Latest / The Art of Adjusting® Podcast / Episode #78 - The IA Glow Up & Grow Up- With 3 C’s and an H

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Episode #78 - The IA Glow Up & Grow Up- With 3 C’s and an H · The Art of Adjusting® Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'm Bill Auten of Auten Claims Management.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: I'm Chantel Roberts of CMR Consulting and welcome to the Art of Adjusting podcast.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Today we're going to talk about life as an insurance adjuster from the perspective of property, auto liability or workers' compensation adjusters.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Our goal is to bring interesting topics in the world of claims adjusting to people who are working as an adjuster now and to people who are considering a career as a claims adjuster.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Hey, heather, how are you?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I am fantastic.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Yay, it's another Thursday, so woohoo, woohoo, woohoo, we have some great guests and and this is actually something that you put together for for me and I really appreciate it.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Like I said previously, all in the background, of course, nobody else knows this or cares or anything like that, but you did all the heavy lifting on this, so I'm actually going to kind of like turn it over to you and say, hey, you got the podcast today.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: No, I am super excited about today, mainly because we have like two titans of the independent adjusting world on the screen here and the fact that we have three C's and an H here to talk about glowing up and growing up in the industry.
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: So, chris, oh my god, I just got this.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry to interrupt.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I wonder what she's going to be talking about, the three C's and the H's Like is that going to be like consumerism?
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: No, it's Chris, chantel and Calvin, and then the H is Heather.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Wow, sorry, I obviously need to have some more caffeine.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Go ahead, I'm sorry, chris, you were introducing him.
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Chris, say hello to the world of Chantel's podcast here on Art of Adjusting first, and then we'll kick it to Calvin.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: Well, super happy to be here and I'm excited to meet Chantel.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: This is the first time being on here, first time meeting her.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, excited.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: I'm here on my sailboat.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: We're actually actively sailing right now.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: So if you wonder why it kind of goes like this, occasionally my wife is driving the boat as it sails.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of where we're at in the world.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: We're right outside of annapolis, so, oh, that's awesome.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: That's where this podcast is being brought to you, from a sailboat wow, isn't technology amazing that you can be out on the sea and boom, we've got you.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Well, Calvin, where are you?
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: What's up in your world?
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: Well, just like Chris.
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: First of all, thanks for having me on here.
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: I mean, I've just I'm I'm blown away with humility and humble to be a part of this.
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: You know you, you said Titan and I just imagined I just immediately like shrunk in my seat over here because of who all is on this call.
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: You know I'm a drop in the water compared to you guys, but super honored to be on here.
• 2:56
  Speaker 5: Unfortunately, unlike Chris, I'm not on a sailboat.
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: My name is Calvin Newman.
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: I'm the owner and founder of MoCat.
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: I am a 22 year army veteran, retired and friends with Heather and Chris and I are great friends and man.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: I'm just excited to be here and looking forward to this, this dialogue.
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: I think I think some good stuff is going to come out of this.
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: So thanks for having me.
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: I think some good stuff is going to come out of this.
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: So thanks for having me Absolutely Well, we are here to talk, some real talk with both of you, because we know that you all are in the in the thick of it A lot of the time, from having muddy boots and being in hurricane zones to like understanding all the tech that's coming into the independent adjusting world today.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: So, chantel, yes, you start asking some questions here because you don't know these guys, and I know them, yes, you know.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: so I actually in the deposition that that I had recently, you know, they they taught, they wanted me to explain the difference between what a desk adjuster is, what a public adjuster is and what an independent is, and so you know I did that.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: But what would be kind of your definitions of what an independent is, what an independent does?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: So let's just kind of start out, because I love starting out with definitions, so we can all be on the same page.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: All right, well, I could start, and then Calvin can actually close with the right answer.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: So for me, being an independent and I didn't give a full introduction of the company, but basically I run a company called IAPATH and what we do is we help introduce people who want to be an independent adjusting, how to get started, how to get work using auto claims.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of the background.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Calvin's on the residential property side, I'm on the auto side, and so we make great friends that way.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: But to each person that I talk with it's like the first thing I have to understand about independent adjusting is an adjuster is someone who's can be looking at damages, writing checks, settling claims.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: Well, people don't understand about independence is what you really are as a business owner.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: You are a contractor, just like an Uber driver is not an employee of Uber.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: They are being contracted for that one drive, and so this has a lot of benefits and a lot of bad things that can arise in the industry complications that come up.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: It's easy for those problems to arise that you probably see in depositions, right, because they're not always working for the same company.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: So an independent is a business owner, though.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know we're we're on day one of class, so definitions are like uh big for me right now as well, like I literally just finished my introduction to this month's class and that's what they're going into right off the bat is defining our role, uh, in in, in this industry.
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: I would use everything Chris said, you know, but I would add to what I try to stress to folks is independent means independent, right, and as Chris and I are trainers in the industry, you know we try to emphasize listen, this is by yourself, essentially right.
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: I mean, there's trainers and managers and things like that.
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: But you need to come into this kind of industry thinking independent, right, by yourself.
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: You're the, you're the trash taker out, or you're the, you're the marketer, you're the, you're the salesperson, you're also the employee, you're the bookkeeper and all of these things.
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: So that's that.
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: That's what I would stress is is the definition of independent adjuster.
