait until you can get, you can, onboard with these firms. You're not going to get any work because you don't have anything. But this is a major step that you want to do now, when it's quiet, and do the background check and the whiz quiz and the this and the that and the employment history and the onboarding call and the hey, we need you to go take the all these trainings and you know we've got the like pilot right. No matter who's like third-party training you take, whether it's mine or whoever's.
Speaker 3:You can't go work claims for pilot without doing a five or 10 day pilot college claims college thing. You just can't do it. So you want to get that stuff out of the way now, not when the hurricane's bearing down on the coast, right, you want to be standing by the door with your parachute on and your helmet, little strap tightened up underneath your chin right, and your clipboard, your tape measure, ready to jump, not like well, how do I pack my parachute? And you're down on the ground still, right, being ready to deploy is, with you know, part and parcel with getting the licensing is onboarding with these firms. Right now, as soon as we get off this call, go to pilotcatcom, go to alacritysolutionscom, go to pay sort of claim servicecom, go to all these firms onboard, start applying Crawford, huge company, right, massive company. That's absolutely so important.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely so important. So, so, so key All right. So number four the fourth key. So let's recap. I want to make sure you didn't drop any keys along the way. It's like, literally, Matt giving you a goldmine here and you just have to have all the keys. Number one licenses. Number two you got to have the skills. Okay, you got to know what you're doing. Number three you got to have some connections with mentors, peers, you got to be on with the firms. And number four is you got to have this is a real term stick-to-it-ness.
Speaker 3:Stick-to-it-ness, yes. So this is, let's just be honest, no matter which way you slice it, this is it's a bit of a slog. I mean, chris, I don't know what it's like on the auto side, but on the property side, you know, you hear about people like well, you know, I took all this training and got all these licenses and nothing's happened. I haven't worked for eight months and I'm out of. My savings are gone. That's kind of a reality, or can be a reality, if you're not, if you're not preparing yourself.
Speaker 3:Whenever I get that email and I get them, like every other day, um, and I do read all the emails that come in um, hey, you know, listen, I just want to. You know I spent all this money and I don't have any more resources and this and that, and you know I've, I've got, I've gone on with all these firms and everything, and it's just nobody's calling me. And every time I call and they say they don't have anything. Dah, dah, dah dah. And the very first question I always ask is is what licenses do you have? We'll have Louisiana license. I'm like well, is anything happening in Louisiana right now? No, it's not right, but this stuff happened in New York. This stuff happened in Minnesota, right? What was the question?
Speaker 1:again, I was letting you go. This is entertaining. No, I'm with you. I'm with you because I get to pay for all this.
Speaker 3:All right, the stick-to-itiveness, that's right. Yeah, stick-to-itiveness yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:So these are the little shortcuts, but you still have to have some grit. Right, you got to have some bottom to you, right, you got to have a little bit of iron constitution to do this. And that means that you need to be sort of forward thinking and not just like all right, well, I've decided, I'm going to be an adjuster, I'm going to get my license, I'm going to quit my day job tomorrow, which is a lot of people do it, and it's a huge, it's a fail. It's going to be a fail, right? It's a huge risk. You can mitigate a lot of that risk by planning right. Maybe you don't have any resources at all, you have zero licenses, you don't have any money to buy any licenses right now, today. But any 12 months you might, or eight months. I'm going to tell you hey, take eight months, let this season go by, don't worry about it, there's always going to be another season. Get all this stuff lined up, get the money saved back right.
Speaker 3:It takes some grit and persistence really to stick with this and often, you know, people will maybe like in November or December, when it's dead quiet, almost universally, they'll start their journey on this thing and they'll get all everything all like dialed in by February and then nothing happens until July, right, and so then I get that email. You know, hey, listen, it's been this many months. I'm like, well, hurricane season is really down just getting started. Storm season's already kind of gotten rolling. You still need to get some more licenses right. So sticking with it in the long run but being smart about it, not just, like you know, stubbornly holding on without having some planning with it, is really kind of the final piece, I think. And honestly, once you do start working, having that that ability to sort of reach down into yourself for some of that like persistence and stubbornness keeps you on storms longer. It keeps you honing your skills right and building your skills and building your network and doing proactive things to build your career right.
Speaker 3:And so it's not. This stuff isn't going to be handed to you. You know and this is again real talk, it is. You know, the spoils go to the people who are going to stick it out. Be smart about it. Go to the people who are going to stick it out. Be smart about it.
Speaker 3:You know, the first time I met a guy that only did commercial, I didn't know that was such a thing but he only did commercial. And that guy worked his rear end off and he networked and he, he, he put all his efforts into learning all those commercial policies, learning commercial construction, and then he became the go-to guy for commercial and was making way more than I ever made. Um, and then I met that guy because I had to bring him some supplies in a hotel, and I talked to him for 15 minutes and I was like, oh what, I've been doing a lot of things, I've just been gliding right. So having that grit to hang in there, this is the hardest part of the whole thing, right?
Speaker 3:Is this kind of the pre-storm, pre-first deployment slog that you got to go through? Everybody's got to go through it? I did it. I didn't get my first storm until a year after I decided I wanted to be an adjuster and I went to Vail Training Solutions and did their three-week program and then I didn't deploy until the next year which, by the way, at the time, I didn't know anything was like the top that you could do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, veil was like one of the top, like. So, from what I understand, there wasn't many options no, not really well, mile high.
Speaker 3:I think was mile high, I Was Mile High a thing back then Late 90s, a long time ago. I don't know a belief that this outcome could happen or that it will happen and I'm just going to like hang in there until it does, but I'm going to do everything I can to sort of like expedite. That is is absolutely critical. The critical final piece, because once, once you do get deployed, you still have to have that, those reserves of grit to to carry you through the storm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to. I was going to say we have someone on the call tonight, travis Wiley. He's a graduate of IAPATH, he's out of Dallas, so basically the most competitive market on the planet for daily claims. But yeah, he had like a breakout year. I don't know currently what he's doing, but he graduated in February or March and he ended up breaking out during hail season doing phenomenal and but if you, we did an interview with him, um, to find out, well, what did he do to break out? The dude made like 300 and something phone calls the first month and he contacted 94 fern his first month. And so, yeah, the ones who told him no, he said no, we'd have no need for you ended up giving him work because he kept following up with them and so that stick-to-it-ness that Travis had was what busted him in.
Speaker 1:And once you get work, like Matt's saying, this doesn't magically become an easy career. You still have to have grit. I've burned out more times than I can count and I've lost my home when people, other companies, went under and things went wrong on my finances. You know like things have gone bad during my career, even after I got work. But if you stick to it. There is more opportunities coming, so I think it's huge, huge, huge, huge. Now, matt, we have a ton of amazing Q&As that Dean is lining up for us. I think we could be here for about three hours Just on Q&As, but I know I want to give you a chance to show people how you can help them go through and unlock these four keys, how you can just give them the keys, the fast track, as you call it uh you're getting on the storm, so I'm going to hand it over to you.
Speaker 1:Um, and then, guys, gals, questions you have, whether it's about what matt's about to talk about, or if you still have questions rolling around, put it in the q a. We will get to it here in a minute. But I want to give uh mac the floor because I think what he has can really help you. Guys, if you think this is something you want to do, if you want to get into cat property, I encourage you to listen to Matt right now.
Speaker 3:All right, so this is what we want. I just added that slide like just now, so Guys can see that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I put together a program and it's something that kind of had its genesis back in 2004 when I went on my first major hurricane, which was Hurricane Ivan. And this program is something that is basically me being your inside, your uncle, your inside guy at like a major firm or like you know. That can kind of like be like, hey, you need to do this and this and this, but just do not do that over there, right? I call it Fast Track Deployment Certification Program. The objective is to make you kind of a complete package as an adjuster, as a new adjuster, as a property adjuster, the key feature of this program is that if you pass my partner, ifirm, which will fast track you to their ready rosters as a new adjuster. So what is it? Complete desk and field property adjuster training and it's online on demand.
