SPEAKERS

Dylan McCabe, Justin Land

Dylan McCabe  00:00

Roofing mastery podcast episode number 16 Welcome to roofing mastery podcast I am Dylan McCabe, your host and in every episode we give you a seat at the table as we interview owners and CEOs of roofing and general contracting companies and industry experts, so that you can get tips and tactics and strategies from them to take your own company to the next level. Now in this episode, I interviewed Justin lane, he is co founder with his father of Max for claims specialists, his father was actually a senior adjuster at a big insurance company, he literally trained 1000s of desk adjusters on what to approve and disapprove with general contracting scopes of work and insurance claims. Then he went and created a supplement company and now he helps general contractors, you are going to get a ton out of this, you’re going to learn about things like how to get traction with desk adjusters, things to do and things to avoid. He’s gonna also talk about getting black flagged by insurance companies, something you definitely want to avoid. He’s going to give you insider tips on how to form your estimates. And he’s also going to talk about some closing advice that everybody needs to listen to, you’re going to get a lot out of this. Before we do that, I’ve got one shameless plug for our roofing CEO groups. But I got to ask you a question. Do you have a grip on your business? Or does your business have a grip on you? Well, let’s be honest. How are you doing in the areas? That what we call a six key components? How are you doing in the area of vision? Do your people see what you’re saying? Do you have a vision that’s shared and embraced by all? And has that vision been turned into a 10? year plan? a three year plan and a one year plan with 90 day goals? How are you doing on the people component? Have you surrounded yourself with the right people? Or the right people in the right seats? How are you doing with the data component your business? Do you have measurables in place? And are you keeping score? What about issues? Do you guys identify, discuss and solve issues together and make decisions? Or do things just keep getting pushed down the road? And how are you doing in the process component? Do you have core values that are clear and shared and followed by all? And has that process been documented and illustrated? If you can’t answer those questions with confidence, you can take our test it’ll take you about five minutes, just go to roofing mastery comm you can take our tests you there will be 20 specific questions, and you can rate yourself from one to five. And then of course if you’d like to discuss further, you can jump on a short strategy call with us to talk about how this process we have in place with our roofing CEO groups has been used by 80,000 business owners and entrepreneurs worldwide. There’s no mistake to success. People don’t get there by accident. They have a strategy and a proven process in place. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, we would love to talk to you about that. And you can join the waitlist for one of our roofing CEO groups if you’d like to take it to the next level. But it all starts with taking that quiz. So just head over to roofing mastery.com and you can take the quiz for free today. Alright guys, let’s jump into this episode and my interview with Justin land. All right, as I stayed away a special guest on the show today, Justin land with Max for claims. Justin, thanks for being on the show.

Justin Land  03:10

Man. Thanks so much deal and excited to be here.

Dylan McCabe  03:13

I am too because in our discovery call you really surprised me with with answers that you had to some of my questions about supplementing about scope of work about things that you guys have done for general contractors, and a lot of it was new information to me. And it really impressed me so I’m looking forward to digging into this but just for our listeners who may not know you may not be real familiar with supplementing companies in general kind of share your background story how you got into the business and then let’s talk about max for claims.

Justin Land  03:45

Sure, man, you know, my backgrounds actually two part is construction and ministry. Believe it or not, man I spent about 15 years on a pastor staff at a church building teams, mission trips, things like that. having a lot of fun, man, I have a big heartbeat for kind of like the global and local impact efforts so loved that my construction background started, you know, with remodels, flip some houses then you know built a few custom homes with my father and some other things and man I’ve just always enjoyed being a part of something that’s bigger than myself, you know, teamwork type things. So that’s my background. Yeah.

Dylan McCabe  04:23

And then let’s talk about how max for claims was born and the the kind of the problem you guys tried to try to solve?

Justin Land  04:29

Yeah, sure, man. So our company, it’s really cool. It’s a father son duo. I know people over over the years have told me don’t work with family, but man, I see the opposite. My father is a blast to work with. And so we’re a supplement and claims company our focus really is supplements we serve roofers and GCS. We exist to increase our clients bottom line by helping them maximize every insurance claim and we walk them right through the process. We want to make it easier for these guys. They work really hard. They spend a lot of time you know away from their families. And our goal man really is to maximize those efforts so that they have more time and more profit. maxforce story man, it starts back with Ray. So my dad he actually got started in this field in 2008. With his independent adjusters license, he was first assigned to Deepwater Horizon in Florida I’m sure you remember that man. The they made a movie about it and all that stuff, but Ray was actually responsible for, for processing 1000s of claims for damage and loss. And from there, man, he spent years kind of working as an IRA, he became what you call a senior file examiner in the insurance company. So it’s basically the the leading desk adjuster for insurance companies, their senior file examiners, and then they train all the desk adjusters. And so yeah, man, he eventually decided to use the skills and knowledge for the roofer contractor instead of working directly for the insurance companies. And after spent about 10 years in the insurance company world, he launched max for January of 2018, actually, and I jumped on board with him soon after part of that he spent a couple of years working for some, some roofing companies that were doing it. And he said, Man, I can I can do this better if we just launched on our own.