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: Obviously, we can go into who we're paid by and all of these things, but solely independent is independent.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I love that that you said you're the trash taker outer and all this kind of stuff, because I started off with, you know, like some of the big boys Liberty, mutual, metlife, all of that and I don't mind saying that because it's on my CV.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: And then I did go to an independent and we actually had a corporate cat and a corporate dog and I was the official litter box cleaner outer and the owner the owner of the independent adjusting firm was the man who got in there at seven, seven, 30 in the morning and emptied the dishwasher.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's not I'm the owner and I'm going to let this, the admin assistants do that.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: But you know, the other thing that I think independent and this is the way that I always explained it to, especially when I was talking to insureds or claimants who were concerned that I might be biased towards the carrier because independents are not hired by policyholders is that you know what?
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I'm an independent, I get paid, regardless of if this claim gets paid.
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Yep, you know I do something very similar.
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: You know, sometimes we can find ourselves in sticky situations where we are in those predicaments and to some words, more or less.
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: You know, the more I find, the more I get paid.
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: So I'm here to be that honest broker.
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: I want to find the legit damage that lines up the cause of loss and the date of loss lines up.
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: I want to find it because the more I find, the more I get paid.
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: And oftentimes we find ourselves in those situations where we have to have those discussions right Educating we're talking about defining and defining our role to the policyholder.
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: We'll find ourselves in those situations as well.
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: So.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: I never lived in the independent space in my insurance career but I sure the heck worked with a lot of them and was in that role of trying to explain, like, all the complicated craziness of processes and systems that they had to work with for the company that I worked for.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: And I will tell you like I learned such a tremendous amount working with folks that were in that independent adjuster space.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: They taught me more about estimatics and really understanding that relationship that you have to maintain that professional distance with, and it was an incredible experience to work with, like in conjunction with independent adjusters and in a lot of ways because I spent the majority of my claims career in that desk space where I was kind of behind it and then also training people as well.
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: So I'm going to kick it over here to Chris for a while and say what do you think is working well in the independent adjusting space today?
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: One thing the industry has done overall really well in comparison to what I would say traditional insurance is the independent space are amazing lead generators, and so Calvin and I deal with this all the time.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Where new people are excited to get in the industry, they get a license, they maybe get trained by us and they get on with these big independent adjusting firms and they don't realize that what these companies are doing is recruiting people in case they need them.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: So in the independent justice space, one of the things that works really well, especially as Internet has become more normal the last 20 years, is if there's an independent out there.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Almost everyone knows about them, right?
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: So we have this amazing bulk of talent sitting there.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: But you know that comes with all sorts of other issues.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: But I would say that's one thing that's working really well.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: And then the other thing is that the independent space tends to pivot faster than the dinosaur that is overall insurance using technology.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: So, like you know, at our company we create a little software program that people can use to fill out a form instantly.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: You can't just turn that on in a month at a carrier, whereas we can for our people.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: We can train online suddenly without asking for permission, because we're an independent training and mentorship company, we can do flexible things like that.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: So in the independent space, I think we are evolving in a good way.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: The way Calvin trains, the way Matthew Allen over to Jester TV, how he runs everything online training, like all these things are happening independent of each other, but yet it's giving a great ecosystem for someone wanting to get in.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: So I think that's what's working really well in my opinion.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so, Calvin, you get the, you get the hard part of that question, Cause I know you're like, oh these sorry, I don't mean to like dump on you here, but you're, you're in the like, the mire and the muck of dealing with people face-to-face and training and your company and everything.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: What are their?
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: What are the biggest challenges that are facing those folks who are coming in the door today?
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, listen, I don't mind that question, you know, nor would Chris mind it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: You know we're confronted in our space, we're confronted with those hard questions all the time, or what Chris and I would call objections right.
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: Well, why do I need training kind of stuff?
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: But you know what I would?
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: Probably two things.
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: One is expectations.
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: I don't think we do a real good job of setting expectations for the independent and I think it's kind of a mixture.
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: The reason why is kind of a mixture of one.
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: There's a lack of information, you know, and that's due to sometimes, you know, the carriers are very close hold with the way they want things done and things.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: Of that.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: You know everything's proprietary.
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: So you know, oftentimes you know somebody gets a lot lucky and they get hired and they have no idea.
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: I mean, I've been to one of the things we do at MoCat when our graduates leave, just like Chris, we mentor but we go to some of these storm rooms, war rooms, whatever you want to call it, on our own dime.
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: Sometimes the firms will hire us to come train but being knee deep in it, I get to see the misfortune of new or aspiring adjusters showing up to a storm with the expectation of oh, this is easy.
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: All I got to do is go inspect the house, take some pictures.
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: If they even expect that, I can't tell you how many folks and this is so disheartening how many folks get in this industry to spend tens of thousands of dollars to go to a deployment just to realize that it's not what they expected.
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: On the flip side of that, I've had very similar conversation with several IA firm owners and CEOs and presidents of listen.
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: Nobody gets into this industry wanting to do bad.
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: Nobody gets in this industry wanting to not succeed right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 5: And so there's some staying on the same question as to where we may be struggling as an industry.
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: It's definitely the expectation.
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: Management for newer, aspiring adjusters is kind of a ready fire aim mentality right For some of us, or situation, I should say, for some of us, right, just thrown to the wolves.
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: We're on the eighth hurricane of the year.
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: Get out there and do it and if you survive, you survive.
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: If not, well, maybe next time.
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: The next thing that I would say is follow up with adjusters and be it new, aspiring or seasoned adjusters, you know we have a week.
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: There's no grading system for how well you did.
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: I mean you can base how well you did or how bad you did.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: You could base it off of how often do you get called for the next storm, right, I guess.
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: But you know there's not really anything once we get into the industry that says, hey, you know what you did, really good on your customer service, but your estimates, man, we had to kick it back four or five times.
