Transcription
What's up, YouTube? Welcome to my commercial educational roofing sales dinner. We've got 50 commercial property owners, and we are going to educate them, inform them, and help solve their big problems for big paychecks.
If you're sitting at the site of where hurricane, category four strength winds, water coming in, and this is right next to the Luminary Hotel. Look, these people are board members, commercial property owners, and they're property managers. And they want to find out how to speed up their insurance claim, how to find a roofer they can depend on, how to navigate this process next time the storm season comes up.
And everybody asks me, Lee, how do you land more commercial projects? The reality is, the devil is in the data. First step is to find a cell phone number and email address to market these people. Finding a commercial property owner, like when I closed Grant Cardone, I had to look him up. We use technology like rihannamy.com. It will allow us to find cell phone numbers and email addresses and then pull that information out. You send them texts, we send them calls.
But these people were all sent a direct mail. And I'll tell you a little story. It was about four years ago that one of my commercial clients got a letter, and it invited a bunch of commercial people to a dinner and asked them to make an RSVP to see if they wanted chicken, steak, or shrimp. And I took a copy of that letter. I call it the three million dollar letter because that night, I went to the event, I got three million dollars in business. And ever since then, I've been using the same letter to create my own events, just like the one you see right here.
Look, everybody asks me, Lee, how can I get in the commercial business? Well, sometimes you just need a coach. Hit me up in the comments below. Fill out the application. The to the Moon contractor. I'll teach you how to hold your own commercial live event like this. 50 Million Dollar Commercial Claim Symposium starts now.
So, my name is Lee Hay. I'm the owner of RCA. We are a family-owned roofing company. And today, we want to educate you. There is really an epidemic of misinformation when it comes to roofing, insurance claims, laws, attorneys, public adjusters. And it's a big problem here in the State of Florida. You know, I'm sure nobody came here that didn't have any roofing problems. But by a show of hands, does anybody have any issues with their roof?
Well, I'm glad that you made it because even if we don't get to be a roofing contractor this time around, we want to be a roofing contractor for life. We want to educate you in case this happens again. And, um, you know, a little bit about my story was, you know, my dad, he started in 1993 in Hurricane Andrew operation. And roofing for our family has kind of meant sort of a different thing. And my whole life, I've done these insurance restoration projects. But this year, I actually caught a lot damage myself. It's hard to find a roofer you can trust.
And we believe our core values of moving with speed, doing things right the first time, standing behind our promises with integrity. And our real differentiator is how we respond in these difficult situations. And it doesn't matter if you need a good, competitively priced roofer and a cash bid or a repair on a property that's just a headache. I'm not just the guy that goes for the insurance claim. I'm a retail roofer. I will do repairs, and I will be the guy that will bid against many roofers and give you the best price value guarantee. So I'm not going to be the cheapest guy, but with our warranty, with our service, with our project management, I guarantee you'll get better value. So we believe we're the gold standard in roofing.
And we'll get through this quickly. But, um, you know, who out there thinks it's hard to find a roofer you can trust? I mean, whether they tell you that your roof is not damaged, or they tell you the roof is damaged, or they tell you this is the repair that's necessary, or you need to replace the cost. You don't know what roofs cost. You don't know what's repair versus replacement. And so, you know, it's for me, like our biggest, like statement as a company for anyone that works with us is transparency builds trust. And, you know, we want to be transparent with everyone here.
If you're a property manager, our goal is to make you look like a star. It doesn't matter what you need. If you need an assessment, if you need a repair, if you need a claim, if you need a referral to the best attorney in Florida, it doesn't matter what you need. We want to be your go-to guy when it comes to roofing, when it comes to insurance restoration. And, um, you know, my mission is kind of be the Chick-fil-A of roofing. And get a long ways to go. We're a 100 million dollar a year company, and we're probably the second largest insurance restoration company in this area.
So we have lots of accolades that don't really want to go into all the details. I'm a good grouper, blah, blah, blah. I want to talk about the, the details of how we actually get this done. I believe it doesn't matter if you know me or if you know another local grouper that's an insurance restoration. There's a lot of good guys out there. Think we're the best, but I think the best way for a management company or a, a board or a commercial property owner to get fair settlement the fastest, to get put back hold the fastest, is to have someone like me work contingent upon approval.
And the way that works is, I document the damage, I do the estimate, and then we work with the team, oftentimes with a public adjuster and or an attorney. We're able to work together as a team. And because we're a team, the homeowner, the property management company, the board doesn't suffer any extra expense. We guarantee we complete the work for the amount of the insurance claim. And so we're able to do that when we have sort of disagreement in place up front.
