The Insurance Claim Process for Homeowners
What Does an Insurance Claim Feel Like?This post is an excerpt from an email I received from a client. The city they live in experienced a sewer system failure and flooded their finished basement with sewer and storm water.State Farm denied coverageTheir own...
Restoration Marketing in a Crowded Marketplace
Breaking Through: Marketing in a Crowded MarketplaceI recently had the pleasure of interviewing Richard Braun of 1800-RESTORE on my podcast: The Claim Clinic. He was kind enough to put together this article for us all to share. I hope you like it!If you'd like to...
How To Get Insurance Work WITHOUT TPA Insurance Programs
I recently received a question via email from a subscriber that hit on a topic that's close to my heart. Since I've answered this question several times over the past year, in several ways, I thought I'd finally make a blog post about it. Here goes: If an independent...
Direct Assignment Transfer via XactAnalysis – Yep, you can do that.
Have you ever wished you could just re-assign your Xactimate estimates to someone else to write for you? You know, like the way the big TPA firms do? If only there was a way that, when an assignment hits your “Inbox” via XactAnalysis, you could simply re-assign it to...
Does Home Insurance Cover a House Fire?
“Sure, sure. I have insurance. You’re totally covered.”I was young and naive. My eager landlord was young and naive. Hear this: You are not covered.I moved into a condo in Northwest Portland, Oregon. It was a step above the apartment I was living in before. The last...
The Dark Side of Preferred Provider & TPA networks
Let's talk about program work.There's a lot of good things about being a part of insurance "programs", but I don't want to talk about them.I want to talk about the bad side.Insurance "programs" or "preferred provider" networks are agreements that insurance carriers...
$1,000 An Hour: Five Xactimate Codes for Water Damage Success
Five Ways to Rev Up Your Mitigation Revenue. Would you like to make $1,000 an hour? Did you know that you’ve already got the tools to do so? You’re probably already doing these things. But you’re not getting paid for it if you’re not properly documenting your...
Xactimate in Plain English
"What do you do again?" It's the inevitable question that I've had asked many times over the years. And it's understandable. I work in a small niche ($210billion) of the construction world called "Restoration." That means I help people who have suffered water and...
Adjusters act as if it’s their money.
It’s Not Their Money But you wouldn’t know it by the way they act. I’m talking about insurance adjusters of course. And the way that it seems that every claim is being paid out of their own personal bank account. It wasn’t always like this, but longer I’m in the...
So you’re handling your own insurance claim? Really?
These last couple weeks, I've noticed a subtle theme in some of the people I’m speaking with. It has been bothering me enough, and putting these people in bad enough positions, that I've decided to write about it in the hopes that others will learn a better way. What...
When good trees go bad.
Neighbor’s Tree, Your House. It’s that time of year again here in the Northwest. The weather is turning and the wipers need replacing. And, with the last storm system that blew through, a lot more than the leaves are falling. As I was driving into work I saw several...
What is Thumbtack?
Kellee Gunderson via Compfight So I was introduced to this site today. Ron Garcia of The Garcia Group asked for references today at our BNI Meeting. The website is called Thumbtack. So I went there, gave him a glowing review, then signed up. Part of signing up...
Change is Tough
If everybody followed the rules, nothing would ever change. ~Richard Branson Fighting upstream is hard. Being different is hard. Making real change is hard. The last couple weeks have shown me just how hard it is to be different. I had a potential client accept a...
Make My Pain Go Away: Choosing the right Contractor
How to make the SMART move when choosing a contractor. Choosing a contractor is tough, real tough. Most people don’t know where to start, so they do a quick Google search and get lots of bids. Let me tell you, that process is a sure fire way to fail. When someone...
Will you please “like” me?
First, THANKS! Second, let me explain why I'm posting this. I recently joined Klout.com. Klout is a service that purportedly measures one's online "influence" level. It is measured on a scale from zero to 100. While super-dooper online personalities like Dennis...
Look for the Good, Coach to the Strengths
After reading The Long Tail and Killing Sacred Cows, and after sitting down with Beth from Four Winds Coaching yesterday, a core truth stood out to me. As with all great books, ideas and coaches, they speak about the profound and basic truths. As a society, we have a...
May Newsletter 2013
May is here and it feels like June! Now before you break out the sunscreen, may I suggest you verify a different kind of coverage? This month's video illustrates how complacency in coverage can really burn. A tenant lets a water leak go unreported and only notifies...
Home Repair Advocacy for Insurance Repairs
"Insurance companies rely upon the ignorance of their own policyholders. An uninformed policyholder will rarely argue with an adjuster, because they don't know what they don't know." –Russell Longcore Insurance Claim Secrets Revealed! 2006 You're an informed consumer...
Top 5% Most Viewed?
Should I celebrate, or run and hide? 🙂
What Is an Independent Estimator?
It has come to my attention that most people don't understand just what it is that I do for a living. I'll admit that the term "independent estimator" is fairly ambiguous. It's not like I'm a plumber or mechanic. So here is a brief video explaining my role as...