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: Let's think about investing, and this is the second big point.
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: From my standpoint, there's not a lot of investing into the independent world from our industry, meaning, hey, look, you didn't do a good job in estomatics, so we're going to send you over here to see Chris and do CCC one, or we're going to send you over here to see Jessica at MoCat to learn some more.
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: It's independent, right, I mean, it's on our own, so yeah.
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: I think those are the two big things for me.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: I've got to say talking about your last point is, I believe that most carriers have pretty much stopped any kind of training whatsoever period.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: So even you're you're absolutely right, um, in the fact that when we're talking about carriers, the big boys, carriers, the big boys, you know the domestics.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Um, what I had found was if, if they just didn't like you, they never hired you, like you said again, and you would never know unless you called them back and said hey, we haven't heard from you in like six months, blah, blah, blah.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: And we didn't necessarily do cat work.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, like, like you're training people to do, and education also very, very important, because I don't think anybody ever tells the independents like oh hey, do you know that a hurricane is coming down and you are going to have to because it's during the summer.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Sun comes up at like what six and it goes down at like nine.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: You're going to have to be out on a roof or through a house or whatever, from six to nine, that's what more than 12 hours, and then you're going to have to be up from nine until I don't know 6am, writing those estimates and sending them back off to the, to the, to the home office and oh wow, it's 6am and the sun's coming up, so don't grab breakfast, get on out back to the end.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: And so I mean, I have had cat adjusters when I was working.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Katrina literally throw out the estimates, you know, out the out their window because they're just like, I am done, I am finished, I cannot do this anymore because no one trains them for that.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: And then again, like you said, um, and I think that's where Heather comes in with the resilience and the and the mental thing, because we don't, we don't talk about that enough.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: In fact, I'm going to be attending a webinar shortly about mental resilience and mental health in the adjuster sphere, about how we, as adjusters, get secondhand trauma, essentially from from everybody else.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Chris, you're shaking your head, you're, you're nodding your head, going like yes, about that you're nodding your head, going like yes, about that.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah well, there's a book I co-wrote with somebody a few years ago called the Burned Out Adjuster's Playbook, and I'm not someone who's exactly a hugely empathetic person by nature.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: My dad's a two-time doctor, counselor, psychologist, like pastor.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: He deals with all that stuff, and so I kind of picked it up from him some.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: But I by nature I'm not that way.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: But in this industry, as training and Calvin and I see it all the time we go from feast to famine, energy to burnout, all within a 24 hour period, sometimes while you're financially stressed as an independent.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: Then you're dealing with the secondhand trauma you're talking about, and so it is one of the most and I've done some other stuff in my life other than adjusting, including being a business owner just as traumatizing, right, calvin?
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: And?
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: But adjusting is seriously.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: It can wreck you in a heartbeat If you don't have the right expectations, not just about work expectations, but like how people are going to treat you good or bad, how finances work, all of that, and so it's everything adjusters at a job, a W-2, would feel.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: But then you're the business owner and it's all on your shoulders and then you're away from your family if you're in a cat scenario and it's like this compounds to where I mean I literally I would like almost throw up at the end of my career.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: I would throw my computer across the room to the seat and I'm like I can't, I'm done, I'm done for the day.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: I literally cannot, and I wasn't even in a catastrophic scenario, but I was so tired and so that's that.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: It comes back to expectation, because I didn't have to do what I did to myself, but I didn't know that because there wasn't anybody saying hey, I think you need to sleep more than two hours a night, like you need to do this, you're doing this.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: If you're doing this, if you go more than seven days without getting a full night's sleep, your body literally just slams into the ground and you might not recover for three months.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: Right, Yep, no, I think it's.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: I think today we're we're in this world where we've become cognizant of the fact that there are those impacts to individuals, emotionally, psychologically, all of that, and the industry is starting to like wake up to the fact that there is this existential risk to those who are on the front lines dealing with the people who are in those those traumatic circumstances in their life.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: But the independent world is still operating out here in their island because you know they don't work for the carry.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: They don't.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: You know they don't.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: They're not underneath that W2 umbrella that says I have to.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: You know I have to have the proper systems in place for this individual.
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: So, calvin, I'm going to ask you, like, what do you do to help to prepare people for what they're going to see and how to manage that, that empathy that sometimes can feel quite overwhelming in certain circumstances, especially when you're in catastrophic events?
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: You know how do you help in catastrophic events?
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: you know how do you help people who walk in your door?
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so, first of all, I can't believe we only have an hour.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: It's real, heather.
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: You and I have talked about this in the past, about the mental health in the past, and I love what I love.
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: You know, some of your brilliant ideas and initiatives that you may or may not be working on, but it's real and I have something that I do, have several things that I do, but I will tell you and this coming from someone who has been in traumatic situations, meaning in my multiple combat deployments in the army and the, you know, to Chris's point, the Chris I was so, so awesome the feast of famine, to energy, to burnout.
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: That is real and I will tell you from a soldier standpoint, the human body gets acclimated rather quickly, gets acclimated to operating in high stress environments and then, when there's a sudden shift, a decrease in almost immediate in the independent world, an immediate change to normal life, that that starts affecting the human on all aspects.
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: You know I can't tell you how many of my friends I've seen gain weight, right, me included.
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: Now that's because I'm getting older and a little bit lazier now.
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: But gain weight or lose weight, or or or you know, the, the mental capacity starts fading or things.
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: So the the mental stress is real on, I would say, on adjusters in general period and not just field adjusters, desk adjusters as well.
