Same Mentor. 25 Years. 6 Months. 12 Days. What Happened?

My father-in-law Mark spent 25 years becoming one of the best auto damage estimators in the industry. He started as a painter, worked his way through body repair, estimating, shop management, and eventually became an independent appraiser.

He trained me in 6 months.

Two years ago a student named Ty went through our program in 12 days, then deployed to a hailstorm and trained under the same mentor.

Same man. Completely different timelines.

In this episode I unpack what that compression tells us about where the collision and claims industry is heading and why the fossil workforce crisis is more urgent than anyone is admitting publicly. 

One in four adjusters retires by 2027. The knowledge leaves with them. And AI alone won't fill that gap.

This is what the Renewable Workforce is and why it might be the most important conversation this industry isn't having yet.

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hey, welcome to the first episode of the Collision and Claims Podcast. Or if you're joining us on the Independent Adjuster podcast, welcome back. I'm your host, Chris Stanley. And today what we're going to talk about is my father-in-law spent 25 plus years learning how to be good at auto damage estimating. He trained me in six months, and then having a student go through it in 14 days under the same mentor. Now we're talking about two completely different processes, but this episode is about that timeline and what it tells us about where the industry is heading and what it means for every person trying to build a career in it right now. So backstory. I was throwing boxes for a living, really fast setting records of the most boxes thrown in a day. My rotator cuff hates me now. And my father-in-law, Mark, had been in the industry 25 years writing auto damage estimates, but he didn't start there. He actually started as a painter of cars. He painted cars for a living. He went to WildTech, I think it was, or some kind of trade school to learn how to be a body man and a painter. He then fixed cars on the body side as well. So he's painting and repairing the vehicles. Eventually he moved on to being a collision estimator. And then he became a body shop manager and owner. And then he went um back to being a manager of a big dealership and then he became an independent appraiser. And when he became an independent appraiser, he told me he wanted to teach me how to do this job, how to have this skill that he had acquired across these 25 years. Now keep in mind, he has 25 years of industry knowledge that I do not have. He has official training through a technical college. He has 25 years of experience, and I'm stepping in, never having changed my own oil. So I went, worked with him four days a week for six months, learning from him, shadowing him. And he got me ready. He got me able to write estimates as an auto damage appraiser. And he introduced me to a company and I got work, and here we are 15 plus years later, and I'm teaching other people how to do that. And so, you know, he's in the industry all these years. I get done in six months, and I'm now able to work in the industry. We're doing the same job. You know, 25 years later, he's doing one job. Six months later, I'm doing the same job as him. And then through our company IA Path, we train people to basically do what Mark did at scale. How Mark trained me, he certified me when I was ready, introduced me to a company, helped me get work, and then was my mentor as I got that work, asking him questions. We did the same thing for people at IA Path. And so we had a student go through two years ago, this is a perfect example of this, and he went through our certification in 12 days, fastest on record. He then deployed to a hail storm and actually got to mentor under Mark. Now, Mark worked with him like a few days on the storm, like a week or something. And then this guy, Ty, was off to the races. I mean, he's been on first call lists, he's been amazing, and he's been so good. But how did we go from Mark spending 25 years in the industry and to becoming an independent appraiser to me needing at least six months to get started as an IA to now Ty 12 days? And what I think this is illustrating is the speed at which we are having to adapt as not just an industry, but as society. And now it's only accelerating with AI, right? Like AI is just the noce to everything. But our industry in particular, we have relied in the auto-estimating community on this, what I call the fossil workforce, the marks. He has spent decades under time and pressure to become an expert at what he does. And that's the only way he was able to learn. That's the only way we taught people. The only way you could get in this industry was through years of time and pressure, which makes you, if you're looking in fossil terminology, right, that turns you into oil, very rich oil. And Mark is like one of the richest in talent and in knowledge I have ever seen in this industry. So he's a super valuable assay. And that's the fossil workforce. That's what we've relied on as an industry. But now, as things have sped up, we cannot recreate marks. We cannot. Why? Because we don't have enough people sticking in the industry long enough. We don't have enough people who have been interested in this industry. We've done a terrible job of opening the doors up to new people and making it easy to get in because we've required years of experience. We've required you have an uncle or a father-in-law to get you in this industry. And the pipeline, this fossil workforce is coming to an end. It's like one in four adjusters are going to be retired in 2027. That's like a year from now. One in four, 25% of our fossil workforce, of the industry knowledge that we have is going to evaporate overnight. And we think AI with computers and everything is just going to magically replace that with the gap that we now experience. So we're in a really important influx where we have to develop systems that help people like Ty get started in weeks, right? In 60 days or less, we need to be able to take somebody who's interested in the industry and convert them into a valuable, youthful member of our industry. They can make a good living in our career. We can continue on with our businesses as insurance companies, as collision repair shops, as independent adjusting firms. We need people to enter quickly into this industry to replace the mass exodus that is coming of the fossil workforce. All their knowledge is leaving. And if we don't lean in and push the gas on replacing them, we literally are going to only have computers to rely on. Because who else is going to have that knowledge unless we pass it on to them? And so at IAPath, we kind of merge all these different things together and we create a renewable workforce. And that's what I think the future is, is where you're taking someone who's interested, and instead of making them spend years in a seat they don't want to be in, miserable, burning out, high stress, we actually put them in the seat that they want to be within 60 days or less, turn them into that asset that we need. And so that's renewing that person. It's renewing the position that they were in. Maybe right now they're an FNOL adjuster, first notice of loss adjuster. Maybe right now they're a parts guy at a collision repair shop, but they want to be an estimator. There's no reason that within the next 30 to 60 days that that person could not be in that position as a functioning, producing member in a shop. And if that isn't happening for you, that's what we do with IA Path. But that's the future to me. And that's what I'm super passionate about is how do we fix the fossil workforce problem? Because I wish everybody was like Mark. I wish everybody had 25 years of experience in all these different positions that we just innately knew what to do. But the reality is we're going to have to rely on people who don't have 25 years of experience. And we have to build the systems, the pipeline, the workforce to accommodate less experienced people. So that's a lot of what we're going to talk about here is how do we do that? How do we build a workforce that is renewable and not only built on the fossil workforce? Because the fossil workforce has the knowledge. We need that knowledge desperately. We need Marks in our life. He now works at IAPath and he works with students passing on that knowledge. He's still passing it on to me, but we also need people like Ty who are interested in the industry, excited, and we turn them on, get them equipped, and send them out to be amazing at what they do. Love to hear your thoughts. Email me, Chris at iAPath.com. And if you want to talk about the fossil workforce, you want to talk about the renewable workforce. If you need collision estimators, independent adjusters or appraisers, or someone for your staff, reach out to us. We may have somebody in the market you're looking for, or we may be able to train somebody who's interested in that role that just doesn't have that skill set yet, and we can get them up and running in less than 60 days. All righty, until next time, keep walking your path and claiming your life.