Dylan McCabe  06:12

So okay, so let’s back up. You said he became a senior file. What would you call that?

Justin Land  06:18

Yeah, senior file examiner. So man, I call them the Navy SEALs of subs, they really are like, the top notch, kind of the leadership guys who train all the desk adjusters. So when a roofer or GC does a supplement, it’ll go to a desk adjuster, Ray spent years training those guys for multiple insurance companies.

Dylan McCabe  06:39

All right, so of course, something comes to my mind, which is 90% of the time, or maybe it’s 99% of the time. And when we send an estimate of scope to scope of work. It always has more stuff on it than what the desk adjuster put on there. It gets knocked down and they say, Oh, no, we can’t do that. Oh, we can’t do this either. We can’t do that either. Oh, not overhead and profit. This is not sophisticated enough. And oh, that’s why we don’t see any code issue there. And it’s just like, it just drives me insane. So is your your dad was the guy that trained 1000s of guys to basically, you know, filter out what gets approved and what doesn’t?

Justin Land  07:18

That’s exactly right, man. He trained all of those guys on you know, what, what did the photos look like? are we dealing with professionals? Do these roofer GCS even know what they’re talking about? All those kinds of thing, man, that’s what re trained. That’s what that’s who re trained. So yeah,

Dylan McCabe  07:33

so did he just have, like a lightbulb moment to say, you know, I really want to stop doing this and going through the whole wrestling match, I

Justin Land  07:42

want to kind of flip and get on the other side of the table and start helping contractors. He did, man, it was an epiphany. So most of our family is in roofing or construction. He and I both were blue collar dudes, you know, I mean, we we’ve built we love that process. And it’s hard, man. It’s hard work. He and I both have put on roofs. So we know what putting on a roof you know, consists of and what parts you need. And what you’ll find Dylan is most of these desk adjusters have never put on a roof. They have no idea. They just know what the books tell them. They know what their adjuster trainers tell them. That’s it. Yeah, that’s that’s what they that’s what they go by man are numbers and stats, and does it fit into the insurance company’s standard?

Dylan McCabe  08:27

Yep, you’ve got an educated people trying to make educated decisions, and it drives me crazy. And you find it in every sector. I mean, you’ve got, you’ve got attorneys in health care, deciding how patients should be covered on certain drugs and not other drugs. Instead of doctors, doctors should be making those decisions and same thing in general contracting, and that just drives me crazy. We had one yesterday, we sent in a supplement. Ban the desk adjuster was just like, No, no, no. And he was even wrong. The crazy thing is is like, dude, you just straight up wrong, like this is a code issue. Yeah. And you’re saying that if there’s no issue with that item, though, you know, the flashing around the chimney and stuff almost like, yeah, I’m a newcomer to this industry. I’ve only been in this industry at the time of recording this podcast about six months. And of course, my my learning process has been microwave because I’m going through training every day, but then also interviewing guests on our podcast catches me up to speed on a lot of stuff. So, you know, you find out very quickly that a lot of these guys just don’t have a clue what they’re what they’re doing. So I think it’s awesome that you guys help contractors with that. You kind of help take that burden off of them. Sure. And a lot of ways and you guys run that process where your dad was one of those Navy SEAL type players in that industry training all those desk adjusters so he knows and you guys know, better than anybody else, what to do, what not to do what they’re looking for. And we’re gonna get into all that. So let’s, let’s get into a case study. Let’s get into a story of where you guys got involved with a general contractor. And it was a big turning point because I know that A lot of people listening to this that may be thinking, Oh, yeah, okay, a supplement company would be helpful. But I can do that. I can do exactly. I can send that supplement in. But they may not realize how big of a difference it makes when you work with an expert.