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: And so one of the things that we do and I literally again, because we're on day one, we started two hours ago, so part of my introduction in our, in our class, uh, we do two things.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: Uh, I, I show a video and it's the.
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: Uh, I show two videos.
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: One of the videos is uh, uh, the tornado that happened in Paris, texas.
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: Uh, and there there's a quick video.
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: It's probably seven seconds long, but it's a, uh, a dad who is coming out of the rubbish of his house with his video or with his cell phone and he's just like immediately, the guy's literally just now coming up out of this tornado rubbish and he's got his phone on and he's scanning around and you can see his children, and then the video comes to his face and you can see, you can just see it on his face and you can see, you can just see it on his face.
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: But the words he uses is just we're okay, right, and so.
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: So I try to show that.
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: I hit our students up.
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: I call it hitting them in the mouth right at the beginning, because I want folks to know that we're dealing with people in our most disastrous time of their life, right, and folks will be having a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: So for the the field adjusters, we're face to face with that all day, every day, and you have to be empathetic to it.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: But on the desk adjuster side, you're face to face with it on that phone and if you're somebody like me I know Chris said he's not really the empathetic.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: Chris is a softie right, I've been around that guy, he's amazing.
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: Chris is a softie right, I've been around that guy, he's amazing.
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: But I'm the same way, by nature I'm not the most passionate or people kind of person.
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: I have to put myself in that boat.
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: But you know I show a picture of a desk adjuster with his hands in his face, right, and there's so many talking points with that one picture.
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: You know, as a desk adjuster you're day in and day out dealing with these folks on the phone and they're projecting.
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: If you're one of these folks, that that shoulders other people's drama man, that plays a toll on you.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I don't mean to ramble here, but I love this topic and I think everybody shoulders a part of that emotional side to this, this industry not letting you talk at all, but I, I'm just like I'm, I'm, I'm feeling it because you know, I've lived in this space as well, both as a desk adjuster and um.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I was a desk adjuster at an independent and so when we were talking about Katrina, you know, I had nightmares for like two weeks about flooding and and and drowning.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: But what I um was I was going to ask both of y'all, when we're talking about helping people and being empathetic and what have you?
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: My dad is an IA too, by the way, and he said he remembers being out at hailstorms and everybody would be like, look at this hail thing, and dad, for 18 hours, had to go.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Oh my God, that's the biggest thing I've ever seen, you know, even though it's like the same as the next door neighbor, or, you know, five miles down the street, or, or, or whatever I, I tell my students, because I teach risk management and insurance.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: I tell my students who are Gen Z, really right now, so we're talking early 20s.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: You know, this is a great way.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Y'all all want to make an impact on the world Insurance and specifically claims, because claims adjusters are a great way to make that impact.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: So how do y'all think we could make insurance, kind of sexy for these youngsters, these kids these days.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: That is a hard question, which is one I think we've all wrestled with constantly, because me, calvin, matt Allen, all the adjuster pro, we're all doing the same thing.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: We're trying to find people who want, have a desire, even are aware of the industry, and say this and try to kick them across the line, right like jump in here's, here's how, and then figure out if this is actually what you do with you know a good chunk of your life.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Um, but yes, the the the side of making a difference with the Gen Zs really ticks that box.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: But I think it goes beyond that.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: One of the reasons I've seen that younger people, when I talk with them, typically don't want to get in.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: And I'm a millennial, so right on the tail end of that or whatever, I'm 40.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: So I'm not a Gen Z, I'm barely a millennial.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, I don't totally get that generation yet you know, I got kids in it, but it's like they they don't want to spend forever getting to the result that they want.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: And so one of the big problems with independent adjusting by and large is that it takes and even traditional, adjusting is it takes so long.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: You either have to get a four-year degree, you have to get two to five years experience to even get to the starting point, to where you're helping people, and so the payoff, I think, has sped up what we expect as human beings in the last two generations.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Like we want a pizza, we hit a button, it shows up 20 minutes later, whereas before that would have been, you know, insane speed for dominoes.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: Now that's like the expectation for everything, not just pizza.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: It's like, oh no, I want Indian food, I want this, and you can just do it with a click of a button.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: And so, with YouTube and all the different things that kids want to be, I think crazy stats are like 50% of Gen Z's want to be a YouTube star, something insane like that, like that's their career choice.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Me too.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Because not me, but I, you know.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: I kind of came close to doing something along those lines.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: But a lot of that, I think, is the immediacy.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: It's that dopamine hit that I want to do something.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: I do something I get congratulated for, versus our industry, like we talked about earlier, is the opposite.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: You never hear anything and it takes you years to get there, and people are losing faith in that kind of long-tail system of college and then legacy at one company and you get the wristwatch at 50 years.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Nobody's doing that.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: So the new generations to make make it sexy.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: I think we have to rethink how we get people in the industry, the speed and velocity at which we do um, otherwise we're going to lose all the talent we have, whether it's heather you, calvin, myself, we are aging out and we are what I like to call the fossil workforce.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: We are literally time pressure.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: Everything has made us into something valuable oil, right.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: But as we leave, if that is not passed on and used, the next generation has nothing to pull from, and so I think we've got to kind of shift how we're approaching training, how we're approaching even getting interest in the industry.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how would you do that?
• 30:19
  Speaker 5: You know I equate it to snowboarding, and that's something that the newer generation is better at than me.
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: I mean very much along the lines of what Chris is saying.
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: You know, snowboarding is hard to learn, easy to master.
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: Well, adjusting is hard to learn, easy to master, right?
