Claims Management, Estimating & AI in the Restoration Industry

All right. Hello everyone. Welcome to the restoration success show. We got the next episode here and we have Andrew joining us today coming from Oregon. So welcome. Uh Andrew. Happy to have you here. So let’s just start this out. Like, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and kind of how you ended up in the restoration industry. What’s up, Mr Jamie? Good to be here. Thanks for having me. Uh I think I ended up in restoration, like, like a lot of folks accidentally. Uh I needed a job, right. We all needed a job at one point in time and, and, and this industry I think, uh is, is unique in that once you get sucked in to restoration, it’s very hard to extract yourself. Yeah. Yeah, it gets, it gets into your blood. Uh, early on. I got addicted to that feeling of showing up and being the freaking hero. Um Because because you know whether, whether you want to believe it or not, we are heroes with that person that shows up. Um, you know, when the, when the water is flowing, right? When that basement is full and, and the homeowners are panicking that person to show up to help them with. That problem is a freaking hero. So I got, I got pretty, pretty addicted to that feeling early on and it just stuck with me. So I’ve been doing uh a lot of different aspects of restoration for better part of 22 years at this point. So the year 2000 2, 2000, 1003, so 23 years now, um, and the last decade or so, I’ve been running a company called Claims Delegates, which helps contractors write exact, made estimates. And so that’s more and more, especially the last four or five years, I’ve seen the, the need to reduce overhead, uh bring uh bring things in house more and control operations, uh centralizing the estimating function of your company. The bigger you get, if you have a central estimating hub, uh you’re able to realize some pretty good economies of scale and, and cost savings and, and overhead uh savings and things like that. So that’s what I’m, what I’m focusing on LEX last couple of years is, is helping folks realize those economies of scale through uh reducing their overhead uh and increasing their throughput on their estimating. So I’ve got a team of exact guys that, that all they do, all we do all day, every day is, is write sheets. So it’s, it’s been fun and the last couple of years with, with private equity, it’s been, we’re, we’re only we’re only just getting started, I think. Yeah. What are you? Um, because, yeah, I have some friends that have so the private equity and, and, and, yeah, it kind of seems, I mean, based on some of the conversations I’ve had, like, I think private equity is coming in pretty hard to home service industries as a whole. Like H VAC roofing. I mean, restoration would fall under that. Like, are there any, like, trends specifically or any anything you’ve seen as of late as far as when it comes to private equity and restoration industry as a whole? Well, the whole, the whole deal, you have to understand what the purpose is. Uh, the purpose is. I have this bucket of money that I’ve been told I need to spend and I gotta get a, uh, a certain return on it. I’ve, I’ve got to get a, you know, 20 or 30% return on that money. Um, well, the, the fun, the fun guys themselves are looking for a three X return, right? So how do you, how do you do that? Well, you, you buy a business and grow it, you buy a business, make it more efficient or you buy a bunch of businesses and, and consolidate them and eliminate all the redundant expenses with all the other other ones. So it’s, it’s a pretty simple playbook, uh, but it’s, you know, that you, you can see the big players out there. So a T I is one of the biggest ones that, that I think everyone can point to and, and, and see, they, they play in this playbook is, you know, they were, they were, they got bought and, and Jeff Moore was told, here’s, here’s a bucket of money. Now, go buy your way, you know, you gotta go spend this money. Uh, and so they bought up a whole bunch of folks. But one of the first things they do is look at, you know, their a tis was big to start out with, but they have a really good organized core uh uh in a, in Anaheim at their flagship office where they can run a lot of the admin stuff including estimating out of one office. And, and so they, they buy a, a business in New England. Well, that estimator no longer has a job, right? Because they’ve got that covered. Now they need to, they need to, they, all they need to do is get the information over to the central office and they can write estimates all day every day. So that’s, that’s the playbook is, is where can we find the efficiencies? Where can we find um these cost savings? And then ultimately, that’s going to be resold again, right? These, these businesses are being, being bought and sold and bought and sold and just repackaged. Um But the, the redesign, the, the, the fundamental redesign that these businesses go through in the pe world is, is unique. Um And so what I’m seeing is a lot of guys, you know, there’s a sweet spot in there 5 to 10 million. Um So I know, I know, I know a t I was looking for $10 million players because he had two, he needed to buy 20 companies at 10 million apiece. Um And so these businesses, once you get to 10 million, you start getting, you start getting calls from private equity. And a lot of these guys, I talked to a lot of my clients, once they request over 303 million, they started getting phone calls, they just started getting random emails. Um Hey, you wanna sell, you wanna sell, you wanna sell. Um And then the focus becomes, how do I, how do I change my business? How do I format my restoration business? So it’s more attractive so I can get a bigger multiplier when I do so. Mhm. And I imagine that’s, you know, because you touched on this a minute ago. I mean, we’re, I imagine you and your company are gonna be able to really help out in the next few years is, you know, like I said, a piece of this would be having the estimating department centralized, have the sops in place, you know, the estimates dialed in and that could be spread out across, you know, all the restoration companies under the main umbrella, right? If you can help them with one piece of that puzzle and not just, not just save the overhead costs but do the function more economically, more, more, more efficiently. Right? So I know if, if