Speaker 3:Okay, this program covers scoping, dimensioning and diagramming, losses, photos and photo reports, estimating and exactimate complete property policy. You know every policy that you may encounter as an adjuster and I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second. But we do file review, desk claims, contacting insurers, negotiating with contractors, reports, documentation, damage evaluations, underwriting review. This is all part of the claims process right Setting reserves, time management, claims routing and recon estimatics, invoicing and probably one of the the best features of this program, which I think is unique to any program, whether it's in person or on demand or live or whatever online is a live file review of your work. I want to let a couple of our partner firms kind of tell about the program and kind of their. You know what they think of it and how they use it, what they think of our graduates.
Speaker 12:We are thrilled about our partnership with Adjuster TV. The fast track to deployment is something that we have a lot of confidence in and, knowing that adjusters that complete that program and they're coming to us have a really well-rounded knowledge of what it takes to kind of get into this business and get out onto a deployment, so it takes a little bit of that guessing game out of it for our resource management team. We can say, hey, we know this person, this person's going to be a great asset for us and how we can get them out to deployment as quickly as possible because we can trust that they're going to be able to stand on their own two feet and do this job.
Speaker 7:When we recognized what Adjuster TV does. It's a different experience than a lot of other training that's out there. We know these people have been trained to be able to do the job we're going to let them represent us doing, and that goes a long way. For us, the top adjusters are going to be those that actually take their craft seriously. Invest in education. Actually take their craft seriously, invest in education, understand organizational skills. Do you actually even know how a claim flows? Do you understand that? That is definitely something that sets people apart. When you hear the best, you know the best, you get involved with the best, and that's what kind of brought us in this relationship.
Speaker 9:It is so handy to have those videos that you guys have there for an adjuster to go to. What have you done to prepare yourself as best way possible? Seems like these newer adjusters are even more prepared. Your training is getting out there and adjusters are becoming more and more prepared, and that's a refreshing thing. So we've got a lot of great adjusters we've met. We're going to get them onboarded and get them deployed.
Speaker 3:So the certification again is a little bit different in that, yes, we're giving you all those trainings I mentioned before, all of that information, you know the full claims process, you know understanding and, again, really in the context of Xactimate as a tool, but it also one way to kind of think of. It is sort of like as a professional referral. The folks that were in that video are just three of our nine partner firm representatives that when somebody passes our exams, I give your information to them and I say, hey, you know, bob Smith has passed. Here's how he did, here's what his scores are, here's a couple of things he might need to work on. But he's got these licenses, et cetera, and he's ready to go Right. And then that person you know Alyssa Sanchez or Tom Boxsmith or whoever, they will take your information and that I gave to them kind of like a warm introduction and they'll walk it down to HR and say, hey, bob Smith needs to be, you know, fast-tracked through our onboarding. Where's he at in his onboarding? Let's get this guy moved up to the front of the line a bit. You still have to do all the stuff they want you to do, right, like we said, you know, pilot still needs you to do their claims, college and stuff like that. But this is something that gives you that edge and it gives you, you know, two identical resumes, one with FastTrack and one without the FastTrack, one's going to the front of the line.
Speaker 3:Our current partners are Pilot Catastrophe, crawford Company, Alacrity Solutions, paysetter Claims Service, sedgwick, ccms and Associates, which is based out of Dunedin in Florida, houshing Company, the Best Claimlaim Solutions, which is a IA firm and kind of an insurance industry recruiter. So if you're like you've changed your mind and you're like I think I want to go just work at a do sales in California for an insurance company, these guys can help you out with that. And then Team One Claims as well. A couple of additional things from our partner firms Andrew Price, who we mentioned previously, is a director of operations staffing at Sedgwick. He says for years, matt and Adjust your TV have put together a program to put people in position to succeed. That Fast Track program is the next step to opening more doors to opportunities.
Speaker 3:Um Hernando Gallegos, who's the COO at CCMS and Associates. He says the adjusters we are working with out of your training program are superb and I wanted to commend you on what you've developed. Your adjusters that are on with us now are receiving claims and doing a great job, and I I have to share that kind of thing with with you know, anybody that I can who will listen. Um, because it's. It's a testament to the grit of the students that we have going through our program. I want to make this clear that passing fast track does not give anybody priority over experienced adjusters. No matter what school you go to, the firms are always going to deploy adjusters with real world experience first, and Chris and I talked about that a minute ago. But it's kind of important to mention that. It's not getting anybody to the front of the line. It's the front of the line where they can deploy new adjusters.
Speaker 3:How soon were you working after certifying as an adjuster as fast track? 21% said immediately or even before finishing the program. Another 21% said within 30 days. So that's 40% in a month. Another almost 40% said within 60 days, 8% said within 90 days and 12% said they were still waiting on their opportunity.
Speaker 3:And here is a really important point that we didn't really cover, but I think it kind of falls in line with the grit thing. The 12% includes those who had received offers but had to decline due to location, timing or holding out for a different type of deployment. I tell you, if they call you and you want to do desk and they have a field deployment, go do the field deployment. Right, you're going to. You're going to get on the board a lot faster and you're going to get a lot more experience a lot faster and the desk deployments will come. But you may just have to do something that you don't totally want to do first. Your first deployment again may not be the one you're gunning for in the long term, may not be the most exciting or convenient, but it only takes one successful deployment to get your name in the door for future more desirable opportunities.
Speaker 3:So inside this program you get access to real Xactimate level one and two certification prep and Xactimate mobile training. I am an Xactimate certified trainer and so the training that I built is based on their training, but it's tweaked for adjusters and tweaked for my workflows and stuff. You also get complete claim file documentation and scheduling training, see what real files look like and get a chance to work on them yourself. You'll learn essential restoration construction with Xactimate walkthroughs. We do scoping and building inspections. We have raw, uncut, unedited walkthroughs of buildings. The fastest way to scope houses without missing damage is to do it the most efficient way possible, and there's a way. Practical examples of the entire claims process. And then, of course, time management, which sounds boring as heck, but I'm telling you that's where the money is, because you get the more claims you can close, the more you're going to get paid, right?
Speaker 3:This program also includes a few bonuses. We have a digital course guide and a companion guide for FastTrack that is continuously updated. It's a Google Docs document that we jump into and we edit and change things and add things as needed. We have a lot of downloadable PDF job aids, checklists, scoping tech sheets for interior and exterior, sample calendars for you know how many claims should I do a day the first week? How many should I do a day the fifth week? Right, and a whole lot more for mapping out your claims in your time.
Speaker 3:We do have a lot of macros. I mean macros are. If you don't know what they are, they're basically a little like kind of a shortcut and Xactimate that helps you kind of write estimates in really in seconds, and you, you know it's, it's a whole. If you're not familiar with them, you know there's about a lot of videos on YouTube about it, but we also have scripts for contacting insurers. What to say when you call a contractor, like the homeowner says, well, you know, I don't care if I'm there or not, but I really want my contractor there, right? Well, when you call that guy, what are you going to say, right? Or when they say my contractor says that it's going to be more than what you said when you call that guy, what are you going to say, right? So we go through all that stuff we do. This is a really, really, really big one and honestly, I feel like I kind of give away the farm on this.
Speaker 3:But for the past two and a half years we've been doing a weekly one to two hour or, some cases, three hour live Q and A every single week every Tuesday 2 pm Central, and oftentimes, you know, we've got 15 people in there've added to the program. So you guys, you know if you jump into the program, you're going to get instant access to that as well, and that's kind of a big deal. Um, so the the weekly live streams, it's. You have lifetime access to that for as long as we do it and um, it's, it's, it's kind of an important part of the program Plus. You get 12 free months of Adjust your TV Plus on our top tier subscription and then, once you've graduated and you've gotten certified, you have a direct line to me to help you through rough spots, get you unstuck.
Speaker 3:Once you get deployed or you get claims assignments, maybe your first deployment is doing daily claims at home. Right, if you get stuck on something, you got questions, you're looking at something, you're not sure if it's damaged or not, you take a picture of it, text it to me and we can work through it. Right, if you got struggling in Xactimate, we can work on that. If you're struggling with your time management, you feel like you're falling behind, we can help, we can work on that. So I'm there to support you, me. You know I'm not going to hand you off to anybody else to do that it's. It's a kind of a direct line, sort of a phone, a friend, rescue sort of thing, and so it's hard to say.
Speaker 3:You know, when you sit here and you say, well, what's the value of this program? Right, this isn't the price, but this is. You know what the overall value is. You know, I think of this program as the shortest distance between you and running claims. Right, this is the fastest possible program that you can do, um, and it's there's a lot in it, right.
