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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)
NACA 2025: IA Path Preview and Why You Should Attend
The episode explains the significance of attending the National Association of Catastrophic Adjusters Conference, emphasizing the potential networking and educational benefits. Personal experiences and details about the IAPath team’s involvement highlight the value of participation while addressing the costs associated with the event.
• Introduction to the NACA Conference and its purpose
• Overview of membership fees and conference costs
• Personal anecdotes illustrating benefits of attending
• Details about IAPath’s presence and new book launch
• Educational presentations planned for the conference
• The importance of building professional relationships at NACA
Hey, pathfinders, welcome back to the Independent Adjuster Podcast. This is your host, chris Stanley. I am excited to talk to you guys a little bit about the upcoming National Association of Catastrophic Adjusters Conference. We normally just call it NACA. So NACA is coming up. It's usually in January. This year it's in February, and so this is just before February 2025. And IAPath is planning to be on site. We will have a booth on site. So I wanted to tell you guys what to expect from NACA. From my experience, it just shares some NACA stories and hopefully the IAPath team and you will be able to meet up if you decide to go to the conference.
Chris Stanley:So what is NACA? Naca is basically a membership organization that helps bring and foster more people into the catastrophic adjusting industry, and they've recently expanded into even like daily auto claim some, and they've invited us to come be a part of it a lot and requested us to come be a part, and so this organization has dues, discounts, things that you can get as a part of the organization, including discounted conference tickets. But what they do is they really bring all the catastrophic adjusting IA firms together at this conference so you can attend and connect with these people and hopefully get work out of it so you can schedule times to meet with them these different IA firms, all through an app, and then show up and guess what, have networking opportunities with companies like Pilot, alacrity, eberl, different tech companies like Claim Leader or other app people like Exactimate or whatever show up and it's a great time to get to know the industry and to get to know individuals in the industry. So it's usually three days long. I think it is Monday, tuesday, wednesday, sunday night. A lot of times they have opening kickoff events. If you get there early and the different IA firms have get-togethers throughout the week or after hours and stuff, it's a really pretty fun time. If you're a people person or if you're really needing those networking connections, it'd be a great place to go.
Chris Stanley:It is a little pricey, in my opinion, a little expensive. The membership is $600 or $700 a year, I believe it is. It's not exactly right, it's $500 or more, I believe. And then the conference ticket is also depending if you buy early or late in the hundreds of dollars like $500 to $800, I think it is depending on when you buy. But if you think about it in terms of if I get one deployment at some point in the next three years and I spent $600 on a ticket and I spent a few thousand dollars or a thousand dollars depending where you live to go to this conference and it's in Arkansas, little Rock, arkansas, this year to attend to actually get work out of it. Really a great return on investment overall. Even me not a work out of it. Really a great return on investment overall, even me.
Chris Stanley:Not a huge fan of meetings, don't like in-person events. I'm the digital guy. Let's just keep it digital. We can scale that, it's easy. But in-person there was something special I attended a few years ago. I showed up with my father-in-law, mark, who now works with IAPATH, and we just went to the conference, hung out with Matt Allen, hung out with Max Olson, who works with IAPATH and Adjuster TV as a camera guy, was able to sit in on some of the auto presentations. I think there was only one that year I got to sit in and hear SCA present, john Geronda present on that. He got to talk to some people and meet them and it was cool. It was cool seeing it, cool seeing for our industry, like I hadn't seen something like that before. So it was really cool to broaden the horizons and to meet a lot of people in person. A lot of good relationships to come out of that conference and getting to know it and good memories. If you're interested, good thing to do Now IAPATH.
Chris Stanley:What are we doing? So this year we have a booth. We did a booth last year. We had our team there. Last year, my sister and Chris and Kobe and Ashley were there on site. This year it's going to be my sister, danica again, and it's going to be Brad Fancher and Max Olson on site. So Brad Fancher is our instructor, he's our director of training and Max Olson is like the media guru behind Diapath the camera, the man with the plan, the media guru behind Diapath the camera, the man with the plan, and they're all going to be there. We are going to have the brand new independent adjusters playbook.
Chris Stanley:It's been five years since I've updated that book. Thousands and thousands of people have bought it, downloaded it. 8,000 people plus have watched the video version of that book and totally shifted the way they thought about maybe getting started in the industry, and so I felt it was time to do a revamp and I thought what better time to release it, to make a big deal about it, than to bring a bunch of books to NACA and just give them away like candy. So that's what we're going to be doing. It's going to run about 200 books there. Lord willing it all works out and we're even going to have leather bookmarks that are made by my sister's husband, chris. He is a leather and metal guy, so he made leather bookmarks that you, if you get there early and get some, come to the booth, find the team and you can get a leather bookmark so that way you can get started. So if you go find the team and the booth early on, you should be able to get a leather iPath branded bookmark. So make sure you find them, say hello to them.
Chris Stanley:I will not be present. I will not be on site. I tend to not do that. It puts my family under a lot of stress to be nomadic and set up our home somewhere and leave the family for any time. So I choose not to do that. But my team is going to be amazing.
Chris Stanley:Brad Fancher is presenting four different presentations. Ipath is handling the entire educational training track for Otto and NACA. So if you don't know Brad Francher, you're going to have a chance to hear him. He's amazing. He's a better estimator and adjuster than I could ever hope to be. He's an IAPATH grad. Five years ago maybe, plus now, he graduated from IAPATH, became a successful IA and now he's a senior heavy equipment adjuster, basically for a major insurance carrier, and so he handles our auto and heavy equipment grading and instructing and he's phenomenal.
Chris Stanley:So he's gonna be presenting four different presentations. One is all about basically our core presentation about how you can get work without waiting on the weather. I don't remember the official title we went with, but that's the gist right, like how you can use auto to further your career. And then we also have one on CCC1. So we're going to be showing you how CCC1 works, giving you a demonstration, explaining a lot about it and then which is the major software that we use. And then the third presentation he's going to be giving is about how to make money with auto hail claims. Well, that's really exciting. I think Brad's going to do awesome at all those. And then the last one is about heavy equipment, the opportunities in heavy equipment, how you get heavy equipment to work and really how all of that works in our industry. So you don't want to miss any of those presentations Hear in our industry so you don't want to miss any of those presentations.
Chris Stanley:Hear Brad talk, meet him, because he will be the instructor if you decide to join IAPath. And meet my sister, who is like my right-hand person, she's my assistant. You're talking to her. You're basically talking to me Like she knows her stuff. She knows not only about our industry but about how I see our industry and about how I see our company and how I want to help you guys. So she loves you guys, loves the adjusters. She's the beating heart of IAPATH a lot of times, her and Brad, and so you're going to have a chance to meet them in person. I hope you guys will be at NACA, Hope you guys have fun, hope you guys make a lot of connections and, ultimately, what Claim your life? See you guys in NACA. The team will see you in NACA and let me know what you think about the conference and Brad's presentations. No pressure, brad.