all we’re doing and that’s what all we do. It claims delegates says write sheets all day, every day, we get really, really good at it. Where your average right run project manager estimator, they weren’t wearing four or five hats in a day, right? And estimating is just one of the functions they perform. So they’re never gonna be as good as somebody like us. They never can’t be just a function of, of reality. Um So reducing, increasing your specialization actually increases your profitability because you write better sheets. They’re better documented. They’re, yeah, you’re making more your profitability of each individual estimate or invoice goes up just naturally as a function of bringing that all uh into a centralized function. I imagine that’s helped your company out too. It’s like, hey, we can help you with a handful of things, but estimating is our bread and butter and we are dangerously good at it. That that’s kind of how we positioned it from the marketing standpoint. It’s like we don’t pretend we don’t work with doctors, lawyers. It’s like restoration companies. You know what I mean? Because that way we’ve seen it basically all at this point, we’ve worked with all the markets. So it’s kind of like you have the proven blueprint system, you just need to deploy it then optimize and tweak it as you go. Like, that’s kind of helped. I, I imagine both of us in our companies as far as like, hey, like, we, we can’t be everything to everybody. We’re gonna be very good at this particular mix. I’m gonna run. Yeah. And there’s, it’s, for years people have, have outsourced there, there’s, there’s fractional accounting, there’s fractional CFO S, there’s, there’s fractional CEO S, well, we can be the, your fractional estimators and you can be the fractional uh marketing department. Right? There’s, there’s, you know, you might, if you can’t get the best, you know, if you can’t hire the best in any given discipline, you might as well just go buy it, go rent it because you’re always gonna be forcing. If you don’t have the best player, you’re always gonna, if you can’t train them up, you’re always playing with the second best. So, so don’t try to pretend that you’re the expert marketing person. Just go rent the expert marketing person. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had some um mentors of mine and then tell me just over the years, like they’re like, look, it’s gonna take time or money to grow and scale it, you get to pick one and when you’re starting out, you’re probably gonna put in more time as you grow and scale. You know, you gotta buy back time, focus on more important things. And I think that’s something that people don’t realize like to get the experience you are like you or I might have already doing in our world. It’s like I, I was like, I don’t think you understand that we’ve managed millions in ads then and learn those lessons now. Like you’re paying for the speed and the experience to shortcut it. And if you want and like, you know, from our title, like if you want, you can go build this out and I would be like, are you ready to pay a six figure salary just for the seo piece? Like just seo piece? Like you, you can’t go watch a youtube video. Like this is like, you know, you and I talk about this is this is a big boy game. You, it’s, it’s gonna take time or money, you get to pick one and that’s the same way when it comes to estimating like you can go together, can you go recruit a guy that wrote $2 billion worth of estimates last year? No, exactly doesn’t exist but we did. So yeah, and that’s, yeah, so that’s um that is a good, I’m gonna be tough on that because that is a good perspective. I think that would help our listeners out and like, and I think that that plays into all facets of, of growing scale and restoration company, not just estimating, not just the marketing, I mean, you got sales hr systems, processes, finance like this can be deployed in all of those facets to help. I mean, to expedite the process, right? You have to learn one way or another or, you know, I always say this quote, but success leaves clues is the quote. I love to like, hey, we’re not reinventing the wheel here. There, there’s people have done this ahead of us. Why don’t we learn for them? The shortcut problem. Just copy. There’s, there’s no shame in, in copying. What works? Yeah. And then you can, you know, add your little secret sauce on and innovate to differentiate yourself from the competition and, and roll with it. So what um so when it comes, you know, kind of back to estimating and stuff, what are some of the, I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of mistakes but, you know, maybe the there might be one or two mistakes that stand out from the others that you see a lot of restoration companies make. Like what, what are those mistakes typically that you see the biggest ones? Yeah, we gotta, as you might imagine, we, we, you know, people come in at different stages and different different levels of expertise and we’ve got to spend a considerable amount of what we do is is coaching, coaching guys up um right out of the gate, what the vast majority of new clients come in uh with a defini deficiency of documentation. They, they don’t have a system to document losses. Uh They don’t have a process to do it. And uh you can have the best, like, like I’m a huge fan of Mata Report, right? Mata report scanning, you get a 3D model, you get everything you can measure and you know, down to a LA is laser accurate and everything else. But that doesn’t having a Mata report scan or having 1000 pictures doesn’t get you a scope. So one of the first things I coach people into is here’s how you develop a scope and this is what a decent, this is what a real good scope looks like because a lot of these guys are just thrown into it. A lot of these guys didn’t know what they were getting into, you know, some uh there’s franchise operators that they were, they were real estate, it’s real estate agents last year and they just bought a Rainbow franchise or something. Um And they just in the Rainbow franchise said, well, it’s all in there, right? It’s just follow the book. Well, the scoping is one of the, the biggest blind points of everyone that I see. Um People don’t understand what it means to tell a story and when you take your estimating function out of your, your, your operation and, and do an AAA Ehore like with, with, with claims