Speaker 3:But here's a quick recap of everything that you get in the program and kind of what you know sort of the going rate is for for these things. Um, that's kind of on the open market. Uh, the claims clinic maybe $1,000 a year value, right, macros, smoke claim templates, water claim templates, total loss templates, all that kind of stuff Might be another thousand bucks, right. Xactimate level one, two certifications I mean you can find that for $99, but you're going to get what you pay for. The going rate for high quality Xactimate certification prep is about $1,500 to $2,000. Official exactimate mobile training another thousand bucks maybe, right, advanced property adjuster training right $3,500 to go to MoCat. May have lowered their prices these days but they were $3,500 for a while. Ours is, I think, better, but it's kind of commensurate, right.
Speaker 3:Live mentorship with a 20-year claims veteran, which is me, right, I think that's worth $10,000,. You know, if it was just you and me and we wanted to get together and you had me for a year, I would charge you $10,000. You can have me for more than that. Right, hotels and travel for in-person training at least $1,500. Right, um, hotels and travel for in-person training at least fifteen hundred dollars. Um, personal referral for me, once you've passed this, I don't know, I don't know what even want to put kind of a number to put on that. So it's twenty thousand dollar, you know, plus program. Um, it's uh.
Speaker 3:Honestly, I don't think there's another program remotely like this that's going to do as much for your career as this one. We, we have all the elements there. We've got the training, the software. Then you have the networking and getting access to my professional network. Right, I built Adjust your TV as a place where I can bring the best, most reliable information about being an adjuster to the most people. And because of that, you're probably going to get this entire thing for much less than I should probably be charging for it. So the Fast Track to Deployment Property Certification Program is $32.97.
Speaker 3:And we can go over to adjustyourtvcom slash path to get enrolled. So how do we do that, right? Well, when you go go to that link, you're going to be confronted with this uh website page, and this is just the top, like I don't know eight inches of it. This page is very, very, very long and has a lot more videos on it, a lot more testimonials. It's got a lot more information. It has a layout of all the modules and the trainings and everything else. But to get enrolled we click on the enroll now buttons and, by the way that, nine days, three hours, 54 minutes I think that that's the actual countdown timer for this course for when we close enrollment. Once you click on Enroll Now, you'll be taken to a checkout. We do have Apple Pay. We have.
Speaker 3:Link Pay and we have Amazon Pay. You can pay with your credit card, obviously, and then, if you wanted to pay in payments, we have partnered with Affirm to let you do that and you have to apply with them in order to try and do that. Once you've done that, then you get an email from me and Dean Murray and welcoming you to the program. You probably also receive a receipt email for your records, probably for tax purposes I think you could probably deduct this off your taxes as well and then we give you a login link for the Fast Track Deployment Program To access the program. You're going to jump into it inside of Adjuster TV+ which, by the way, also allows you to access the trainings on your mobile device, your iOS, your Apple or Android device, whether it's iPad or phones, which is pretty cool. So you go up to the upper menu, click on dashboard and you're a FastTrack deployment student. So you want to click on that. And here are the main modules for FastTrack we cover, you know, intake.
Speaker 3:What do you do with the claims when you get them, how do you set up your appointments and all that kind of stuff, how to do your inspections, how to build your estimates, including a considerable library of restoration construction estimating videos, like what line items do I put in there for replacing cabinets? What if the insured has personal property to the sandwich? How do I do that? How do you close the file? All the things that go into closing a file, common estimating scenarios, which is actually goes for the construction step I was talking about a minute ago, um, and then getting certified, which is the you know what are the steps before you get certified, how do the tests work and what do you do once you're certified? A big thing I want to kind of mention. Well, before we do that, let's go to the start here thing. There's a programQ which is, when you click on it, it is a let's see a link to the companion guide.
Speaker 3:There's not actually a video, there's a five-second placeholder video. When you click that link, it brings you to our program guide, which has the entire program laid out for you, as well as your final exam instructions and getting certified and all that stuff. Really, really important thing here and Chris and I talked about this is the click here to join the FTD Students Only community which is on a platform called Mighty Networks, and it's free to join that or to log into it, and that is where we communicate with each other, where you guys communicate with each other, where if I have news, if I have jobs, if I have to cancel a claims clinic which is the weekly live stream or if I have to move it or whatever, this is where we do it right In here. So a lot of people, you can DM me directly in here and you can talk to each other and ask questions, and a lot of people will ask questions about Xactimate. He asked me doing something weird, how do I fix this? And then people will jump into the chat and help you out, right, so a little real talk.
Speaker 3:If I could do this with no guidance, or very little guidance, other than just getting training and just kind of feeling my way through it. There's really no reason why you can't do it, considering the resources that you have these days, especially, you know, in this, having this program, which is the number one thing that I believe is, makes the difference between somebody that washes out on it, especially on a hurricane, and somebody who absolutely crushes it. As an independent adjuster Avoid my dead ends and wasted time. It took me several years before I figured out how to make more than $75,000, $85,000 a year before I made my first $100,000. And I didn't need to do that. I could have done it in a lot less time. I do want to share a little bit of what our grads say about their experience after being certified, so let's just watch this short video.
Speaker 10:Being that, the bar passed. Hey, you're on our roster to here's work took more push than I expected. It really did.
Speaker 2:You don't find a lot of information, even when you're deployed, about how to actually run through the claims, and having the reference go back to the videos is like priceless. It's going to save you so much time and so many headaches.
Speaker 11:The amount of stuff you get. You're not going to get that anywhere else. You went top to bottom. You literally taught everything. It was perfect.
Speaker 5:So this is a value probably, truth be known, a little bit underpriced. So it's been actually got good feedback about you and good feedback about my training. So, yeah, I would absolutely recommend it for somebody that's doing it and it's on the more economic side of some of the different opportunities out there if you go to school, that's 5, 10, whatever day.
Speaker 6:you've got to pay for flights or drive time, gas, food, lodging and I got to sit on my porch and learn Because a lot of people don't have time to sit there with you.
Speaker 2:You have a trainer or a manager. You just get through it yourself a sink or swim and because of this course I was able to swim.
Speaker 8:I worked into a lot of the things that were reportedly a bit of a fast track, but they were 90 days or better and I just didn't want to spend that kind of time. I absolutely wanted.
Speaker 6:FastTrack. It's definitely worth it. Just pay for training. You go on deployment and you pay attention to everything that you taught. You're going to make it up in a day or two, so why not and you might be able to stay on deployment.
Speaker 8:Stay working the very first day after we were down to, three out of the six IA firms that you mentioned reached out to me. So there's the proof in the pudding right there that, oh no, this is real. You better be ready to go.
Speaker 10:When Ian rolled through, I got a lot of offers and it was really hard to choose who I was going to go with. Most of those offers came from the FDD referrals that I got.
Speaker 7:I went out in the field for the first time. Hurricane Ian and I crushed it. I actually sent you an email showing you how good I did out in the field. So I closed over 50 claims my first time in the field.
Speaker 4:At first, when I saw the price tag, I was like that's just too much money. Honestly, if I had paid twice that, it probably still would have been worth it.
Speaker 11:The knowledge here unbeatable, Like you can look all over the internet, but you won't find it.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, definitely worth it. Now that I've been through it, I can't imagine going out there and running a claim for the first time without having that training that we got from you. I would have embarrassed myself terribly.
Speaker 2:Most people don't realize that when you apply for these firms you're just kind of like a resume. There could be hundreds, depending on the size of the firm, or thousands of people that are applying for the same positions and trying to get their foot in the door. The connections themselves, on top of the training, combine in a one-man situation, because I was able to get my first employment.
Speaker 10:Especially if you're newer in the industry, I would definitely recommend it. But even if you're more experienced and you're just trying to make a switch, kind of like I did, or find more opportunities in with other carriers that you haven't worked with before, other firms you haven't worked with before, I definitely recommend that because it gives you connections that you didn't have before, because you're kind of a connected guy After.
Speaker 13:Matt sent out the notifications that I had passed the curve. I got emails from three different adjuster suppliers, and so that in itself indicates that the program has good recognition.
Speaker 11:Two cuts of people ended up halving our staff and then they cut in half again, but I made it to the end. They were pleased with the work and of course I have you to thank for that, because I would have been completely in the dark otherwise, because I would have been completely in the dark, otherwise, within less than a day, crawford, paysetter, ccms and Sedgwick reached out to me.