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, go back to your story with your dad.
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: You know at some point in time in your adjusting career, every claim it's essentially the same right Meaning, we handle them the same.
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: We're going to schedule it, we're going to scope it, we're going to write it and we're going to submit it, it regardless of hail, fire, water leak, whatever it is.
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: But it's such a learning curve to get into this industry that I agree.
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: I think some folks, you know we live in a society of now, right, and I think that it's a turnoff for some.
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: Well, what do you mean?
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: I got to, I got to wait for an IA firm to call me.
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: Well, you know, meantime I can go work Uber and make just as much, or whatever.
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: You know what I mean.
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: So I think we need to bring awareness to it.
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: You know I love that.
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: And, heather, I know you do this with CPCU and Chantel.
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: You're talking about teaching risk management.
• 31:36
  Speaker 5: I think I really think it starts there.
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: You know, heather, you had me out at an event a year or so ago and I was excited because that event was like loaded with youngsters and I was like, wow, so this is where they are because they're not on the independent side.
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: Wow, so this is where they are because they're not only independent, they're over in the, in the, going to college and taking the risk management courses and joining the CPCU society, which is a phenomenal society.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: Right, that's a great way.
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: But there's a difference between putting folks in the industry kind of at that mid-level executive and the coming in as a claims adjuster right, there's a clear difference between those two.
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: And so we need those brilliant folks that are sitting in the college classrooms to realize that, hey, there's another side of this.
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: You can use those AICs and CPCUs, that level, that executive kind of level thought process.
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: We need that brilliance in the claims world right?
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, and I think one of the biggest things, calvin, that you hit on there is the role of all of us.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: We all have this responsibility to shape that narrative and to tell the story Because, like to me, you know we're all true believers, we're the choir, we love this industry, we think it's fantastic, but there's all.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: I taught in colleges as well, and when those students would walk in the door, they don't know anything at all about risk management and insurance.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: They don't understand that.
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: It's just like the meme that I posted the other day for with Mufasa talking to Simba about look at where the light touches sun.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: This is where insurance is Okay.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: It's everywhere.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: It's the circle of life, basically that it helps to like move society along, and what is more powerful than a role that you can have in helping to shape what society is today?
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: So I know you talked about, like younger generations not flocking to the IA world.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: What, what do you all think we have to do to help them to understand, when they already don't really know insurance right now, what's the solve for that?
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: So they see that there's this whole other cool entrepreneurial, you know way to run a business on your own, but also like make an impact in the world.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: What's the story we have to start telling to help with that?
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll go here.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: You know, I, I get youngsters that come through the class and most of the let me back up, most of the folks that come through my class are career changers.
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: Right, you know we're.
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: We're somewhere between, you know, 45 and 60, right, and we're on our second and third career.
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: You know some, sometimes we're empty nesters and we want to, we want to travel or we want to whatever, right?
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: So when we get a youngster in and when I say youngster I mean mean, like I've had them in here 18 to, you know, 35, whatever that's what I consider young.
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: Um, I don't know if my beard's not as gray as, uh, chris's um, I'm teasing, obviously, but uh, uh, I get crazy excited when we get young folks in here, uh, and so.
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: So I tend to like pick their brain a little bit, like how'd you hear about this?
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: Or why are you here?
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: And most of the time it's well, my family is in the industry or whatever.
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: But to your question, I think what we need to emphasize is the entrepreneur.
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: Right, you hit it right on the head, heather, folks nowadays, they don't want to work for somebody else's dream, they want to work for their own dream right and that's where society is with technology and all these instant gratifications is I want to work for myself, I want to make money for myself, right?
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: So, getting the word out, standing on mountaintops explaining that, listen, you can do that as an independent adjuster, you, you can definitely do that.
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: And and oh, by the way, you can make a decent amount of money doing it Right.
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: And so you know, are you going to be out on a yacht doing your TikTok videos?
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Like Chris.
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: You like, chris, you know you can absolutely do it.
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: Here's, chris, you're like.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Chris, you know, you can absolutely do it.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Here's Chris.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Yes, there's.
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: Chris on his sailboat.
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: But I really think, I really think the message is that entrepreneurial spirit, that growing your own business, building, building your own brand Right, which I think folks want.
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: That's, in my opinion, I think it's, that's the message want I.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: That's, in my opinion.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: I think it's that's the message, I think, dovetailing that right in with once they, you have their attention.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: What were they?
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: They, they fall off, though.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Is that exhaustible runway like well, I, I don't know what to do next.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: I it's gonna be this huge, long journey to get to a payoff, whereas, door dash, I hit a button, I'm available, I'm ready.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: It takes, you know, like one inspection of your car for uber or whatever, and you're up and running and you know a business license or whatever, and so I think we have to make the that runway very yellow, brick roadish, like go here and it starts happening for you in a short amount of time, because people can hold their breath for a short amount of time.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: But I think if we say you're not sure about something, but you should do this, and it's going to take you four years to find out if you like it, I don't think most people, if they haven't been chasing this through their family or something, are going to go.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: That's what I want to do.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: I want to risk four years to see if I like it, like I did with my other degree I got and I don't use it in radio, right.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Like nobody wants wants that to happen again, and so I have friends who did that.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: That's why I used well, I was.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: I was just about to say did you look me up?