delegates, it becomes incredibly important to be able to tell that story and, and the scope is a story of the loss. So yeah, that’s the number one thing is, is, can you tell a good, a good enough story that someone who is isn’t on site and never will be on site can write a complete accurate estimate. That’s, that’s the hardest thing um in the number two. And there’s, there’s several so documentation and scoping and then uh uh uh the, what we’ve been doing the last couple of years, uh I’ve been refocusing on is the collections piece uh because there’s, there’s a vast misunderstanding of how you actually get paid and, and if you’re sending estimates and invoices to the adjuster and waiting for a response, your accounts receivable is gonna be way higher than it needs to be. And, and it’s not uncommon to see accounts receivables over 2500 days, 25000 and 210 days. And, you know, I’ve had some clients with, with 250% of their annual revenue stuck in A R. So they’re, they’re in a position where they have to run double time because they’re getting paid. You know, they have half of the actual revenue they’ve realized because the other half is stuck in A R because they’re not going about the collections process appropriately. Uh And they’re relying too much on the goodwill of insurance carriers to do the right thing. And, and that’s so that’s the, probably the number two lesson that I have to teach guys when they’re coming in when they’re brand new with us is, is the carrier never going to willingly do the right thing. It’s up to us to properly frame the claim. And this might come as a shock to some of you listening out there. You have to actually bill your client. And it’s amazing how many restorers still today never send a bill to the insured. They never send a bill to their client. And II, I, I’ve said it 250 times and I’ll keep saying it, how is someone supposed to pay you? How is someone supposed to pay a bill that they’ve never received? And in the mentality of, well, I have to get approval through the insurance adjuster first. Well, that’s why your money is stuck in accounts receivable. That’s why you’re not getting paid because the adjuster is not responsible for your bill. And that’s so a lot of, a lot of stuff we do a claims delegates is a mindset mindset shift of, of we need to understand who the client is and that’s where really, I mean, you, you found me through the rebels and a lot of people are going to be recognize the Restoration rebels. That’s what we do at the restoration rebels is, hey, we need to understand fundamentally who the actual client is. Then we need to empower and educate that client on the claim process because like it or not, a uh restoration guys don’t have very much leverage, right? What are the things we have that we have leverage on? We have, we can file a lien and we can send someone to collections. But we can’t, we can’t sue the homeowner or we can’t sue the, uh, the carrier, right? We can’t even apply leverage to the carrier. The only person that can apply leverage to the carrier is the homeowner is the insured because they’re the policyholder. And we forget that. And we wonder why we have millions of dollars in receivables that we haven’t been paid. And then, and then the, the carrier comes out, comes at us with these 2100 cents on a dollar offers and we feel compelled to take them because we feel like we don’t have any other options. Um, and it’s a, it’s a, it’s a sad downward cycle. Um, you know, I don’t want to get started down that, that whole a CPA road. But, um, so it’s the mindset of, of who the client is and what is. Yeah, there’s, there’s some people that just feel guilty about profit and, and we need to remove the guilt from we’re in business to make money. The insurance company is in business to make money. We, there’s no shame in, in high profitability work. Now, if you’re not, if you’re not doing quality work, yeah, you should be ashamed for charging. If you’re not, if you’re not doing premium work, you shouldn’t be charging a premium dollar. But if you get up in the middle of the night on a weekend to go under somebody’s house and suck poop out of their crawlspace Well, I mean, you know, I’m, I’m gonna be 353 this year. I don’t do that anymore. You can’t pay me enough to do that and that service needs to come with a premium. And when the adjuster comes back and says, well, you, you charge too much. My, my my reply is, well, you should have been there. You should have been in that six inches of sewage that we were crawling through because until you are, you can’t say what that my bill was exorbitant because it’s not, I charged a fair rate for, for doing that thing because there’s a lot of people in the world that would not get into a sewage field, crawl space. Let’s just be real. Uh, and adjusters are, are the number one on the list. They will never be out there. So you can’t tell me what, what is a, a good price to charge unless youve done the actual work. Yeah, that’s, um, that makes me think we, we have some clients that do crime scene clean up stuff. I mean, as far as difficult job, they’re like d you are the thing we struggle, struggle with most on those jobs is finding people willing to do it. They’re like you talking about a messy, uh, uncomfortable job. They’re like, it’s all but they’re like, somebody’s gotta do it. It’s real, somebody’s gotta do it and it’s with, with crime scene clean up and, and that’s things like that. It’s it’s the mental and emotional stress. It, it’s less about the hazard, the actual hazard. Um, you know, it’s, it’s arguable that there’s no more hazard in a crime scene than there is in a sewer. Right. It’s all contamination. But it’s the mental load of, you know, what happened there. So, I’ve done a couple. Right. I, my, the company at the first company I worked for, uh, Dow Columbia in Portland, Oregon. We did it. We were pretty much the go to company for, for crime scene clean up and, and, and, and death stuff. Um, and I went to a couple but yeah, after the first couple I, I just said, no, I can’t, I can’t do it. It, it wrecked me, like, like wrecked me. I, oh, I know. I, I don’t wanna get too graphic but I was so the last one I was at, um, it was a, it turned into a fire because this lady was on oxygen and, um, she had decided she would be a good idea to, to light a cigarette while she was on her oxygen. Um, but you could see the fire line where