Speaker 10:My files have been spot on with all these reviewers. They're all telling me we love your work, Good job.
Speaker 7:He showed you everything you need to be successful in the field.
Speaker 4:I would absolutely recommend it. I hear all those stories about people burning out in their first week or two After going through Fastback Deployment. I'm not worried about that anymore.
Speaker 11:I feel like I could go show up to a hurricane and they could give me 50 claims and I'd be fine because of just how organized the system was Knowing how to handle a claim, what to expect from start to finish in the claims process, whether that be working from the desk or working in the field. That's really invaluable.
Speaker 5:This class is worth way more than what it costs. Without the knowledge that I gained from that class, I would have failed immediately and probably had a very short career.
Speaker 13:Getting an interpretation of what I was doing wrong by an actual file reviewer really demented it for me. Anybody can find their way in. I think the difference here with this course and the value that it brings is your ability to not only stay in but continue to get more work.
Speaker 3:So that's the program. So that's the program. If you head over to adjustyourtvcom slash path, that's where that kind of enrollment page is. And else I want to make absolutely clear that we can't promise that you're actually going to get work in any situation. We don't do job placements, we don't control the weather Really important. Even the IA firms themselves are going to be careful not to promise you that you're going to get work, especially in any kind of set time frame. But what we can promise is that if you're not already on the ready roster, this certification is going to move you to the front of the line for deployments where they can send new adjusters. And, like I said before, we don't. Fte doesn't give you priority over experienced adjusters. They're always going to go with experienced adjusters first, people that have they've worked with previously, over new people. But that doesn't mean that you're not going to get your chance.
Speaker 3:So when can I take the exam? People often ask the FastTrack final exam is self-paced, meaning you can start the exam whenever you want and there's no time limit when working through the questions and scenarios. You do not have to attempt the final exams until you feel ready, which, after you watch all the videos, you will absolutely feel ready to do it, um, but what if you fail the exam? Um, not common, um, I don't really think it's really happened, um, but because my name is going to be on every single person that I certify, I will not pass you if I don't think that you're ready. Okay, um, which you know. We want to continue working with you to hone your skills and give you more support on whatever you need to bring up those parts of your skillset so that you can pass, and we do that through our live Q and a sessions and and even one-on-one. We can get on a call, um, and then, when you're ready, you can retest a second time, free of charge, of course, um. If you fail a second time which never happened as far as I know, um, then additional exam attempts may be permitted at our discretion and we may charge for that, but it's not going to be like a gazillion dollars, but we we want to help you with this.
Speaker 3:This is a training program and kind of a sort of a mentorship program. Um, the only way really to fail, and this is so important and I want you to burn this into your brain. Okay, and this goes for whether you're doing auto claims, you're doing property claims, you're doing trainings, you're taking my thing whatever. The only way you're going to fail is not to follow instructions. If you go off and do your own thing and kind of like, make up your own thing and get all creative and you're just wasting everybody's time, including your own.
Speaker 3:Do it the way they say to do it, do it the way I say to do it and you will pass Part of the training is to calibrate you to learn to do things the way that they want you to do them. Does it mean that you're going to do it like? I don't feel like I need to say this, but I'm not saying like do whatever the insurance company says, even if you think it's wrong. That's not at all what I'm saying. They have ways that they need you to do things so that there's uniformity across adjusters and across the way they handle claims, and that's the way they want you to do it. That do it.
Speaker 3:Do I need to be Xactimate certified to pass your program? No, but a lot of what we are teaching in the Fast Track program does build off of basic Xactimate knowledge. We don't require you to be Xactimate certified to pass, but I would say maybe take the level one certification, the level one certification, watch the videos and work through the labs and the sort of you know problems and stuff or whatever that they have. That we have in our Xactimate level one, and that's more than enough to get you through the program. If you need to start brushing up, well, this is what I just said Start level one certification trainings included with your free bonus of 12 months of Adjust your TV Plus. Do I need to purchase Xactimate? You do not need to purchase Xactimate. You just need the demo version of the desktop version of Xactimate X1 to complete the certification trainings and pass.
Speaker 3:Do I need an adjuster license to take this training? No, you do not need an adjuster license. However, training no, you do not need an adjuster license. However, if you want to go work, most IA firms, even if they want to send you to a place that doesn't require a license, they still want you to have at least one license. So that's a first steps kind of a thing like Chris and I were talking about. Can I get a refund? No, there are no refunds. If you don't feel that you're ready to follow through with the Fast Track program, then I would strongly recommend that you wait until you are before you spend money on the certification. Super important. This training is not designed to help you decide whether or not you want to be an adjuster. Okay, you can get help with that at adjustertvcom, slash, start and, of course, which is free, and by watching free videos on the Adjuster TV YouTube channel, which I have over a thousand now.
Speaker 3:How long does the program take? So we call it Fast Track for a reason. The shortest somebody took from enrolling to passing the certification was three days and they passed. They worked on it all day, every day, for those three days in there, but they already they showed up with a level two Xactimate certification, so they didn't have to sort of like bumble around and Xactimate. Most people with you know a day job can complete the program in about two weeks of nights and weekends. The tests themselves can kind of go over several days because you're going to be doing assignments and then you're going to have to do corrections to those assignments as part of the file review process. Okay, that's the program and let's talk about questions.
Speaker 3:Who do I go through?
Speaker 1:All right, so I'll read it off the questions and then you, you answer them. All right, so we're going to answer live. Andrew, what equipment is needed to be an IA, what kind of investment am I looking at, and is there a place where I can buy it all?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So if you go to adjust your tvcom slash resources, we have a full list of a lot of gear. Not all of it is required, but for property claims you're going to need a laptop and not a Mac. You need to get a PC laptop. Okay, go to Costco, go to Sam's club, go to Best Buy and get the six, seven, 800, maybe a thousand dollar laptop, um, xactimate, um, and this is on. That should be somewhere on that resources page.
Speaker 3:They have a recommended minimum specifications and like kind of a required minimum specifications and a recommended specifications for a computer, and as long as whatever you get fulfills those, you're good to go. I would get as much RAM as I could. You don't need a huge hard drive, but I would say a one terabyte hard drive would be good enough. And then the processor wants to be whatever the minimum. Is that exact where it's saying on that you need tape measure, you need a pair of gloves, you need some sidewalk chalk, you need a snapshot camera, which may be challenging to find these days, with everybody using their phones. A lot of the work that you might do when they deploy you, which may be challenging to find these days, with everybody using their phones A lot of the work that you might do. When they deploy you, they may say, hey, we just need you to, we'll send you an app, right, and you just walk around the house and just do stuff on the phone. Then you're not going to need a snapshot camera, right? So critical things are going to be that computer, a ladder. My personal favorite for a ladder is a 24 foot extension ladder. My personal favorite for a ladder is a 24-foot extension ladder aluminum, because it's light and it gets me on almost everything.
Speaker 3:If you're just rolling with a car, speaking of vehicles, the vehicle that you have is perfect. If it needs a little bit of work or it needs to be updated on maintenance, do that, that. But if you have a car and you just have trunk space and you don't want to put like a luggage rack or something on it, that you could put an extension ladder on, then a folding like a Werner, you know, 18, 22 foot. I wouldn't go any shorter really than maybe 20, 22 feet on one of those. You could stick those in the trunk Probably going to need a printer clipboard, a bunch of pencils, a bunch of printer ink, lots and lots of printer ink. You want to always have printer ink on hand, um, and then paper, of course, and then from there it's just little knickknack stuff that you know, like pitch gauges and things like that?
Speaker 1:Did you say cougar paws or some kind of shoes like that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you want to get a pair of cougar paws it's basically a roof-climbing shoe. Got a pair around here somewhere. They have a foam thing attached with Velcro which is super strong. So you think of Velcro. Oh, my gosh, in order to get that, you really have to rip it in order to get it off of there, but it helps you to stick to steeper roofs. So safety is important. R rope and harness, uh, goats hip locks there's some. There's some gadgets that you can use to like make it a little bit safer climbing on the roof. Um, that's to your discretion. I recommend fall protection, of course, um, especially if you're a little bit nervous about heights, um, but again, you know you are going to be required to access roofs and you should be willing to access at least lower pitched roofs. So that's kind of the short list of.