Justin Land  10:13

Yeah, that’s great. No, I’ve heard this before. Right, you get elite results with elite professionals, right, elite results with elite people. And I believe that man, I think we’re way better together. I really do. I think that contractors, and roofers should be out there selling and taking care of customers. That’s what they’re extraordinary at. And we hear it all the time, you know, hey, we’ve got an in house got, you know, dabbled in supplements, we’ll be fine. We hear that. But like you said earlier, you’re kind of getting an intense training right now. And you’re talking about the flashy? I mean, the second you say that the very first thing I know my dad would say is okay, we’ll go back to that desk adjuster and tell him, I tell you what, I’m just going to add a couple of extra man hours and exact teammate, because, you know, my guy is gonna have to crimp that flashing and pull up the shingles and install it correctly. And that’s going to take more time. So why don’t you keep the price of the flashing? And I’ll add time for labor? Will you go there? And the desk adjuster will say, absolutely. So those are some of those intense learning things that, you know, a desk adjuster may see 30 or 40 claims a day, you know, based on what their workload is. Ray saw 160 to 260 claims per day. And he had to wrangle all of these troubled cases the desk adjusters couldn’t manage they’d send right to management, which was Ray, and I think men, you know, this with GCS, too, when these guys have been in the field, and they’re very passionate about developing and learning and growing, it’s almost no limit to their expertise. And so that’s our goal. Man, we strive for that we don’t, we don’t have all the answers. But man, I’ll tell you what, no one works harder than we do to get those answers and to try and connect dots. So yeah, case studies, ran our stat nerds, man, you’ll find that on our website, we are stat nerds, we love numbers, we feel like results are tangible. I don’t like hype at all. I like just just show me the real things. And the real numbers. Give me a great relationships, show me great results. I’m happy. Okay, so one case study that we have, I think is really cool. We have a client, okay. And it’s funny, man. The first one I hear is often like this, and this is exactly what our clients said. They said, the whole insurance claims and settlement process is such a pain, man. It’s just not worth the hassle to us. Okay, well, we said, Hey, we you give us a chance to look over your claims for the last two to four months, and let’s just see what you missed. And at the time, they had a supplement guy, okay, they were paying a guy to do supplements. So what we did was we went over their past roofs for the past four months. And in just four months, man, we found and got approved an additional $265,000. That’s a big deal, man. And get this deal in man, if you fast forward to a total of nine months, right? We worked through we found we approved for this very same client, man, check this out $565,050 in just nine months. So that is over a half a million dollars that our company specifically was able to bring to the table for this roofer that literally was money on the ground, they would never see it. And they had a supplement guy to start out with. So the the results man, our actual, that’s one case study. Here’s another story, man, I love this one. We have this client who’s been voted The Very Best Roofer in their state for the past four years running. Okay, prior to using us as their in house supplement team, they always added Valley liner and drip edge to every roof, their main priority man was to make sure that their customers were covered and taken care of no matter what. So you got to take that that cost, the average cost for them was about $800 per roof that they were paying out of pocket. They just did that. Not a big deal, right until you start doing the numbers. Okay. So this is crazy, they do about 600 storm and insurance routes a year. That means that they were spending with that 800 per roof $480,000 of their own profit, to add these items to take care of their customers, should they be paying for that no insurance company should pay for that. So Ray came along, we taught them how to take the right pictures. We use the same estimating platform that the insurance companies use and our expertise man, we were able to get these two items approved and paid for by the insurance companies almost every time because this is actually a code item in their state. And we proved it to the insurance companies. And we just we send them all this stuff man saying hey, at our company codes show bla bla bla bla bla and our state, please approve, right? Because this is actually a code item and they approve it. So it’s an extra $480,000 instantly to their bottom line. So that goes back to my point, right? Is it worth the hassle? I mean, is it worth 400 $80,000 you know, that’s kind of my philosophy dinner.

Dylan McCabe  15:04

Yeah, that’s crazy to me that somebody that’s two examples where a company left 500 over 500,000 or close to $500,000 on the table, which is nuts, because you guys got involved, it wasn’t any additional work for the contractor. And you guys basically got them an extra half a million dollars in one year. I mean, that’s just wild to me. But the other thing that stands out to me, this is my takeaway from that, I want to hear your key takeaway from that. My big takeaway from that is the first case study I mentioned. They were already working with a supplement company. And so that just goes to show you just like in every industry, not all Roofing Companies the same not not every doctor is the same. And I have a buddy that sells medical devices. And he trains surgeons on how to plan his device. He was like, dude, there is one surgeon I would allow to operate on me in Dallas one he’s like, yeah, I want to know, the level of incompetence and just lack of talent when it comes to some of these guys, because they’re basically like a carpenter on your body. And it just freaks me out. But Same thing with this, like, you guys are obviously highly skilled, you’re very passionate. You take this to the next level. And like you mentioned, like elite you get elite results within elite team. And that that’s my biggest takeaway is whatever we do whoever we utilize as a as a team player in our company, man, they need to just be crushing it. What what’s your key takeaway from all that?

Justin Land  16:32

Now, that’s fantastic, man, I believe in empowering people big time. I don’t like making processes harder. I love the development process. So I think when you see potential in teammates, man, you, you set very clear expectations. And then you turn them loose, and then you reassess, you set very clear expectations and you turn them loose and over time, and I think that pattern really empowers people, right? It turns them loose man, which creates even more passion. So sticking around and passion to empower people, man, that’s that’s a good day at work. You know, so we believe in that same kind of motto for us, man, we only hire senior examiner’s because we found such great high success with Ray and him being in the pressure cooker for 10 years. We only hire 10 year senior examiner’s because we think you know what, because Ray can go down and he can go You know what, you’re never going to see the following types of claims until you hit about five or six years. And you’re never going to hit following kind of trouble claims to hit about seven or eight years, you know, and he just knows this. And so we’re like, man, let’s empower people. Let’s put great expectations in front of them. Let’s help them build their own expectations and goals. Let’s turn them loose. And then we’ll start the cycle all over again. That’s one takeaway, man, I agree with you. Second takeaway is this. I actually only told you the statistics for nine months with that company, which was 565. I actually pulled this morning the same companies notes. I was just curious. Again, I’m a stat nerd. In 11 months, 11 months, okay, we’re not even at the year mark, we actually have brought $864,000 to that same company.