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Because I was a radio tv film major, um, so I might have a little bit of resume and just split it in there look, we got radio on television, we got yachts and tiktok, we got it all I mean, we got it all.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Hey, you know what I do, I did also do a dual major in french, so on, put palais français si, si, si nécessaire um.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: I love what y'all are saying, but also I do think it's the educational aspect of it and I tell my students look guys, claims are fun, and I think that when we look at, when I look at, schools that have a major in risk management and insurance, they're not teaching claims.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you that right now they are teaching how to risk manage, how to underwrite, how to sell insurance, and if they teach claims at all, it is one paragraph in a book, is one paragraph in a book, and even my book, even my book, risk management book, says that there are only four steps in the claims process, and I'm going to tell you two of them.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: One is the first, notice of loss, and the second one is payment of claims, and I'm like that is so wrong because we don't pay every claim.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Professor Roberts is about to go off on a tangent.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: However, let me just get off and calm down.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: Anyway, yeah, breathe.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: I also think that it's necessary, like to Chris's point, to let these students know.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Know, by the way, you could get the feast or famine one particular person at a domestic carrier, but as soon as that person gets promoted or whatever, you've pretty much lost that client.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: You know it's unless you're on that roster, which is very rare.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Because I noticed that with us is that we would have one particular adjuster send us a lot of claims and then, once that adjuster got promoted or moved to a different branch or whatever, we never received claims from them anymore and we would go back to other adjusters and hey, you know, so-and-so loved us, sally, loved us.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Why don't you use us?
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: No, I've got my favorites, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: So we need to be realistic with them as well.
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: So I'm, I'm, I'm curious.
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: So you just hit a button with me and, and only because at the, at the collegiate level, I'm curious why we're not.
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: You know, I've kind of turned the question around, okay, why are we not exposing these young adults, these young soon to be risk management people?
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: And here's my real question.
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: Behind it, or maybe my comment behind it, is claims.
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: In my opinion, claims are the number one expense for the carriers, and so anytime that we talk about claims, it's a whole.
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: I don't want to deal with that right From from from that level, right.
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: But at the end of the day it's the number one expense, so why are we not investing into that professionalism?
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Thank you, and and this is what professor Roberts says.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you, and this is what Professor Roberts says.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: You know, I think we are teaching insurance completely wrong, because why do people get insurance?
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: People get insurance to have their claims paid Right, and so we can't start off with what do you want covered.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: We got to start off with what do you want paid and work our way backwards and and and so, professor Roberts, like we're doing a personal insurance right now, we do a um, is this claim covered on every module homeowners auto?
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: You know, and of course I've told Heather this, but we study the Incredibles throughout the three semesters.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: That that I do.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: You know, is Bob and Helen covered?
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Is Edna covered?
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: And and then the, the commercial one is syndrome, because even villains need insurance.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: You know, even villains need insurance, and and so it it's.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Is this commercial liability claim covered?
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Is this commercial property covered?
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And I said, look, even if you're an agent, even if you're an underwriter, even if you're an actuary, you need to know how to read a policy and find out if this claim is covered, because, and then work backwards, Because as an underwriter, you need to write that endorsement or exclusion if you didn't want it to be covered.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: So I look at it all wrong, and I can tell you why we look at it all wrong now that I'm like going on.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: And it's just what you said, Calvin.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: It's everybody sees claims as where the money goes out, not where the money comes in.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: And so if you're looking at yourself and wanting to cut budgets, you know what do you do you stop going out to the movies, you stop buying, you know candy, you stop buying Cokes, or you know you stop going out to restaurants.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: So what are you going to do?
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: You're going to cut the claims department instead of realizing that they can be of a legitimate help to you.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: And that is the reason why nobody pays attention to the redheaded stepchild and I can say this because I'm redhead.
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: But that's but because we don't pay attention to the redheaded stepchild.
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: That's why we get claims in that are that are that are prolonged.
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: We miss cycle times because we're we're such a knee jerk reaction to get these claims going on or to to get them a schedule scope written and inspected that you know, maybe now we're hiring staff at a rapid pace and that staff is not educated in the process, right, and so now we're wasting more money over here, heather, I see you chomping at the bits.
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: I can go on, I can go on, but I know you have some.
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: I wanted to hop in and say that claims is often thought of as the job to get you into insurance right, especially for people who decide to go to the carrier world right?
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: They they're taught this mindset oh, I'll get my foot in the door and claims.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: But that's not really the job that I want to do and I think you have to flip the script on that to help people to understand that claims is where you actually deliver what is sold wow insurance it is where the rubber meets the road.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: That's what I tell my students product being delivered, yes, and all of that sales and you know, lights and magic and all that stuff behind the scenes.
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: Magic and all that stuff behind the scenes claims is where the magic actually happens in the process of that.
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: So that's a story I think we all have to consider telling to those who are thinking about.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: And then also, like we're living in this world where technology is just like exploding, especially on the claim side, why?
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: Because of a lot of those reasons that you all are talking about right now, which we're trying to figure out how to like slow down the cost, because everything is getting more expensive, the cost of everything is just like going wild with inflation right now.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: So, chris, I'm going to kick this to you With all the innovation, there's always opportunity for people, right?
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: What are some of those emerging trends that we're seeing right now, especially on the IA side, and how are they evolving to meet this constant chain of innovation that's happening in the insurance world?
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to pull a presidential debate here.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to answer the question and then dovetail into that question, so call me Joe Biden if you want.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: But basically, calvin said something earlier and as you guys were talking I was like, oh my gosh, he hit it and it was in the wrong segment, right, like he said it, but it was the answer for what we just talked about how to make it sexy.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: We're trying to figure out how to get people into this side of the industry and we we all already said it in what we were talking about earlier, which is it's through the word of mouth of the people in it.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: But in independent world especially, and I think in the traditional claims world, we are burning through people at a rate which is negative word of mouth.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: So by rehabbing the people we have.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: That's it, I think, is how we make it sexy for others, because they realize heather had an amazing career.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: Cpcu what's cpcu?