the, uh, the, the, the, the tube of oxygen was on fire and it went down to the carpet and it went down and it went into the bathroom and, and then she got up and went to the bathroom because I don’t know what was happening. But just the, the evidence that I was seeing, I could replay the actual incident in my mind and it just disturbed me. So it was like, it takes a unique human being to compartmentalize that and, and when you have people that performing that role, they need more time off than normal. So yeah, there’s, there’s all kinds of costs, mental and emotional costs are the, the ones that are hardest, hardest to quantify, but they’re very, very real. You should charge a premium for that. That should be $235 an hour. Right. And there’s no shame in that because that, that work still has to get done. Yeah. Do some of your clients do. Um, I imagine. Do you have clients that do cash pay and claims? They do both. Yep. Yeah, that’s, um, a lot of our client as well. I was just curious because, and there’s, um, yeah, I, I would caution folks to whether it doesn’t matter who’s paying the bill, the bill doesn’t change. Um, there’s guys that’ll have two different price lists. They’re essentially running two different companies but it’s dangerous. It’s, it’s dangerous to do that because, um, especially if the insurance company gets wind that you charge, you know, you charge less for cash pay. Um, there’s guys that are in, in legal trouble because of that because, because the carriers is like, well, that’s fraud. You’re just jacking the prices because we’re involved. So there’s no, I mean, the, the money is the same color what, no matter where it’s coming from. So make sure your prices are the same. Yeah. And I think that’s where, I mean, yeah, it’s like you’re not trying to, like, pull, you know, nobody, anybody listens, obviously not kind of like, pull anything on anybody. Like, then we add fluff items in there. But, you know, I think we’re, you know, they, what they can learn from you or they should learn. It’s like you deserve to get paid, but you deserve to get paid and make sure you’re including everything in that. You know what I mean? Does they have a full fed properly written so you can get paid and therefore can lead to the profit you deserve, like you said, because everybody listen here like if you’re not making a profit and you run a charity, if you want to run a charity, run a charity, but at the end of the day, you got people to pay bills to pay, then if you want to take some of those profits and donate to charity, that’s a good thing. Ab Yeah, absolutely. But it’s, you gotta pick, you gotta pick one or the other, right? Like I said, you, you know, contribute to the charity, but it’s you gotta make money. Um So I think that’s where, you know, learning the proper way to write the estimates and manage the claim process for people like yourself could be super beneficial. Now, that being said there is there’s a very real cost to managing the claim process. So when it comes to cash pay, um, if someone is willing to pay my bill and I don’t have to go through this dance with the insurance company back and forth. That’s, there’s value there for me and I’m willing to, I’m, I’m willing to reduce my bill in acknowledgment of that value. So in, in that way, I, you can justify charging less to a homeowner who’s gonna pay you up front because you don’t have to go through this process to get paid. Um, but that’s it. Yeah, that’s, there’s, there’s, you know, there’s, there’s ways around the, the fraud accusation if you’re gonna charge less to homeowners and the reason is, is, is gonna cost you less because if you, if your money, excuse me, your money in accounts receivable is costing you money that dollar six months from now is not worth a dollar anymore. So, yeah, I think there is something, a lot of guys don’t really take into account. Yeah, I mean, you, you know, better than me, but I remember this is my construction days too. It always seems like whoever’s paying the bill or whoever’s getting the job done, there’s always seems to be a little resistance when it comes to including overhead in this. But, I mean, because, you know, I used to help build hospital schools like huge projects. The overhead number would be hundreds and hundreds of times but we’re like, you got senior project manager, regular project manager, field engineers assisting these guys estimated like the overhead is a real thing. It’s like, well, this, this thing is managing itself. So it’s a line item on the estimate. And I mean, but there was always a little bit of back and forth on that and then when it came to change orders, like, like, dude, I’m sitting here in your office negotiating this with you, like my time is not free. Like, let me remind you of that. Like this is a, a line item for a reason, you need to pay it. I mean, but again, you have to be ethical about it. You can’t try to like add in there and people, you know, project managers working on other jobs should not be included on that, but that was always a thing for sure. Well, that’s the, the concept of general conditions that, that comes from construction that comes from big construction, right? And, and your general conditions is, is customarily set at the beginning of the job and then every change order, it’s a percentage that gets added to that change order based on your general conditions, right? That’s a concept that is like I try to explain that to an adjuster and it’s like I’m speaking Chinese, it’s, it’s, it’s like all they hear is Mandarin and overhead and profit and it just like I I’ve been advocating that yes, don’t ignore the overhead, don’t ignore that you have actual costs. Don’t ignore the fact that you need to make a profitt, but bake it in, bake it into your pricing and don’t show it because every time we show it, it creates an argument. So it’s easier for me to say this is my pricing rather than trying to justify this additional eye on him because when you put overhead and profit, you’re just showing it right. It’s out there and it gives them something to, to latch in on and, uh, and argue about. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s just learning. Yeah, I mean, like I said, with somebody like your experience, you’ve seen enough of them and, you know, like what’s gonna be a flag and what’s not gonna get flagged and someone like you’ve played the game so many times, you know, the rules of the game and again, not that you’re trying to do anything wrong, but you’re just gonna play the game properly, get paid what you deserve to get paid, take care of the home, you know, like you want, you want to be a win, win for everybody involved in the process. Um And so everybody can, can move on. It’s just, but yeah, but it’s just not, it’s easier said than done the trick bar, right? Um Well, there’s, there’s actual rules and then there’s perceived implied rules and I’m a huge fan of, if it’s not an actual rule, I don’t have to follow it. Um You know, if the, the rule says, if I get the football across the line, the goal line, that’s six points, that’s the rule. But, but you know, it, it trying to say how I got the ball, there was, was wrong because my internal guideline says, says, so, um that’s what we’re dealing with right now is the industry. There’s a, there is just a huge, huge problem of, of you can’t charge overhead and profit unless you have three or more trades or you can’t charge overhead and profit unless the job is complicated enough. And guess what? All of a sudden there’s no job that’s complicated enough to justify overhead and profit. Um These, you can’t charge supervisory hours. Um Yeah, just these, these rules, right? Um, a lot of them came from the programs, but these rules aren’t really rules because as independent restorers, we’re not part of the TPAS, we’re not part of the programs. And when the insured bought that policy, there wasn’t a claim booklet that came with it that says these, these are, this is how you’re going to estimate this job. There, there’s no policy in the land that says you will use exact toy. But how often do we as restorers get that email from, from the adjuster says, well, I need you to put this in exact toy. I can’t, I can only pay exact toy pricing. Well, those are two rules that don’t exist and so, you know, back to the coaching, I coach my guys. Hey, I, I’m all about following the rules, follow the actual rules. But don’t, don’t, don’t follow these implied rules because those are the rules that change, those are the goalposts that change on you and, and you can’t play a football game when the goalposts are moving. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I think, I mean, tell me if you agree, disagree. But I think the tricky part about this industry too is you mentioned this earlier, like, uh, from the insurance company’s perspective, like they’re a for profit business, they know that the higher the amount like that, you know, and I don’t think we talk, we didn’t talk about this. I don’t want to go deep into it, but I’m involved in insurance company. And so I’ve, you know, we work with carriers, we get appointments the last few years and we just had this hurricane come through a couple of days ago, like a lot of these, they’re going to install it. Like when these, these storms come in, they’re gonna belly up, install it. We, we’ve been, we’ve seen it in the past few years on what, you know, when we’ve been getting appointments. Like it, it’s the wild wild west over there too. And they’re not, I always, I think there’s always going to be a little friction between restorers and insurance companies because they’re not just gonna be like, oh, yeah, sure. You think it’s 240 grand, here’s a check, like that’s directly affecting them and sometimes it’s directly affecting them where they, they might go belly up. So they’re not just going to strike the check and not give up a little bit of a fight. And like I said, we could go down a deep drive a hall. Now, that’s the interesting tricky part about this industry is you got them over here, the stores try to get paid or they deserve to get paid it. It’s, it’s wild, it’s wild. It’s always gonna be a fight and, and if you, if you think there’s a way through this industry without fighting, yeah, you’re wrong. There’s, you’ve got to develop a thick skin. You’ve got to have a strategy, you gotta have a claim strategy of how you’re gonna approach these things. Um Ed Cross has a great approach. Ed Cross advocates. Uh Yeah, you’re in Florida, right? Oh, South Carolina. Ok. So you guys can have assignment benefits there. Yeah. Uh You can’t in Florida. Um But the assignment of benefits is, is another really great tool for restorers to have leverage that a lot of restorers are hesitant to use because it feels too aggressive. Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t, well, yeah, I mean, you know, you probably know more of me but I, I haven’t talked to one of our guys. We have some pies in Florida and I mean, I remember the last time maybe six months a year ago since I talked to one of the guys who I’m thinking of it. Yeah. Florida. He’s like, man, it is because the government has stepped in down there. Right. And got involved and he’s like, man, it is just, it’s a, it is, he’s like, it’s a nightmare. Um, it’s the hardest state, it’s the hardest state to do restoration work in. Yeah, I mean, a lot of our guy in the gun in particular, like, I mean, he, he was a construction company that got into it. So he is a chiller. Like I, I love these guys because I come from the rebuild recon world and I know like you think these little things are hard, like wait till you’re doing a, you know, $22 million put that like it’s a whole different bargain, but he is very good at it and he does this stuff too. But he, he’s like, man, honestly, we’re just kind of scaling out that division a little bit more now. We’re trying to figure out the whole, you know, the mid side of things with the insurance claims because it’s just, there’s like there’s so many things changing but to keep revenue coming in and to keep scaling, like he’s just kind of pushing the, you know, and because like I said, it’s changing and it’s changing rapidly. He, he’s like, man, it’s been tricky the past. I don’t, I don’t imagine that getting any better I mean, especially when we have these storms, like what just came through and they’re disastrous for these, you know, because then people, because that causes pre go up and then the homeowner can’t afford the premium. Then it’s just like a cycle that just snowballs. I think, I think this particular storm is, is gonna be less. So, uh, because there was so much flood, right when there’s, when there’s flood there’s NF IP that’s not falling on the insurance carriers in, you know, in those areas. Um, so I don’t think we’re gonna see as