Dylan McCabe  18:05

No grief. That’s it. Now Now, it’s just a lack of knowledge on my NBA, again, in being relatively new the industry. When you guys come in, you’ve uncovered this 800 grand? Well, at what point is it closed out to where? Who cares if you can get that stuff approved? The Job’s been done, the contractors moved on. Can they still get a check for that?

Justin Land  18:26

Yeah, absolutely. So key, obviously, is integrity and accuracy. Okay, so we’re not talking about doing anything dishonest here. Sure. There’s price listing updates. If roofers aren’t updating their priceless to the day, that’s money insurance companies should pay because that’s something that you paid as a roofer. You don’t need to you don’t need to take that loss, Roofing Companies man that the mo and if you study the industry, if you back up about five to 10 years ago, for forever, man, roofing companies were about let’s just get as many as possible, just as many routes as many routes as many routes well, industries change now, quality is better and shingles, you know, that people are just smarter, you know, the industry is a little more efficient, you know, your customer is smarter with what style of shingle they want and why. And so now it should become efficiency. And as you start to see these companies that are really producing and really growing great teams and really serving their communities man, they are they are one able to put care into their work but to they’re able to be profitable, because they are becoming smarter and they’re they’re connecting with the right teams to make their whole team better. So it really should be efficiency not necessarily quantity anymore. And yeah, I know there’s there’s target goals and you want more routes and all this that’s great. But you really want it to be efficient.

Dylan McCabe  19:47

Yeah, I like that efficiencies, huge efficiency and processes, I mean, enables you to focus on the main things even better. Well, let’s let’s let me ask you another big question of what’s something that you see over and over Over and over again, with your clients where they basically face a challenge of not using a supplement company and not partnering with somebody who’s got that elite knowledge and training what’s, what’s the biggest challenge they face and getting their estimates approved is great, man. One of the challenges is it’s kind of a misconception about claims companies are supplementing is like adjusters know what it takes to put on a roof. You know,

Justin Land  20:26

I hear that all the time. I talked to a guy just yesterday, and he said, I don’t know that I need you guys. I pretty much trust my adjusters and I work with, you know, five or six of them pretty consistently. But man, listen, I’m sorry, that’s just not a true fact. Most of those adjusters they literally work from their numbers and their training and what they’ve been taught and they add numbers and marks to to their estimate in order to come up with a number. Right and so it’s a really good idea man to have a checks and balance systems. Just to double check those guys. It will blow your mind how many times we actually look at an adjusters estimate. And the roofing measurements are wrong. The most the most simple elementary part of an estimate it’s wrong or they miss refunds all the time. Or they won’t pay for custom flashy and they just call it you know waste you know or miss cornice returns. Let me tell you a huge one. This is this is a big one. Everyone needs to listen to this one man about cornice returns. Okay, so typically adjusters think that that’s waste, that’s what they’ve been taught. Okay, so you know I’m talking about with the cornice, cornice return the little strips. Okay. So to replace those man, it’s extra shingles, right, you have to move your ladder for each one, which takes more time. So most insurance carriers will pay $85 per cornice return with proper pictures and documentation. They usually pay about 100 bucks for two story homes. So we had to supplement with 14 Cornish returns that were missed. Not on there. The adjuster said waste. We said no, no, that’s impossible. It’s not waste. So we got this approved. Man, that’s that’s an additional 14 $100 that was approved. If that adjuster misses them on every roof. He does imagine that miscalculation.

Dylan McCabe  22:11

It’s a lot of money..

Justin Land  22:12

That’s a lot of money, brother.. You know, and it depends on the area you’re in. But there are some areas without a lot of corners returns I would probably say average for us is about nine in a couple of areas we serve. So do the numbers there nine times 85 or 100. I mean, you’re missing 850 bucks. $900. Easy on almost every one of those that supposedly waste. They don’t know they didn’t put them they didn’t put a roof on.

Dylan McCabe  22:36

And if this guy’s looking at 1000 claims a year. I mean, it’s a million bucks.

Justin Land  22:39

That’s a million bucks. That’s all that nerd I like that.

Dylan McCabe  22:43

Yeah, pulled out my calculator real quick. So okay, man. Yeah, so yeah, it’s just crazy to me that things that go down and you know, we do run across some guys that are just great to work with as desk adjusters. Absolutely. And they’re not they’re pounding their chests and I’m a big bad desk adjuster. I know everything. They we actually have a reasonable conversation. The thing that kills me is it’s so rare. Yeah, it’s just so rare. And and one time recently, Miller, my business partner was like, Hey, man, I’m just I’m just curious. What’s your background? We had developed a good rapport with a guy that was up on the roof with us. And so not the desk adjuster, but the guy they sent out to go up on the roof. Yeah. Any Miller said, Man, I’m just curious, you know, we, you’ve been great to work with. But we have all different experiences. What do you do before this? And they asked me and I was a pastry chef. Yeah. Like, this is the problem. Man.