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: I want to do that.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: You know calvin had a great career as an independent.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: But if all the stories they're hearing are oh my gosh, they made me not pay claims.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: I should have paid um, because they were cutting costs, they, you know, I know I was burnt out, I was stressed out, I got a divorce because they wouldn't let me go home for my wife's anniversary.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: Whatever those stories are we have, like you said, we have to flip the script.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: But it starts by, you know, really changing how we rehab the ones we have and cherish them, because they're not expendable resources, they're non-renewable.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: In fact, if you use the fossil workforce analogy, they're non-renewable.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: And if we want to create this next generation, we have to hold on to what we've got and then they will create the next generation.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: So that that's my debate.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: Non-answer answer.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: And as far as the trends go, I think we can use technology.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: One of two ways and how I'm seeing it is.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: The first is always how do we eliminate people?
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: That's always the first gut reaction is how do we eliminate people?
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: But what I'm seeing our own students do in our community is they are using things like chat, gpt and other AI tools to speed up their own workflow processes, and so faster than when I'm seeing other industries pick it up.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: They're like hey.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: I use this to write my appraisal report in 30 seconds, you know, and I'm like it was way better than I would have written it or whatever, so things like that.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: But as a whole, the industry is only looking at it from my vantage point is how do we jump start the claim, which is good initially, but then it's like, how do we close out the human error?
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: But then that's assuming that the ai is going to be right every time, which we know is a programming thing, and there's no guarantee of that, and so it's scaring everybody, which is also a bad story to get people in this industry.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: If they're like ai is going to replace me, it's goingaring everybody, which is also a bad story to get people in this industry.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: It's like AI is going to replace me.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: Ai is going to replace everybody in some way, shape or form right, but it's really prevalent in insurance.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: They're like, hey, they're not going to need me, they don't need humans in this job.
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: But this is the one job that I think you need a human more than anything else.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: We still have grocery store clerks.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: We have self-checkout, we have robots delivering stuff with Amazon, but there's still a grocery store checkout.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: Because people want to see somebody.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: They need insurance.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I completely agree with that.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: I think insurance adjusting is always going to have a person on the phone.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: You may get into a tree, you know, before you talk to a human, but the the job is about empathy, you know, and, um, listening to people, and Heather, and I've talked about it, uh, bill, my other co-host, we've all talked about it and so, yeah, it's, it's not only going to be just AI that's doing it.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's do a real quick kind of fun lightning round Y'all ready?
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Craziest claim story.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Go, calvin, you're laughing, you go first.
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: Well, I shouldn't go first, because this is probably a PG podcast.
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: I don't know, I should think of another one.
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: Okay, I'll try and make it PG.
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: So kitchen fire out in the boonies, like in the hollers.
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: It might have even been Arkansas, hey hey, hey.
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: I'm from Little Rock.
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: Well, super sweet.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: That's my grandma cousin and aunt, all wrapped up in one.
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: Look, I'm, I'm from South Louisiana, so these are my people, right?
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: Super sweet grandma, I bet you.
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: She was every bit of 90 years old and I was working for a carrier that required an all on inspection, regardless if it was just a fire.
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: So I was on the roof and as I'm on the roof, I'm seeing some cars come in and this little old lady would go out to the neighborhood or to the street and then she would come back back to the house and maybe 10 minutes later another car would come and I finished the roof.
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: I got on the elevations and you know three or four cars were coming and going and I go inside the kitchen and the lady says you know, I'm starting my scope.
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: And she said hey, you don't have to open up the dishwasher, do you?
• 51:07
  Speaker 5: And I said not really, I mean, I need to get the manufacturer tags and stuff off of it, like that.
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: And she's like well, if you don't have to open it, please don't open it.
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: And I was like okay, but in my mind I was so caught up in my scoping process that when I come around and got ready to do the dishwasher, I completely forgotten that she had asked me to not open the dishwasher and I opened it and there was every product from probably every adult store I'm trying to give a PG that you could imagine and she was washing those things at the time that the fire happened.
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: And, yeah, I was like, oh, and when I tell you, she was every bit of 90 years old, 85 pounds, I was like.
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: And then I started realizing what those cars I've noticed that all those cars were older gentlemen and I started realizing what was going on there.
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: So I learned when an insured asked you not to go into a room or open something up, don't do.
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: It was, um, yeah, that was my craziest totally not what I thought.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not even going to be interested, I'm not even going to be interesting anymore I totally, I totally thought she was going to be selling moonshine I wish it was moonshine I totally thought she was going to be selling moonshine I would not be scarred for life if it had been moonshine I.
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: I look at my grandma differently now.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Wow granny.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Okay so.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: Chris, we're not going to make you answer that question now because Calvin is taking the case.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Calvin wins, calvin wins.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: He wins hands down.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: I can see.
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: So what is one thing that you wish every new adjuster knew?
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: Wow, every new adjuster.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: One thing, okay, here it is.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: It's a little bit of a soapbox, I'll make it fast, though Is that there are four life currencies, uh, that you need to consider when you take on any career or business, but especially independent adjusting.