many because the wind, the wind portion of this latest storm wasn’t, wasn’t really the driving factor. It was, it was the water. It was, it was the, and I think everyone, you know, south, what happened in South Carolina and even North Carolina, right? It was that no one was, no one was like, oh, man, the Appalachians are gonna flood. No, we weren’t, we weren’t thinking that right. Yeah. Um, but, yeah, no one was. And it’s like, what do you mean? There’s floods in South Carolina? I thought the flo, I thought the storm hit Florida. Well, it did. But, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it depends on where you are. Yeah, it’s gonna be, yeah, I feel bad too for some time because I know, you know, the western part of the line because, you know, I’m over here on the coast in Charleston where, you know, we’re basically under sea level. So, depending on where you are, you have to, I mean, you’re acquired, if you have a mortgage you’re, you’re required to get, you know, flood insurance and homeowners. But a lot of these people in the upstate, I imagine they don’t have no flood. Uh, why would you, you’re not even close to, you know, you’re not close to the floodplain. Right. But the amount of water we saw come down was, well, well, it was 1000 year storm. Um, but again, that’s all NF IP national Flood program. That’s a different animal altogether. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But I’ll take in Florida, I’ll take a flood claim over, over a regular claim now because of all the limitations on, on regular homeowners insurance. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, let’s shift gears a little bit. So, so a, I is a, is a hot topic these days and I don’t, you know? Yeah. And I mean, you know, hopefully people, you know, I’m, I’m kind of looking at it as, as I saw the internet back, you know, everybody. Well, that’s kind of what I started doing. My old boss is like, oh, nobody goes to Google and when their house floods I’m like, you can’t be serious. Like what they don’t. I know. Well, and, and this is how I see a, I now like, it’s a big beast but it is not gonna slow down and it’s coming whether we like it or not. So, I mean, we’re, we’re working on some things and thinking a lot about it, how to integrate it no more gods. I mean, again, like you said, the efficiencies and the operational efficiencies and the time saving aspects is gonna be a game change. Um I, you, I imagine it’s gonna, I mean, as far as when it comes to estimates and the claims process, like what do you see happening in that world when it comes? A uh well, I heard, I keep hearing the um uh versions um on, on this theme of, of A I is not gonna take your job but a human that’s leveraging A I is gonna take your job and, and there’s, you know, we, yeah, the, the, the, the, the rumor mill and, and the just the overall sentiment keeps going to this, you know, a G I concept. Uh Advan advanced general intelligence, artificial general intelligence. Um And yes, once we reach, reach A G I, that’s gonna be a whole different thing and, and we’re all kind of screwed at that point, I would think. But until that point which we’re, you know, depends on who you ask. 5, 10 years away from A G I, uh the person that understands how to use these news tools is going to be, be at an incredible advantage. And so we’ve started, uh there’s some A I in what we do, uh we leverage exact mate, but we also leverage the, the actionable insights profile within exact mate. And that’s got some A I back to it. Um But I, I fully believe that five years from now there’s gonna be very little human estimating done and, and it’s gonna be up to the person who is leveraging the A I system of the day to get the best results out of their estimates. Um So I see. So right now, so, so let’s take what I did yesterday for an example, I drove to Portland yesterday to do an inspection but the drone on the roof did the thing automatically. I got a sketch back into exact mate directly into exact. I did a mata report in the house automatically. I got a sketch into exact. So those two things traditionally are done by a human being were done automatically and more efficiently and more accurately by a machine for me. And like it was ready for me before I got back, it was three hours to Portland and three hours back before I got back home last night, those resources were there ready for me to start using. Um I see that. Uh And but now I’ve got a, I, I wrote up a scope by hand. I sent it over to my estimator and he’s gonna work over the next couple of days to to write it up. That writing portion of it is gonna be automated. But for now that scoping portion that telling the story is still all human. There are, there are things out there. There’s a, there’s a, there’s an app called a platform called Impartial. It starts with an M partial. I think it’s impartial dot IO or impartial dot something. Uh that will take a before you do a before demolition scan, Mediport scan and you do a post mitigation meta report scan and the machine will infer what was done in between and it’ll write. It depends on who you ask. And, and I’ve seen it, it’ll write a 65% sheet and then a human has to take it another the rest of the way, 35% um that I that in systems like it are gonna get much, much better very quickly. And so I see a portion, I see a near future where there’s a 90% A I portion of estimating and a 403% human. Yeah, but that 10% human, it needs to be a very different, needs to have a different skill set than we have today. So there’s going to be AAA dearth of, of properly skilled and educated estimators here in the near future. Uh it because if you’re not on board with this thing, if you’re not learning it now, you’re behind. Yeah. And you, you will never catch up once this thing gets ahead of steam, you will never catch up. So that’s why I’m like, yeah, everything I’m playing with everything now like this background, like I told you. I told, I told mid journey to come up with a log and stone cabin on the Deschutes river and look at it. It’s gorgeous. The machine did this with a very short prompt and it’s beautiful, right? We, this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is, this is just the beginning. We are. I’m excited. Frankly. Honestly, I’m not, I’m not fear mongering. I’m not a, I’m not always gonna take all our jobs and, you know, it’s, it’s just the next iteration, the next natural evolution of, you know, the, the industrial revolution turned a lot of people’s worlds upside down. The agricultural revolution turned a lot of people’s worlds upside down and it’s, it’s just evolve or die. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s uh you got to innovate, right? And if you don’t like to innovate. Yeah. Good luck. It’s coming. Whether you like it or not. I mean, I agree with you. I see there’s another tool in the tool belt. You gotta learn how to make, you know, just use it as a tool in the tool belt. Start tinkering with it, playing with it because I mean, I agree like the, the, the speed at which these, I mean, the Softwares and, and platforms that out there now and this is just the beginning but the, the amount of updates they release and then they’re like, hey, we just did an update. This one is not 10% better. It’s 2000%. But you know what I mean? Like the days I’m like, it’s scary, but the days of incremental improvement are over, there’s, there’s not gonna be anything incremental about it anymore. Um So I’ve got a, I’m gonna start name dropping stuff still. Um Brei is another platform that was built for public adjusters. Yeah, I think it’s really dot IO or something like that. So what I’m able to do is load emails, load insurance policies, loan load, you know, just claim stuff into Brei and then I hit a button that says print a proof of loss and it’ll print out a proof of loss with the insured’s name on it correctly. The insurance company, the, yeah, it’ll just, or, or print out a demand letter and it just does it. Um I, so I used open A I uh open A is chat GP T to create a GP T called rebel replies. So I take email strings from adjusters and I use it mainly to rebut ward laws and, and Sedgwick and, and, and third party administrators. Uh I load the entire email string and I just say, hey, what’s a, what’s an appropriate response? Give me a line by line response to their objections and it just does it because I loaded in the S 500 I loaded in uh uh some books that I use, I loaded in some of the stuff that I have done over the years. Right. I’ve, I’ve got my, my list of, of objection responses that I’ve developed over the years and I just put it in the machine and now the machine does a better response better. It responds more intelligently, more cogently and quicker than I ever could. So, why wouldn’t I use it? Right. Yeah. You know what I love about it too because, you know, there’s been a lot of talk about, you know, a good starting point. I mean, I don’t know, you could, there’s many places you can start with. The chat D BT is an easy one that you can start with. Um But you know, there’s, you gotta think about, you know, a skill set. Now. It’s kind of like, you know, they’re calling it Prompt engineering. It’s like, it’s only as good as the how you frame it and position it in the beginning and then it’ll go, I’ve played with that song, you know, depending on the input you give it and that’s to your point, you better know how to use it, right? Or you’re going to get, you know, not what you need, but if you learn how to prompt it correctly, the sky’s the limit. And then what’s awesome too is you can with that letter, for example, I’ve, I’ve played with this, I’m like, hey, give me three variations of it within three seconds, boom, boom, boom, boom, take pieces from each variable, copy them into one done like the amount of time saving us and, and these are like, this is just one example we’re talking about like, the, it’s, it’s endless opportunities. But I just, like I wrote a course, I wrote a course and I did the course I made $5000 from a course that a, I wrote most of it. Yeah. That’s, wow. Yeah, that’s awesome. Why wouldn’t it? Yeah, it’s, um, and even, you know, now with Chat G BT and all that, you know, with the being able to, like you said that one software you said does this, but even Chat G BT, you can do this. I mean, you could upload PDF S files video like and have it just go through it and then have it summarized like, I mean, the sky is the limit I get excited by because I’m like, this is why you can just give it and it doesn’t take like four hours to read through it or whatever. It just knows. Like, you know, I mean, look at, look at what it’s done to zoom meetings, right? You know, I don’t, I don’t have it in this one because we told it, you know, we were recording for this. But ordinarily I’d have read A I in here and then as soon as we’re done R Ira, I sends me a report and says this is what you guys talked about and here’s the action items we recommend you take based on the meeting, you just had it’s like, yeah. Well, it’s almost a lot of it is, is information overload, I think still, I, I think, um, we as a society and, and, and, uh, especially us tech forward people. We’ve started to adopt too many things, I think. Um, uh, I’ve reached the point where I’ve had to actually pull back and go. Ok. I, that’s a great, and I could see where it might be useful later on, but right now it’s way too much information. Right. I don’t, I don’t need another app to give me another 10 things on my, to do list because my to do list is already full. Uh, but what I’ve actually done, I’ve got another. Yeah. A I, I’m, I’m, I’m on Jamie. I’m, I’m, like full in, I’m like both feet into a, I, so there’s a, there’s an app I use called Motion which tracks my calendar tracks my to do list from another app and then it prioritizes it and changes it and if I don’t get it done, guess what, it shows up on my calendar later on. And it’s constantly rearranging. Like I, I could see it right now in the background it’s rearranging stuff as I don’t get this done because. Ok. Boop. It’s, you know, it’s, it, it’s, it’s a personal assistant largely. Um, I think we’re, we’re pretty close to the, to the point where it’s gonna be like, I’ll be like, hey, I need to make an appointment with a doctor next week and it’ll do it right. Yeah. No, I, I agree it’s coming and I like you and I think for our listeners, like, if anybody wanted that. Well, where do I start? I mean, you know, just go to open A is Chad G BT and Chad G BT is a great place. Yeah. Just tinker with it because I like you. I, I went, I think way too hard, way too fast and, but I’m like you, I started a resource document. I probably have about 50 of them on there. That, but like you, I was like, I, I was like, you know, this isn’t solving the problem I’m