Justin Land  23:38

Same thing happened. A couple of months ago, Dylan, one of our clients said, Hey, we’re having a hard time with this process. Would you guys just come out? And you know, where one of our company’s hats and just be an extra eye for us? We said absolutely. We don’t typically do it, but it was commercial. And so the adjusters out there and I’m talking to the adjuster, you know, and playing it cool. He thinks we’re from the roofing company. That’s how we always go in, you know, as a part of the team. And he basically said, You know, I asked him, What did you do before this? He goes, man, I have zero knowledge about roofs really. He said, I took a bunch of classes. And before this, I was a drone operator. Wow. Okay. And this is the same guy that basically, you know, we were saying, Hey, what’s that? He’s, oh, well, I don’t know. What do you think that could be? You know, so it’s just, it’s a wild process, man. And so I’m always of the mind that checks and balances, keep people honest. They just did. You know, and you’d ask me about biggest challenges that roofers and GCS? Fine, right? Number one man and you said it earlier. It’s just not a level playing field. It’s just not. Insurance companies control it. You know, you have you have an exceptional professional and the insurance company trained to save insurance company money where they can, that’s their job, not trained to put on a roof, trained to save and negotiate for insurance companies. That’s it. All right. Then you got those guys talking with roofers. GCS and supplement guys who talk a totally different language that have not been trained by the insurance companies. Plus, there’s no one standard in the insurance company. There’s not a single standard. It’s wild. Banks have FDIC football has the NFL. I mean, hopefully, right? PGA, you’ve got all that. But in the insurance company, man, it’s different between each carrier. That shouldn’t be. So it is crazy man.

Dylan McCabe  25:25

Yeah, creates a lot of trouble. It does. Well, now I want to ask you a question about something that, you know, you hear about this. But sometimes people don’t really know how concrete it is or how it really works. You mentioned to me that if you do things the wrong way, or you cause too much trouble, you can be black flagged by the insurance company, what the heck is what does that mean? How does it happen? I mean, you know, I got a little scared, I’m like, shoot, you know, we don’t play around. I mean, we’re about to send another claim. We’re, we’re not going to send a claim. We have educated the homeowner on their rights as a homeowner, yeah. And they are going to invoke appraisal. All right. And so we don’t when the insurance company comes back to us and says, No, no, no, no, we remind the homeowner that, hey, you own this process. This is your home, it’s your way you have, here’s your rights, if you want to know what you can do, and a lot of times our clients decide to invoke appraisal. So, you know, are we in danger of getting Black Flag damage? So let’s break this down.

Justin Land  26:25

Now, that’s good, man. That’s a good question. Now, you’re not going to get black flag for that you should actually be praised for that. So that’s a really good education for your homeowner, man. And again, that is their process. That’s why they pay premiums, they they pay premiums. So when Storm Damage happens, that they can get back to where they were before the storm, right. That’s why they pay premium. So the more we can educate our customers, you know, our customers as a claims company is always the owner and the project managers of the clients we work with, right, but your customers are always the insured. And so you have to educate those guys the same that way that I’m trying to educate our roofers and GCS, because we do need to have it as as even a playing field as we can, because the odds are against us. So no black flag, man, you should get credit for that black thing, it’s actually pretty common. So specifically, more common with third party claims companies. Okay, so I’ve got this from the horse’s mouth many times from other claims companies, as well as and this one is what matters to me. I got it from Ray. So when Ray was a senior file examiner, he was actually trained and trained his desk adjusters to look out for third party companies. Here’s why Dylan is these are claims companies that speak as themselves and not as the roofing company. So there’s a detachment there, you know, and it’s a disconnect. It’s a disconnect from the pricing from the roof from the company owner, all of that from the process, even the area, they may not even be in the area, they may have never gone to North Carolina where the roof has been claimed, right. So there’s a huge disconnect. So in general, man like, and I know this again, because I’ve heard this several times that insurance companies will actually take that claim, and they’ll put it on the bottom of the list.