Speaker 1:And that list was adjustertvcom slash resources. They could find a list. Okay, adjustertvcom slash resources Dang there, dean already has list. Okay, yep, gustertvcom slash resources Dang there, dean already has it. Perfect. Next up is Summer Tucker.
Speaker 1:Is IA catastrophic? Does it apply to auto and property? So I'll tackle this first and only yes, it does for both. There are auto and, obviously, property opportunities. What I would say about the auto side is auto claims tend to be handled faster. So if you are doing well on your property deployment, it seems like those deployments last longer, whereas auto tends to end shorter. So that's why I've never been super bullish on.
Speaker 1:Hey, you should all try to get deployed to hurricanes as a cat auto person, because I've never seen someone maintain a full career in the field doing auto field claims for cat only. It usually has to be daily auto or a mix of daily auto and cat auto to stay busy. But obviously property does happen as well. That's what we've been talking about all night. So that answers the question. There is Cat Auto Claims. If you are interested in that, we have ways you could schedule a call with us. But we would love to talk with you about it. But, summer, you're already in our program. So we got lots for you, alright. Andrew also asked what does it take to make it into that top 25%? It's the four keys license, connection, stick-to-it-ness and then the skills needed. The skills, all right. Next one Andrew says when is the claim considered closed? We had a fire in January and the house is still not finished and we talked to the adjuster from time to time. Is the claim still open or is it considered closed?
Speaker 3:So there's for cat and daily it's different.
Speaker 3:As far as, like cat goes, cat property, your file is closed.
Speaker 3:When you're done with it, right, you consider it to be closed and that is basically getting the first check going out to the homeowner, right, based on your with it.
Speaker 3:Right, you consider it to be closed and that is basically getting the first check going out to the homeowner, right, based on your first assessment. Right, there's going to be a second payment later once they do the work, because they do have most people have recoverable depreciation, unlike auto where I don't think there's you can't recover, right, it's just you get what you get and the contractor I mean you could, just, obviously you could do supplements as well, right, and sometimes those claims will reopen while you're on site still for a supplement. But on the daily side, usually you're getting the full claim and you're handling that claim all the way out. Especially like fire claims and water claims and things like that, it be months before that claim is fully, fully closed, right before the the insurer's gotten putting the last coat of paint on the kitchen that had been destroyed by the fire and they got their last check from the insurance company.
Speaker 1:that's when the file's closed, right are you getting paid with daily prior to that? I think, because I think that's the context here is would oh yeah.
Speaker 3:so let me think about this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so with, with on the cat side, you're going to get, as soon as you turn in your you know, your roof estimate with the gutters and two, three windows and all that kind of stuff, and you've settled up with the homeowner if they're asking you to do that and you've turned your invoice in, you're going to get paid on that invoice.
Speaker 3:On the daily side, I'm trying to remember how I got paid doing daily stuff. We did a T&E. What they had us do was to do sort of a preliminary like that, do like a, like a sort of a preliminary like that, and then, um, you kind of put you basically lob the ball back into the insurance side of the court and it's up to them to go find a contractor, and so you basically sort of like it's a soft close, I guess you could say, but you're gonna get paid for that first inspection and getting them their first check, okay, um, and then if it needs to be as there's a supplement later you you need to you got to negotiate price or scope or whatever with the contractor. Then you know you may get to bill on the difference between what you billed off the first you know if it's a lot more, whatever, because there was hidden damage or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, perfect, perfect. I think that answers the question. Also, andrew, again you keep talking about closing claims day one and working efficiently as a new without any experience. How does one get that experience? You sign up for FTD or you go find somebody else to mentor you, or awesome training that will get you there. That's really the only way, unless you got something else, matt, for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I will just say this. So, and this is what we teach in the program, if your brand's making new, and I want you closing claims day one right, and the way that works is is that you set all your appointments right and then you're on, say Monday, you have your first appointment at nine o'clock in the morning. You go to the insurance house with your clipboard, your camera and all your stuff right and you take as long as you need to to scope that. You're only doing that one inspection that first day. You take as long as you need to at the insurance house, get all the information that you need, take all the pictures that you need, and then you're going to take that information and you're going to go straight to the help room. Usually and I was talking about help rooms earlier and I'm being slammed full of people but usually the first day, the first, like you know few days of a hurricane, the help rooms are kind of empty because people are out scoping their rear ends off, but not you, because you're going to scope out one and you're going to take it to the help room and you're going to have one or two people there to help you and you're not leaving that room until you have that claim. They help you close that claim.
Speaker 3:You need to see the process of checking all the boxes, filling out all the things, doing all the forms and all the crap that you got to do in a file all the way through once. Right, like I said, it might take you eight hours or 12 hours the whole day to do it and then tomorrow, tuesday, you do it again. It'll take you a little bit less time because you've already seen the process. You're like oh, I know what I need to do next. Oh, I know what I need to do right after that. Right, that's how you close claims the same day and that's how you build that really, really quickly, build that muscle memory and start building that experience level Because you can go out and scope all day long and get experience scoping.
Speaker 3:But if you haven't closed any claims, if you're not doing the rest of the forms and setting reserves and you know, filling out the claim summaries and the damage evals and underwriting reports and all that kind of stuff you got to do with the claims, you're not, you're not doing a whole lot, you're just like practicing, like scoping, do the whole thing and that's going to make you. It's going to. Really, if you don't take anybody's training and you can figure out how to do that, you know you might be OK on your first storm. You're not going to like knock it out of the park necessarily, but you probably keep your one nostril above water. Would you do that?
Speaker 1:All right. Greg asks where can we find the info on the 34 licenses we need to get?
Speaker 3:AdjusterProcom.
Speaker 1:Yes, adjuster procom. That's where I would send you to. I think it's like slash reciprocity you type in adjust your pro reciprocity map in uh or, and it'll pop up.
Speaker 3:Or you can go to adjust your tvcom slash licensing and I have all the links to everything laid out for all the licenses and the CE If you, if you need to renew your license, beautiful Plus. But before we go jump off of that, uh, coupon code adjust your TV for uh, I think it's a 15% discount at Adjust your Pro.
Speaker 1:Dang, there you go. Heard it here. All right, Next step, Cody the. I know a roofing company gets a bad rap, but I just got offered a sales position. Does having roof sales on the resume throw any red flag?
Speaker 3:No, no, I don't. I don't think they really care. If you had a public adjuster stuff on your resume, maybe, but anything else, the construction experience, sales experience it's kind of helpful, honestly.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Next up, cody says what are the best resources to practice writing estimate? Is there a way to get mock property claims to sketch slash estimate the damages?
Speaker 3:Did he ask that before my presentation?
Speaker 1:Yes, he did. There's the answer. Yes, there is In FTD, fast Track to Deployment. Or what is it? Justertvcom, slash path, slash path, slash path, justertvcom, slash path, all right. Summer Tucker says does having an RV save money on deployment versus hotel? I can't wait to hear Matt's opinion on this, because we've both done the RV nomadic travel to cat stuff. Matt, does it save you money?
Speaker 3:I'm going to say, if you're new to claims and new to being an RVer, I'm going to say no.
Speaker 3:I just released a video on this last week or maybe earlier this week. The reason why is because there's a lot of logistical things that go along with an rv, no matter what kind it is, even if it's a sprinter or whatever um, that make it a lot more challenging than just going and like checking into a hotel and flopping on the bed right and going to bed or whatever, right, um, you have to manage water, you have to manage your power, you have to manage your waste right, and you don't have a lot of storage for food and things like that in there. Plus, for your first storm, for your first, I would say for your first year of storms like deployments whether it's storm or daily deployments or whatever I'm going to say no, just because hotels are much. There's so many more hotels, in fact, chris, you could probably speak to this as well Around a lot of major metro areas, there aren't very many RV campgrounds and most of the time there aren't any RV campgrounds in cities. Usually they're on the outskirts or outside the suburbs or whatever.