trying to solve now. I just don’t need to go down that route and all I have, you know, you gotta keep the main thing, the main thing. But I, I thought I kept them there because like you now I’m like, oh, I bet I can let them out to help with this or because there’s a meal and, and, yeah, I can’t imagine if I, like, looked in this all day, every day because I, I came up, I found 50 different good ones. I’ve heard that. Yeah. And then it is wild and, and now they’re all probably, you know, 100 times better since, you know, from a month ago when I went through. But I don’t know, it, it’s exciting times but II, I agree, I think, um, that learning how to use it and run it and just maybe pick one thing at a time, play with it and then you can start going to multiple departments in your company. Hey, because it’ll open up your brain will start going, man. It helped me expedite this process. What about this process in this department or job descriptions in hr like that look like done. You don’t have to go like come up like it’ll give you the starting point, you tweak it specific to your company, add your little lingo, whatever and then done like there’s so many plays with it. Um It’s just, I mean, there’s, it’s, it’s such a time saver like if I was at hr and I need to come up with job descriptions, I would just load up all the other job descriptions we’ve already had and say, hey, this is, this is the new, this is a new t new job. Please write a description. I mean, that’s, and that’s all it would take. No other input required and it would be perfect. Yeah. And if you need to tweak it, you could like drop, you know, a paragraph company bio and your core values or whatever and say, hey, add these in done and then, and then you have Yeah, it’s, I’ve got a, I’ve got a GP T thread right now where I feed it. I’ve got a template of information. I feed it, but then it’ll look at the information I gave it and it sends out emails, collections emails. It’s a 30 day email. It’s a 35 day email. It’s a 40 day email. It’s, and, and it just escalates up, uh, you know, according to what I told it to escalate up to, but it’s writing these emails that traditionally just collections in restoration companies. Right. It’s a full time deal. You need a full time employee handling these things. And if you don’t have that, that’s where thing you just, you’re just getting behind and behind behind, right? So leverage A I to so you don’t have to. Yeah, maybe you’re getting, you’re, you’re a million dollar operator and you’re about to be a $2 million operator, right? Instead of hiring another body to have your, have the existing person leverage A I. So it increases their productivity two X three X five X and you keep your overhead down but you actually increase your productivity. Yeah, that’s where A I is gonna be properly leveraged. It is gonna replace humans but it’s, it’s gonna replace dumb humans, not smart ones. Yeah. Just, yeah, you either learn to ride it or you get run over by. Right. Yeah. Walk there. And what I say is, is, is good, bad or in different, make a decision because the, the road of life is paved with flat squirrels that couldn’t make a decision. So make a decision and if it’s the wrong decision, guess what? You get to make a different decision later on, learn from it and go. But this, this indecision paralysis, this analysis paralysis. A lot of guys feed into. Well, I want to do the best A I or I want to do the best XYZ. Well, perfect is never gonna happen and it’s gonna prevent you from making decisions, which is prevents you from making forward progress. So make a decision, just decide and you get to change your mind. That’s the magic of being a human being. You get to take in more information. Oh Based on my experience, this wasn’t such a good idea. I’m gonna come up with a different idea. I’m gonna take a, take a different tack now based on past experience. Yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s no one that’s gonna do this perfectly. But there are people that are gonna try and fail and try and fail and try and fail. But I’m a huge fan of, I’m, I’m keep dropping these, these ISMs but fail fast, fall forward. Yeah. Yeah. And, and we have a saying in our country too. Gun is better. Perfect when you think about it all day, that’s not gonna speed of execution is what matters, right? And, and that goes in the, the is too like money loves speed like it’s you, you gotta, you gotta get going and just, and yes, you will hit roadblocks along the way. Speed bumps. That’s, that’s life, that’s business. Get over it right. Pick your head up and keep going, learn from it, just don’t stop. Um, the obstacle is the way. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good book. Actually, I wrote that. I say, and I actually, when you, when you’re talking about, um, I haven’t read this in a while I should revisit it, you know. But thinking grow rich classic. I’m pretty sure decisiveness is one of the principles. Make a decision, like, just make a decision. Yeah, that’s another good book. S goes away. Very good book too. Cool. We’re coming up on the hour here. So we’ll uh we’ll, we’ll wrap it up. So if somebody wants to, you know, learn more about you, your company, your Facebook group, what’s the easiest way for them to find you? Uh Yeah, email me Andy at Claims delegates.com. Uh And if you’re a restorer and you want to get into the rebel group, it’s just search for restoration rebels on Facebook and uh you gotta fill out a couple questions, right? We don’t just let everybody in there. Um But then we’ll rock and roll, we’ll get you in and get you going. Um And you know, always hear I want to help, right? If, if you’re not a good fit for my company, we’ll find out. But, but don’t be afraid to ask me the question. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Andrew, I appreciate your time. This was, this was awesome. I could get you back on here again. I think Yeah, we, we covered a lot of different topics with a lot of good stuff. So, uh yeah, everybody, you know where to find them, you know, go to Google Plains delegates. Andrew, you’ll find the Restoration Rebels, Facebook group and um the conversations there and, and get on linkedin, linkedin, Andrew G mccabe. It’s, it’s a great place to start. Awesome. All right. Well, that wraps up this episode of the Restoration Success Show. Till next time everyone enjoy the rest of your day. See you.