Dylan McCabe  28:14

So how does that so when you say third part, which is crazy to me, but but I believe it? Because I’ve heard it multiple times now in the last couple of months. But you’re telling me a third party company? So are you saying, you say it, let’s say I’m the general contractor, I’ve got there’s a large loss claim here in Dallas, because of my relationships, I can get in there. And but I want to outsource somebody to do the scopes and all that stuff. And run with that, since they’re great at that I’m good at sales. They’re really good at detailed scopes, and stuff like that. So with them doing is that what you’re talking about as a third party company? Or what kind of what’s

Justin Land  28:50

Okay, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, man. You know, for instance, man, I spent a half a day with a guy who is a leader in the industry as a claims company, okay, large charge, I will never name them or anything. They’re doing some really great things. But I literally asked him, I said, Hey, man, what’s your approval rating? I just like to know, I kind of wanted to see where Ray and I were with the whole scope of things. We’re always trying to hit mark and said, What’s your approval rating for your clients? He goes, Oh, man, I don’t know. And this guy’s an owner, I said, you don’t know. Like, you don’t know like of everything you submit What is your approved claims versus not approved, but it’s not and I don’t care. He said it’s all about the mass numbers like the more claims we can get, the better the odds over over long term. And I said that’s true, but you know, it kind of proves the point Dylan, you know, the the industry standard right now and you can find this on almost any website is 40 to 60 day turnaround. So from the time a roofer works his butt off to get photos, Eagle view and the original estimate and a job folder and he has the signed agreement and he’s ready to rock. Typically, that dude it will be 40 to 60 days before That man or woman gets their approved approval from the insurance company from their claims company. And during it, good luck trying to get somebody on the telephone. Good luck trying to be like, Hey, man, give me a status update. You know, maybe next week, the week after the week after, they’ll call you, you know, I just think, man, you’ve got to really be smart with those kinds of things.

Dylan McCabe  30:22

Yep, no kidding. And so does this go. In your experience? Does this also go for public adjusters and stuff like that? If you know, if you over leverage those resources to the insurance companies start to say, okay, they want to keep playing hardball, it’s black flag them?

Justin Land  30:37

No, I don’t think so. Man, I think if you do it, right, there’s a process. I mean, insurance companies expect the process. And this is another tidbit. Here’s a pro tip for some of your listeners. So if you even work in exactly, mate, only put two pictures per page and label them. Here’s why. Because insurance companies at the highest level have been trained that if they see more than one photo, or less than one photo, on an exact date, you know, format that they know, they’re not a trained professional. No one tells you that. But the second they see your format your layout, the second don’t know, okay, we’ve got the upper hand, no problem. And they know where they can push. So you really kind of have to have the eye sight of Okay, what game and I hate to call it a game, but it kind of is what game is the insurance plane here and what really is the end results for them versus the best end result for our client, the roofer supported by the insured? How do we get the best results here? As a as an industry?

Dylan McCabe  31:40

Okay, well, let’s talk about that knowing what you know, doing what you guys do. Let’s hear some insider pro tips about how general contractors can get the most traction in this process is they deal with insurance companies.

Justin Land  31:52

Yeah, fantastic, man. First of all, you need to find a company who sees the importance of a fast turnaround, they really do need to care about your cash flow. Cash Flow is king for small to medium sized businesses, when I say that it’s five to $35 million companies, okay. And even smaller than that cash flow is especially King, okay, you could have two or three jobs that that break you. So when doing a job man, a contractor should not have to be the bank for that job. The insurance should be, which means very fast turnarounds. So again, remember, you know, turnaround in the industry is typically 40 to 60 days, it can be faster than that. But that’s the average. It’s it’s all over the website, you can find it all over the industry. So make sure that your supplement team understands that fast. turnaround is one it’s one of your focuses. And it’s one of their focuses. Right.

Dylan McCabe  32:41

Okay, what so what’s your typical turnaround?

Justin Land  32:43

Yeah, man. Good question. Ours is seven days. Wow. Yeah, some sometimes it goes beyond that, you know, but our average on every single claim that we’ve turned in and again, we’re stat nerds is seven days.

Dylan McCabe  32:57

Okay. All right. I don’t want to stop you from the next point. Sure.

Justin Land  33:00

Let me hit you a couple more that I love this man. And I want guys to get this partner with a real pro. I said earlier, right, elite teams create elite results. I really believe that. And here’s what I know about most roofers and GCS, man. They’re really great at selling product. They hustle. They’re excellent at supervising repairs and making sure the job gets done right. There are men and women all over who own roofing companies that are excellent at that. But they are not good at claims process. I’ve yet to find one. And I’m sure they’re out there. It’s the unicorn, right? But I’ve yet to find it, man. It’s just a lot of time. A lot of back and forth a lot of knowledge to be good at it. It is a craft. Okay. And I’m a believer, man, I can the right team creates the right results. And I’ve even heard you say before on this podcast deal, and I love it man, that like the caliber of their training and their connection to one another really makes a good team. Man. I love that. I totally believe in that. Let me give you another one really quick tip. I would check and I mentioned it earlier, I would check your approval rating, I would ask him. Hey, man, what is your approval rating of all the claims you submit for your clients? What’s your approval rating? Because man, I believe every claim counts. I really do. We have something that’s really quick. We love all insurance claims to come to us still. And because we’ll say hey, if we find nothing, we will tell you very quickly. It’s not worth your time on this. Something that we love man is local inspectors and local adjusters. A lot of our roofing companies work with the same guys, you know, so do we, we don’t want to hurt that relationship. That’s a misnomer of supplements. I’m going to hurt the relationship with my you know, my local inspector. No, you’re not. If you do it professionally, it actually goes above his head in the process and goes straight to the insurance company. Right. But it’s it’s this ongoing conversation of finding the best results for that insured. Let’s see, do they have free training, they should have free training, they should train you if they’re the professional. They should train every one of your Salesforce How to take the best photos? And why give the why behind those photos, the angles the shots by? I don’t know who does that. I don’t I don’t know who doesn’t do that. But there’s a lot of great resources out there, that should be one and then ask a couple of questions man, like, what do they care about in business? You know, we had one client recently, Dylan that basically got angry with us, it’s the only client we’ve lost. It’s crazy. We’ve lost only one client over the past couple years. And he basically said, you’re not, you’re not getting enough out there off the tree, like you’re still leaving some fruit on the tree. As far as claims go, and we said, Man, it is not worth your time to pull teeth on this last $300, we’re telling you, it’s going to take you five weeks to do it, the insurance company is going to get mad at you, your local adjuster is going to just be pissed. It is not worth your relationships, man to burn that tree and to strip all the fruit. Your turnaround time is going to turn into eight weeks. You know, like your $300 short, I think we’re good. We got our average is 40 $700 on a roofing claim supplement. Okay, so we got in close to that. So what do you care about in business, we care about relationships, and we care about results.