Speaker 3:And a lot of times they're already grabbed by the time we get there, so it's a much less supply of places to stay besides Walmart parking a lot and then you run into your logistics program managing your water and waste and all that stuff Hotel you can and listen. This is one of the main reasons. They send you to Houston, to Galveston, right, and they give you 20 claims there. And then they you to houston to galveston, right, and they give you 20 claims there. And then they, you know, or they say they're going to give you some claims there and you're halfway there, or you get there and you check into your campground or whatever, and then they call you back up and say, oh no, no, actually we need you in florida. You gotta jump up and go. If you're in hotels it's so much easier to check in and check out and probably these days it's probably cheaper or at least commensurate with what they're charging the campgrounds RV campgrounds used to be super cheap, but these days it's a little ridiculous.
Speaker 1:The logistics, you're right and things go so wrong with RVs or, in my case, sailboats. I was up 4.30 in the morning fixing an alternator so I could have my work day and move the boat. You don't want to deal with that on top of learning to be an adjuster. Exactly, I'm with Matt Alright next one Dean Allen posted for Florence. So Florence asked do auto claims fit into CATS? Most claims are obvious for property, but can you make money doing auto claims when there's a hurricane?
Speaker 3:Yes, I have, there's not enough time. Oh, you have. Yes, I have, there's not enough time.
Speaker 1:Oh, you have. Oh, is there enough auto claims to fit into the cat? So, like in the picture is what I think she said. Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, so some people do. There is a lot more opportunity for auto inside a building or a virtual desk deployment or something like that Field typically is the last shorter, like I talked about earlier. So yeah, there is CAT auto. It's just not as big of an opportunity or as lengthy as opportunity as property.
Speaker 3:And I was going to say, because this is a question, people will say what can I work for multiple companies on a CAT deployment, or do auto and property on a CAT deployment at the same time? And I think they're both like full, more than full-time jobs, they're like overtime jobs each one.
Speaker 1:So two full-time jobs in 24 hours. You got to get done. So, all right Answer from Scott, or Scott Buckingham says. I went to MoCAD in April. I have since used up my free trials for Xactimate. Any ideas on how to do practice claims without going broke? I paid for one month and did not renew it. My option would be to get a different email and demo. But let's say you, Matt.
Speaker 3:Well, if you went through MoCat, then you're level two certified already. Is that right? Certified already, is that right, um? So if that's the case, then you, if, if you buy the like the level three tests, and you call exactware back up and say, hey, I got the level three tests and I'm I'm studying for it through an exact to me certified trainer or whatever it is, or on my own, or you know, um, can I get my exact to me demo re-upped? And they'll say, yes, if you bought a test, the tests are 85 bucks or 105 bucks or something like that. So that'd be one way to do it.
Speaker 3:And when your 30 days is up on that, you can call them back and say, hey, I'm still working on this, man, this level three is super hard. I'm still working on it. Is there any way I can get another 30 days? And as long as you haven't taken the test yet, I think you can keep redoing it. They are changing this a little bit going forward. I think in the next month or two they will. When you go, when you sign up for a demo to Xactimate, they're going to take your credit card or your debit card or whatever, and at the end of the 30 days, they'll start charging you, but they will still extend it if you have bought an exam and or you're currently taking training from an Exec2Meet certified trainer. I don't have level three in my platform yet, otherwise I'd say that you're taking that from me, but if you already have level two, then you can't use that excuse. That's why I say level three.
Speaker 1:Got it All right. James Clark says is there an average amount per claim that I'll make on a property deployment?
Speaker 3:Depends.
Speaker 3:It depends on a lot of factors. I would say, over the course of like, if you're a working adjuster and you got a wind or ice storm in February and then you did a windstorm in March and then you did a sewer backup storm in April and then you did hail for three months and then you did a hurricane until Thanksgiving, over the course of that the average is probably going to be somewhere between maybe 250 and 500 dollars. Just, there's so many factors, right? You know, if you've got a bunch of commercial losses or large losses, that's going to skew that up.
Speaker 3:Um, on the hurricane, you know, you might average seven $800,000 a piece, but on the sewer backup storm you might average 250 each or $300 each, right. So that's why there's there's a lot of disparity there, um. So it's hard to say an average. You just kind of have to, like you, sort of figure out your own average over the course of like two years and say, all right, well, over the last two years I did this many claims and I made this much money, and divide those numbers together and then it gives you your average.
Speaker 1:Perfect, Perfect. Patrick asks can you get on a roster with a phone call or email only, or is a resume the only way to get on?
Speaker 3:You can get on a roster by going to their website. They're all going to send you to their websites and say click on the Apply Now button. They may or may not have a place for you to upload a resume. Again, I don't think a resume on the property side anyway is super important. If you, if you just want to get on the on, on board with the ia firm now, your licenses, your certifications, your trainings are going to be the things that are going to move the needle for you on getting moved up to the ready roster and being deployable. Right, and the absolute most important number one thing is going to be those licenses. Um, you've got it, you've got to have those.
Speaker 3:But you don't have to have a resume or make a resume to get on rosters short answer. Or to get on to onboard, um, I mean, if you've got, even, if you have experience or if, even if you have like licenses and all that kind of stuff, I still don't think you need it to have. Like, make a resume with your picture. If you're going to a conference, take a stack of resumes with you with your picture, your face on it, so that they can put the two to you know, because it might be weeks before. The person, like, gets around the box of stuff that they bring back from a conference. Oh, who is this guy? Bob Smith, I don't know. Or he just got your picture of your face on there, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I remember that guy.
Speaker 1:Right, let's give him a call. So here's the big thing about resumes. I did a whole book on it after interviewing the top 12 top hiring managers in the insurance industry at large. Is that throw out the concept you have of a resume? All resume is is a piece of paper that is marketing yourself for a specific position. So what Matt's saying is, yeah, you don't need it in that format, but when you fill out the form to onboard with them, if you don't have anything good that markets you like the features of you are not good, then you got to get some good features going and so you just have to think about it differently.
Speaker 1:Just what do they want me to have? And let me go get that, and whether they need it in a resume format or not, it just, it all depends on the situation whether you're at a conference, whether you're working with daily auto firms who want you to have a resume, or whether you're applying through a portal. But skill set, skill set and good things on the resume, all right, sweet. If you need help with a resume, go find the adjusters resume playbook, simple. And then Gerald asked with you if we have an all-line in one state like Texas, do we get another? I think it's suggested to get more.
Speaker 3:What do you mean? All-lines.
Speaker 1:So he's got a Texas all-lines license already. Do you think he should get more?
Speaker 3:Well, if he wants to work in Texas, then he gets a Texas license. Now the beautiful thing about the licensing, at least on the property side. I'm sure the reciprocity is the same on the auto side right.
Speaker 1:Yes, because we use the same adjuster license but appraiser's license. It's not always reciprocal which is state-level, auto-specific.
Speaker 3:Most state adjuster licenses on the property side, whether it's IA or All Lines or whatever it is, are reciprocal with each other, with some exceptions, and those exceptions are like New York, california, I think, arizona, hawaii and Alaska. Maybe, basically, you have your Texas license, but in order to run claims in Florida, you have to get your Florida license. The good news is is that to get your Florida license, florida honors the exam. You took for the Texas, your background check, you took for Texas all the paperwork and whatever it is you did for Texas. Florida says, oh okay, well, he's got his Texas license. Great, just apply for ours and pay the fee and we'll give you a Florida license. And that's how the rest of it. And so you have to have.
Speaker 3:You have to have a license for every state that you want to work in, that that that licenses adjusters and, like I said, there's a bunch that don't right. There's, you know, pretty much the, the Midwest, the Dakotas, nebraska, kansas, missouri, illinois, believe it or not, doesn't have an adjuster license. Wisconsin doesn't have one, colorado doesn't have one, but minnesota does, indiana does, michigan does, arkansas does, oklahoma, so on and so forth. You want to work in those places, whether it's remote or field, you've got to have those licenses and those are easy to get as like checking out some boxes on NIPR or surconcom and just paying the bottom line number Once you've got that DHS or your home state license.
Speaker 1:All right. Marty asks any tips for getting desk adjuster deployment.