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: Number one is time.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: Number two is energy.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: That's your mental, emotional, physical, spiritual energy.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: Um, there's relationships, and then there's money, and so that's term.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: So, to live life on your terms, you need to think about how you're spending those things in whole, not just your money, and that's how much you're spending, how much you're getting, because without that consideration, that's how we end up at the burnout is, we're spending all our physical energy, all our emotional energy, all of our time and using our relationship, capital and currency we have all in pursuit of money, which is good, we need that to a certain level, but when that's the entire focus, you become bankrupt in the rest, and that's when burnout happens.
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: Fantastic, wow, all right.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: So we went from grandma on the dishwasher to Chris's philosophy.
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure I like the picture you're painting.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: I do and folks.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: That's why claims is so amazing is because there's, there's like there's these worlds of things that you are exposed to and you start to understand about the world that you're living in.
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: So all right.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: Chantel, take us home.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Well, I want everybody to know how to contact you.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: I usually gear this towards more like middle career, but that's not to say that we're not giving out this information right For new independents or people who are looking to get into the you know group.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: So, chris, I'm going to put your email address down there.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: How do they contact you?
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: Best way is with email.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: If you're on LinkedIn, contact me through LinkedIn as well.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: That's the best way.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: If you need one information, just go to IAPathcom, which is the back end of my email.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: But yeah, that's the best way to get in contact with me and I'm happy to answer any questions.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Whether it's beginning, middle end, there's so much out there as far as information, so many good people.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: I'm rarely the right person, but I love redirecting you to the right person.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly, you know, and that brings up a very good point too that I'll just mention when we were talking about resiliency and the whole industry, kind of chewing up or maybe rehabbing people is.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: I have often said get involved with your local independent claims association.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Like I'm a member of the Greater Kansas City Claims Association.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: It is a great way to just like recharge.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: I know we are all busy doing everything, but I can't speak highly enough of it, of just having someone there who does the same thing as you and y'all could just complain to one another and like get that off of your chest.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Anyway, Calvin, how do we reach you?
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so, just like Chris, we're on all the socials.
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: You know, I'm I'm like Chris and I'm probably not the right person.
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, unfortunately I don't get to talk to everybody that calls in, probably because I'm so long winded.
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: The girls don't let me do it anymore, so just mocatcom or you know, our phone number is 417-988-4199.
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: Somebody will answer the phone all the time and talk to you.
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: And, just like Chris, our business is not to sell anyone on the industry.
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: Our business and Chris and I do a great job.
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: Chris is phenomenal.
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: It's a trade I picked up from him when I got in this industry Give the information away for free, tell folks what the industry is really like and let them decide if they want to come to IAPATH or to MoCat or to our friend Matt Allen out there.
• 57:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so we're on all the socials and reach out to MoCat or to our friend Matt Allen out there.
• 57:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so we're on all the socials and reach out to MoCatcom.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, great, are y'all doing anything like doing any speaking gigs or anything?
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: I have a few other things coming up, but they're kind of not in stone.
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: Chris doesn't do anything.
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: Just by Chris, I'll talk for you.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Because he's on a yacht doing.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: TikTok videos.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: He's on a yacht doing TikTok videos and I bet you there's a guitar back there, so there's some yacht rock going on.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: That's my five-year-old.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: He plays the guitar, yep.
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: Hey, I don't know if we have time for something, but I do have one point that I want to make, something that we're seeing in the industry for both Chris and I, the IA firms are looking for more well-rounded adjusters, right, and so I highly encourage folks that you know this happens all the time.
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: Both Chris and I both refer people over.
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: We're not affiliated, we don't trade dollars, but you know, for anybody listening to this podcast that may be interested in getting in, don't turn your nose up to property or don't turn your nose up to auto.
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: You know you should.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: You should check, check everything out that the industry has to offer.
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: And I just want to throw that out.
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: Chris has a phenomenal program and he is a Titan in the industry.
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: So check out IAPATH, and most definitely because the firms are looking for adjusters that can handle more, more, more types of claims and so sorry, I just want to throw that selfless plug out for my buddy Chris down there.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: You mentioned something very, very good I tell my students and anybody who ever asks me I'm like, look here and of course this is probably speaking bad of the industry, but I also feel that we should be realistic with them too is I think you should go into the domestics first and um, and then change your book of business, maybe every one and a half to two, maybe three years, and then after five or six years, um, get out and get into the ia sphere, because you're going to be using the domestics, who are going to like, ride you hard and put you up wet like a used donkey, a rented donkey or whatever, and um, but that's okay, go with it and then get out into the independence and you will be able to basically name your price because the, the, the, the domestics need you because they keep everybody pigeonholed so much.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: And having that multi-lined experience, which is what I have, is fantastic.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: I can do pretty much anything except airline stuff, aviation, you know, but other than that, I, I'm, I'm your man.
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: You can probably figure it out though.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: Right, I mean yeah.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, thank you so much, guys.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: Uh, chris, calvin, I really appreciate it and Heather, again, thank you so much for putting this together.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Our next podcast is going to be October 9th, where Heather and I are actually going to be talking about experts.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: So there's going to be a lot of times when they're like, oh you know, I don't need to tell an expert this or you know, because then they'll give me biased information or blah, blah, blah, and I'm of a totally different opinion, imagine that.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: So, um, be sure to like, subscribe whatever, share, comment, all of that kind of fun stuff, and, uh, other than that, thank you, gentlemen, it was so nice to meet you.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: Thank you for having me Great to meet you.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Bye-bye, see ya.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on the Art of Adjusting podcast, where we talk about life as an insurance adjuster.
• 1:01:05
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• 1:01:11
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• 1:01:14
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• 1:01:18
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• 1:01:29
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• 1:01:32
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