Dylan McCabe  36:12

That’s good. Because at the end of the day, people work with people they know, like and trust. Now that didn’t get a lot of favor with people when you’re kind. And you think about the long term relationship. That’s great. I love that you said that.

Justin Land  36:24

Yeah, I’ve got a friend man who says the kindest thing to give people is information. You know, and and I love that saying, and I think that’s the way that’s where our industry should be, we should be very kind, very loving people who just talked about the information needed in order to get the insurance covered. And the roofer profitable. Because good roofers are going to do great jobs. They just are, they should not have to pay for that out of their own pocket the insurance company should pay, because they’ve been getting premiums for years, just for that reason. Right, right. Yeah,

Dylan McCabe  36:56

well, let’s talk about some things that that general contractor should absolutely avoid, that can really cause some problems.

Justin Land  37:04

And that’s really good. I think finding, I’ll give you a couple, I think finding the wrong people to work with is always a really negative. And I know we’ve hit that a lot. And this is not a sales promotion for Macs for men. This is just in business in general, I think you really got to look at supplements, the same way that you do with like a legal team, you know, you need to find somebody to say, Hey, we have an in house supplement team that’s going to take care of you in this process is the same way, right? Hey, we have an in house legal team that’s going to take care of this problem. They don’t office with you, but they are elite, and they’re professionals. And they get to owner and they’re going to honor your company. I think that’s a big one. Man, you got to go for that. Yeah, and then what other specifics? Are you looking for? In this question? I want to make sure I answer it right?

Dylan McCabe  37:54

Well, just to make sure there’s nothing that a contractor does, that’s immediately gonna, you know, that they just need to avoid because as soon as they do that thing, it’s just going to create a lot of problems. Like I’m thinking, sending an email to the desk adjuster saying, Hey, here’s my estimate. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I don’t know how long you’ve been doing it. But here’s what we need. Don’t give us any problems. Obviously, that’s an that’s an extreme caricature of something you should avoid. Right? Yeah. And just knowing what you know, and knowing what you guys know about the backend, what’s going on behind the scenes with insurance companies? What are some things contractors should avoid that that could really cause them trouble? They may not even know they’re doing, man?

Justin Land  38:36

Fantastic question. Here’s what I would say, first of all, your local adjuster or Inspector, be best friends. It’s okay. You don’t have to push the envelope with them. You don’t have to tell them how smart you are, how educated you are. Here’s what I know about most local adjusters or inspectors man is they’ve seen lots of roofs and they already think they know the answer. And that is totally okay. Let them think that be best friends with those guys, thank them for coming out, you know, and then just walk them through the process. If there’s another inspection that supplement triggers. That’s a great thing. Why? Because if it’s done with integrity and accuracy, the roofer has nothing to worry about that the picture show it, the exact domain shows it, we’re just meeting back up because somebody missed something in the process, and it’s no big deal. We’re just going to take care of it right. And you got to remember what a supplement is. Right? So this is a biggie man. roofers need to understand and GCS need to understand the definition of a supplement and be ready to kind of say that in their own words, to the insured and to the inspector and here’s why. Right, and I got this directly from an insurance company, it’s a client. A claim supplement, okay is a claim for extra repair or replacement expenses. It’s a charge or charges that need to be added to a claim for items omitted, overlooked, underpaid, or discovered after work begins. So think about that. Process man. Another mistake don’t is guys think that just because the insurance has approved something that that claim is over that with finishing pictures or additional trades or things like that, that they can’t go back to the settlement. Well, that’s not true. You’re not going to hear this many places, but most claims are open for two years. There’s a there’s an insurance company out there one or two of them, that’ll close it after a year, but most are open for two years. So that’s a long time to go back and be able to look at price sheets, and be able to look at items that were omitted that you know, you did you have receipts for. Right? So that’s a biggie, another Biggie man, if you do multiple trades, you need to go after LNP. Right. If you do gutters, shingles, you know, interior in anything paint, you need to go after multiple trades. And it’s important, it’s LMP, right overhead and profit. On average, it brings you about another 20% to that submit claim. And you know, as well as I do, if you decide to if hail hits a fence, and you take great pictures of it, and you decide to replace it, exactly, it’s going to say one thing in your local tradesmen is going to give you a quote under that. And so that’s money that you can leverage to the insurer to say, hey, this will help go towards some of this cost. Right. And it also, it betters your bottom line. So we found men in general that most roofers that don’t use soap net companies, their target goal, I’ve gotten this for about 10 different companies, their target goal is about 25 to 29% profit margin. Okay. I think that’s sorry, personally, I think there’s so much more potential that you can hit. And typically that’s what we try to do is we try to say, hey, our goal is to make sure that your profit margin with supplements is closer to 35%. Would that be more fun? Yes,