Speaker 3:More licenses. So yeah, so here's the thing on the desk, adjusting the remote whether it's remote, your home, or it's remote where you know the storm hit florida but they send you to dallas to sit in a cubicle farm, um, the the remote work stuff is very, very, very, very, very popular and so there's a lot of competition for those roles. Okay, it's just, you got to know that out of the gate, the properties there that I'm sorry, the field side, where you jump in your truck and you drive all over creation and climb roofs and all that kind of stuff, is a place where they're kind of they're a little bit desperate for people to do that work, because everybody wants to stay home in their PJs and be, you know, a bubble bath adjuster or whatever, versus going out in the field and taking all those expenses and all that stuff. So if you have a lot of licenses, if you get some good certifications, like Xactimate Level 2, fasttrack, go to MoCat right. Get your IICRC, wrt like water mitigation, water technician Certification's a good one. To get Stuff like that, the Hague Certified Inspector those things can help you kind of bump up your profile once, once you, once you've onboarded with the company and again you know, you don't have to have these things before you apply. You can apply with your name, like I said, written in crayon on a piece of paper and then you can backfill that stuff as you go, because you might call me like, hey, where are the best places from the top 10 licenses you need me to get? And they they'll say, oh, get these 10. And then you go get those 10. And every time you get one you call in. Every time you get the certificate in the mail or the email hey, matt, just want to call and let you know I just got my Oklahoma license and I'm standing by, I'm ready to go. Okay, well, nothing's going on, but definitely let us, when you call in, you deliver some value to them and not just calling in and being demanding work right and without you know, do you get any work? You got any work in? Uh, uh, you know North Dakota, that's where I live. Get to work there, right.
Speaker 3:People call in and make all kinds of demands, but licensing is critical for more, even more so for remote than it is for field. I think very important for both. If you get a bunch of licenses, especially a New York license, you're going to make yourself a lot more attractive. The roundabout way to get to the field stuff is to be willing to or, I'm sorry, the desk stuff is to be willing to do whatever they ask when they call.
Speaker 3:Right, if they call you and they say, hey, listen, we got, you know, some field claims over here, yeah, I'd love to take them, I'll take those, I'll get those off your desk and get them taken care of for you, no problem, not asking about pay, not demanding mileage, not any of that stuff. I'm just going to do. I'm going to help them out, right, start to get in their ecosystem, you start to get on their radar, you start to build a relationship with the deployment guy or a team manager. And then that's when, later on, you know, you let them know at some point you know, hey, listen, what I really want to do is I want to do remote stuff, cause I think you know we want to, we're trying to, you know, build our garden better in our yard and I really want to stay home for that, and you know. But no, and it's sooner or later, you know, something will come up and they'll be like, hey, listen, we got some remote stuff, you want to do it.
Speaker 1:All right, all right. Next one, travis, asks is there a strategy for how to select good deployment from a less good deployment? Or, as a new guy, slash warm body with training? Is it similar to auto that you just say yes to the first option that comes your way?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Short answer is you got to just say yes to the first option because there might not be other options, right? The kind of thing I always say is that you know, whenever they call or they send you a text and they say, hey, we want to put you on standby for Hurricane Beryl or whatever it is, you say yes to all of them. Right, and you got Pilot and Crawford and Alacrity and Eberl Right, and maybe five more, and you really, really, really, really want to go work for Pilot, right? You know, you went to their claims college, you love those guys and everything, but Crawford calls you first. I'm going with Crawford as a new guy because Pilot might staff their storm. They may call you later and you just have to say I'm sorry, I can't do it, but they may not right, there's a chance that they may not Bird in hand in this case.
Speaker 3:Very, very beginning is more important. Getting reps working on claims I don't care what company it's for, what carrier, absolutely does not matter. It doesn't matter what the pay is, it doesn't matter if it's W-2 or 1099. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that you get started learning the process and you start building those skills and seeing if you even like this or not. Right Because you might get out there and be like this is a dumb idea. Sometimes people do that right.
Speaker 1:All right, next up we got. Amy asks how long is a typical cat deployment?
Speaker 3:I think the shortest is going to be windstorm, ice storm, things like that, where the damage is immediately evident. So wind blows a bunch of trees down in the neighborhood, that's immediately evident. That the trees are on the house Right, um, and so those are those claims, pretty much without, with very few exceptions, all come in at the same time within the first few days of that storm event. And so those, all those claims all get handed out to adjusters and they, they bring on enough adjusters to handle those claims and then it drops, the claim volume drops off pretty much to nothing within a week, maybe 10 days of that Right. Ice storms are the same way. You know, it's a lot of trees down, it's a lot of, like you know, power outage and stuff breaks and it's immediately evident that it is.
Speaker 3:Hurricanes tend to last, can last a lot longer than that Um, because it's people will wait to file claims or they don't think they have damage and then they realize that they do.
Speaker 3:Hail storms can last theoretically the longest because oftentimes the storm happens at two, 30 in the morning and you know it might've woken somebody up and oh, that was a really bad storm.
Speaker 3:And you came outside and there's a bunch of like 30 in the morning and you know it might have woken somebody up and oh, that was a really bad storm. And you come outside there's a bunch of like leaves in the yard and the next morning and you don't think anything about it. And then two months later some roofing company canvassers come through the neighborhood they say, oh, you know, we just replaced your neighbor's roof over there and and uh, you probably have hail damage and you know you should file a claim, right. So that kind of thing and those, those storms have really long tail, can have really long tails on them and it can last. For they can last for for months, for probably, I would say for a hail storm, for like a beginning or intermediate adjuster probably would last anywhere from three to six weeks and then for like a really experienced adjuster, it could be you could be there summer, but you'd be one of the last people on that storm.
Speaker 1:All right, Melissa asks. Thank you for all the great information. May we see that list again of the top 10 companies you partner with? Yeah. Or Dean. Could you put it in the chat. Maybe? If you got it or she just threw a link in there, you bet I'll type it out. She's going to type it out too. That way we can see where you got it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's on etchedatjustrytvcom slash path. All that information's there as well.
Speaker 1:Perfect, okay. And then Matthew said do you think drone certification is worth it? I saw someone else say earlier drones used a lot for scoping?
Speaker 3:Um, I think that it's a. There's a couple of parts to that question and the the short answer is I think you know, when we're talking about the 80, 20 of what we want, what we're trying to do here, I'm going to say no on the drone. The drone, the main utility that the drone is going to have for an adjuster, and just really quickly, some of the major carriers State Farm included disallow drone usage. They had their own drone programs that they canceled because they had. There's some inherent problems still, but the utility that a drone has is, if you have a building that is really tall and you're trying to, you want to look at the roof and it's really really, really dangerous, right. And you want to look at wind damage or tree damage to a roof or a house or building that had a tree land on it and it made the structural integrity of the roof unsafe for you to walk on, or there's a fire which makes it unsafe for you to walk on, then I'm going to send a drone up. Or you can't access, it's hard to access the building because it's you know, when you work, natural disasters, I mean. There's all. There could be trees down all over the place and you just can't. There's an outbuilding out there and you just can't get to it because there's just debris and whatever all around. But there's the building right there and you know, fly a drone over to it and do your scope. That way you're probably not going to use it very often, um, and if you're trying to use a drone on claims and some file reviewer or your manager or QA person sees a shadow of a drone on the on a roof slope and they don't want you using drones, you're going to get a phone call. Um, so I'm going to say save your money, um, on that, unless you, if you get sent to the northeast it's like new york, connecticut, where they've got a lot of really big old houses with slate roofs on them could be useful there, but everywhere else, um, I think you know that's the first part.
Speaker 3:The second part of the logistics of it batteries. You know they have a flight time. They're susceptible to high winds. You know bad weather, whatever I mean stuff that you can get out and scope in wind wise a drone may have, may struggle with and it's going to run the battery down or you're gonna have trouble. You know flying it around. Plus, you know you got the neighbors. Their kids are out and by the pool right playing in the water or whatever, and and uh and uh, mr Neighbor dad steps out and here's a drone and looks up and sees that you know he thinks it's. You know he's taking pictures of his kids in the swimming pool and he may come out with a shotgun or I don't know. I think it's no on the no, so I think no.
Speaker 3:I think, there's too many issues for it. I think it's again it's. It goes back to me what I said before Is it going to make me faster, is it going to make me more efficient? Is it going to make me more money? And I think it's. It's cool and they're fun and they're absolutely useful in certain situations, but I think that overall, it's. It's going to have, it's not going to be a positive benefit to my bottom line, to my production and volume as an adjuster.
Speaker 1:All right. Next up is Michael. It says in the web chat someone indicated that he got his adjuster's license using Matt's class. Please expand and clarify no.
Speaker 3:So adjuster licenses when you go to take the pre-exam stuff through Adjuster Pro, they do pre-licensing or pre-exam where they either take the exam through Adjuster Pro and that counts, or they teach you what you need to know about the exam and then you take the exam through the state. The adjuster licenses are not claim stuff. It's nothing, hardly anything at all, to do with claims on any adjuster license that I've ever the exam I've ever taken. It's all history of insurance, it's all. It's a lot of auto stuff, even on the property. One and ethics and it's not. You're not. You're not saying anything about damage or hail or any of that stuff. So I don't teach pre-licensing or pre-exam stuff. I send everybody to Adjust your Pro.
Speaker 1:And also, by the way, when you think about property this is just a side note, like Matt was like there's even auto stuff on property. When they say property, they're talking about any type of property somebody can own, whether it's a car, a home, a fence, like that's the all lines property license. It's private property.
Speaker 3:Right, that's what they're talking about.
Speaker 1:It's not residential necessarily, so just sidebar there. That's why you see auto mixed in there is? It's not. They don't call the insurance industry typically different Segment those two, it's appraiser and it's adjuster. All right, is Richard? With what benefit would you say that FTD would hold for someone who is mo-cat trained?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So this is a great question and I always encourage people to take as much training as they can afford reasonably, because, um, because the, the and I, and I will tell my, my FTD people, hey, listen, if you've got the ability to do it, absolutely go, go to go to MoCat's training. And the reason why is because you want as much exposure to this as possible, right, you want as much muscle memory, you want as much reps as possible, and when you go to MoCat, you know, or vice versa, I'm going to be teaching you a lot of the same things, but I'm going to be teaching you from my perspective, and it might teach it from a slightly different angle than Calvin or one of his trainers does, and it can fill in gaps for you, it can clarify things for you, um, it can. You know, calvin may say to do things one way and it gets you there this fast, and then I tell you to do it that same thing, a slightly different, more efficient way, because I have I've had probably about 10 years of work on him as far as experience goes, and you can get there this fast. Then you know, then you see both ways that different adjusters do it. I think it's absolutely valuable to be able to see um to, to, to be able to see how different adjusters do things, which is why it's also really valuable once you do get deployed.
Speaker 3:If they say, hey, do you want to clean up, which is, you stay behind, you don't. You might get some new claims, but you're going to get supplements and reinspections on other adjusters, stuff that is so educational. You'll see how really really great adjusters do things and then you're going to see how adjusters like really really mess things up and you can be like I don't want to do that on my claims. Man, that guy Wow, that's. I'm incorporating that in my workflow. So the more, the more you can get your hands on the better, um, so, yeah, I, I I would say, you know, if the storm was bearing down on the coast and you're like I don't want to spend any more money on training and you went to mocat, you're good to go, I'm not going to tell you. Well, you have to take mine too, but you know, if you're thinking about it and I wouldn't tell you, wouldn't tell you not to, because you're going to learn, you're going to learn more.
Speaker 1:Plus, you'll get access to my network, which is different than his yeah, I think it's like with any kind of coaching, whether you're in business or anything, the more coaching the better, the more connection, the better and, like you said, the different perspective. Like you hang out with matt, you're going to hear one side of the industry. Hand with me, out with me, you're going to hear another side. You hang out with Calvin. We've all had different experiences. It's totally different and different people are going to teach different things and so it's super cool to see those differences and to experience them. And you know, the more perspectives you have, probably the more well-rounded of an adjuster you're going to be All right we're going to head on to Depot All right, we're going to head on to Depot.
Speaker 3:I'm in the Army National Guard and he's an I-Path grad, if IA firm say otherwise. I think that most of the, especially the major IA firms, really honor our veterans and people serving in the military and if you got to bounce for a weekend to do your, to fulfill your duties, I don't think anybody has a problem with that. As long as you build your schedule around it, right, you can make a little island in your schedule where you're not having to like do appointments, but they're going to want you to have your phone with you. If you're, if it's if at all possible. Um, you know, if you're out doing maneuvers or whatever and you can't have a laptop and phone with you, then that's one thing. But if you're just like showing up at your, at the you know the, your station or whatever and just hanging out in the office, then you probably can.
Speaker 3:I don't, I don't know what you guys do over there, but um, if they're going to want you to to, if, if homeowners are calling with questions, it just goes for anybody. Whether you're when, if you want to like take a quick break and you need to go home for something for a couple of days um remain in contact with your homeowners, because you don't want your homeowners calling and you not calling them back and then them calling your manager or calling their agent and then your manager's calling you like where the heck are you Right?
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:Know what to call.
Speaker 1:Remove the moments of uncertainty. That's the key. Yes. All right. Last question, matt. Certainty, that's the key. Yes, all right. Last question, matt patrick asks do the I firms allow you to use a factoring company to pay for your completed invoice to help with getting paid faster on your first appointment a factoring?
Speaker 3:company I have no idea.
Speaker 3:So you can let's. I'm not sure what that means, but I will try to answer the question. And I think that if you, if you want to use tools to speed up your workflow, speed up your processes, you know if the company doesn't provide a hover and you want to, you know that that's going to make you faster and it'll be worth the money that you spend on those things or EagleView or whatever for roof pictometry. They're not going to say that you can't do that. You may or may not be able to add that to your billing. You may or may not be reimbursed for it.
Speaker 3:The same thing goes for if you are get a, if you're not provided with ladder assist on site, like some companies will provide a ladder assist for you, um, on steeper roofs than like a 712. Um, if they don't do that and you're like you find like a 1412 or a 1612, which they're out there, trust me on this, um and you're like I need to have a contractor come help me with this, or hancock or somebody, um, and they charge you. You know, if I have a contractor come and help me get on a roof, like you know they've got like a 40 foot ladder I'm going to give that guy a hundred dollar bill probably, and you know that's that's going to be that. Um, they may or may not reimburse you for that stuff. You just have to that's.
Speaker 3:That's a question to ask during orientation, I think. But I always recommend to people learn how to do everything yourself first, before you start outsourcing, so that way that you know how to tell that person you outsource to what to do and how you like it done, versus just showing up and just like paying a bunch of money without knowing the process yourself. You know, I think it's better to do it all yourself and then find the places in your, your workflow where you're like you know what, if I could pull this chunk out and have somebody else do it this way, then that would. That would save me like three times the amount of time.
Speaker 1:Last question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're only going to figure that out by doing it.
Speaker 1:All right, I got one more question in and then we're cutting it off. All right, appreciate your time. I've been here over two and a half hours.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, we're good to go.
Speaker 1:Okay. Melissa asks can I join Adjuster TV to get Simbility training, or is there a separate?
Speaker 3:training fee for it. Yeah, so some ability is included in Adjuster TV Plus.
Speaker 1:And that's just a monthly fee, if I remember correctly. Okay, then you just head to AdjusterTVPluscom. That's it All. Right, dean's got the link already beat us to it. Okay, well, matt Dean, thank you so much for being here. Everybody hanging out um, we will send a replay link out.
Speaker 1:there's so much information in here oh man you're if you're an eye uh path person in here. We are also going to add this into our archive of all of our phenomenal sessions we have with different people that we bring on, so this information is going to be there to help you understand how to get started with property, whether it's with Matt's program right now or whether it's in the future. And if you're still here, matt, how long do they have to make a decision on this? I know right now I can't just pop over your website and enroll, but you open it up specifically for people who follow IA Path. So how long do they have to make a kind of decision on this enrollment period?
Speaker 3:I think we've got it for nine days.
Speaker 1:I think you said something like that. So, it's August 2nd at 9 pm. Dean said August 2nd. Yeah, there you go. Which is going to take two weeks to get through it. You're going to be right there at peak hurricane season coming up, so like yeah, I want to get this done. The time is now.
Speaker 1:The timing is now so perfect. Head over to adjustertvcom slash path If you guys are interested. Thank you guys for showing up All you IA pathers and those on the email list. And Matt, thank you so much for spending the time to educate me and everybody else on all this. This was phenomenal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, this is. This is really cool. I'm glad we got together on this and it's fun to talk to your folks as well.
Speaker 1:Not quite the same as hanging out at a fire with you and Dean. I'm missing our summer hangout. We're not making it out west this year, but man, I'm hanging out with you tonight and love you all. Keep walking your path and claiming your life. Talk to you guys later alright, we'll see ya.