Dylan McCabe  41:48

that’s good stuff.

Justin Land  41:49

That’s a biggie man. You know, another thought, bro is if if somebody wants to add renovation or construction or restoration to the end of their roofing name, it absolutely adds credit and clout when needed with OMB. If you’re just a roofing company, that is a hard struggle for a claims company or an in house claim guy who works like at your company. And that’s going to be a real difficult battle for them to get you Oh, MP often on on items, if you’re just a roofing company, it can happen. But it’s way easier if you are, you know, Apex roofing and construction, or and I just made that name. I don’t know. It’s a great roofing company name.

Dylan McCabe  42:30

I’m sure there’s 50.

Justin Land  42:33

But, you know, we have a lot of our clients, a couple of our clients that actually, you know, converted their LLC to that because they do they do multiple trades. And they weren’t getting credit for it until they met us and we walked them through the process and told them why insurance companies were declining them and we coached them through it. They changed their name and honestly man, it’s way easier now.

Dylan McCabe  42:53

Yep, no, we did that at rain tide. general contracting used to be rain tight roofing. Yeah, it’s really tight general contracting for that reason is like look, we got 3456 trades we’re going to be active on this job or general contractor. We’re seven the workout give us a wimpy share, man.

Justin Land  43:09

That’s excellent. All right, we’re done

Dylan McCabe  43:10

1. Well, that’s good stuff. Man. We could talk about this. I mean, this this this podcast is just flown by for me. And I feel like we could talk for another hour. I’d really like to dive in with you on issues with o and P and all that stuff. watch another episode here in the future. But what’s a parting piece of advice? knowing everything you know? What’s just one last word you want to distill down and just say okay, if you miss everything, catch this?

Justin Land  43:33

Yeah, super easy, bro. If you missed everything I said, use chalk. When you do your use chalk. I’m telling you mark your gutters with your chalk on the side. Do you know people always Oh, your test frame? Yeah, do a test square. That’s great. But more importantly, man use chalk. Mark your lines with wind. Circle your hail. Get an up close get a far off, use chalk. It makes a huge difference. Chalk shows everything. You will not believe how many pictures we’ve gotten in where no chalk was used. And then you you know you lay down exactly. And you do the circles around it or whatever. And then the desk adjuster will say, or, you know, they’ll say absolutely, there’s no damage there. Those gutters aren’t damaged. We’ll go we’ll call the roofer say Hey, man, I’m sorry. We tried. If you’ll just give us five minutes to swing by the house and chalk it on the side and send us the picture that we needed. And they’ll do it and and boom, approved. So use chalk.

Dylan McCabe  44:31

Good stuff, man. Simple man. Well Justin, I got a ton out of this podcast interview and for those of you listening, definitely check out Justin and his dad’s company max for claims I’ll put the website address in the show notes to the podcast so you guys can catch it there but Justin thank you so much for being part of the show man

Justin Land  44:48

Man Thank you for having me. I’m excited I’m pumped about our industry. Let’s go make it better.

Dylan McCabe  44:53

All right, awesome interview with Justin land and I love what he said about the at the very end use chalk you Use chalk use chalk. And I gotta tell you what, I’ve talked to several supplementing companies and I’m pretty impressed at how data driven they are and their turnaround time. I mean, it’s just incredible. And the numbers don’t lie. I mean, these guys get on average of that, what did he say 40 $600 per per claim. So they are crushing it, you can learn more about them just go to maximize four.com that is maximize the number four.com. And you can also connect with Justin on LinkedIn and I will put his notes in the show notes of the podcast. Alright guys, this has been helpful to you as a resource. Please take a minute and rate and review on iTunes just go to rate this podcast.com slash roofing mastery or just go to our website and click the button there it would really help us get the word out. And of course if you want to check out our free resources and take our traction quiz, just go to roofing mastery calm and you can take the quiz for free today. Alright guys, this is Dylan McCabe and I will catch you in the next episode.