Six years and you still have not received a fair estimate? Oh, we go. It was not fair, which is why we are now. We go to trial in September. And what we hope to is avoid this process. We want to try to get a speedy agreed prices. A lot of things that you can do to avoid. But, but to answer your question, insurance, when they came out, they, their adjuster came out, and he refused to get on some of our roofs. Oh, no. So we videotaped them, okay, as proof for trial. Yes, the showing that they didn't even do an appropriate investigation, whereas we did go on a roughs. And, and then this last time, at the end, we actually hired a drone. Yeah, we had that taken care of. So because we, we're not going to go through that again. Yeah. And give her props for taking care of her business.
But the biggest thing is, if you leave it to the insurance company to document the damage, they're not going to do a good job. They're not going to complete the investigation. It's up to you to get a good investigation done. And so that's what we do kind of preliminary for you. He lives one of our best project managers. We got a whole team. Raise your hand if you're on the RCA team. So guys, um, I'm, I'm about fixing roofs, but I, I love. I think the superpower is our team. When was this one? Tell them about this one. And then on the whole point.
So the insurance company came out and threw him a bone. They said, we can, it was, I think eight buildings. They wanted to tear off two, harvest the tile, and repair the other six. Then they came back and said, well, we found the tile, but it's not the same color. But we'll, you know, we'll paint the roofs all to match and give them a 10-year warrant. And we came back to him and said, hey, well, the new roof's a 50-year warranty. We'll go for the paint job, but we want five coats of paint. And it was a couple of days later, they came back and said, send us your estimate. Let's get this file closed.
But it took two meetings with the adjuster, two meetings with their so-called engineer that came from Colorado. Didn't know anything about a tile roof. So it was two days out there going through every building, lift and tile, pull and tile, looking at what, what people understand in a tile roof. The underlayment's the most important thing. And so the insurance company always wants to address the concrete tile and not the underlayer. So once we started pulling tile, you can see very distinct markings in that modified bitumen roof that can only be caused by uplift.
And so it took probably four months of this back and forth, back and forth meetings on site, going back and forth with the paint and things like that. And at the end, it really turned out good with the for the association because they got rid of the seafoam green yellow paint, went to a different profile tile and a brown with a, you know, much more updated look. And and they were just thrilled with the final project. In fact, they were ready to throw the towel. They were like, to the point, no, that was the other one. That was Larry. They were at the point where they had written everything up to do an assessment and assess, I think every unit owner. I think it was going to be around 15 to 20,000 per unit just to go ahead and put the new roofs on. Were they old? Yes. Were they insured? Yes. So it worked out for them in the long run.
So a lot of roofers don't do the stone coated steel. They have tile roofing crews. And then people like, I don't know, these are the bad things about them. So I showed you one, and I could go backwards. Cagney, what did you do when this HOA had a problem with the question about maintenance? This one had an issue. The same issue. Yeah. Their biggest concern was walkability because they had the head wall flashing here, and they, they'd had previous issues, and they had squirrels that were chewing. And so they were worried about they've had a lot of contractors out walking on the roof.
And so in this situation, everything about the stone coated steel was a benefit except the walkability. So what we did is we put a packet together for them to give out to their contractors on how to walk on the roof, that had picture diagrams of where to put your feet, how to walk on it, and a waiver saying that they understood and that they were responsible. And so we were able to provide that package to the association to to put in their bedding. So whenever they had that contractor come out, they gave them that form, and that educated them on how to walk on the roof. Now, you can repair the roofs. One at a time. You have to pull up the ones around it, but you can repair them. Now, also, if you see the guys walking on the metal tile roof, now these roofs are completely capable of every single one of them being able to walk them. It just takes a little common sense. Like if you're in a barrel tile, don't stand on the barrel. You know, you stand in the middle. You know, and when it comes to where these two are, there's only one place that you can step that actually will get. If you walk on it the right way, it's completely solid.
Now, the insurance company gives you a 30% discount on premiums. So that is a, how many, how, how many units was that one? Like 200 or something? I don't know what the premium is on that. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? 30%. 30% cheaper for metal. Sixty thousand dollar difference in the HOA's insurance every year, just because it's enough. Now, here's the other thing. These roofs don't streak like the same way. Kyle did. It doesn't. There's algae resistance in some of the stone coated. It's still kind of art has got algae resistance in the paint. And, um, you don't really have to clean these the same way. And what I would recommend instead of getting up there with heavy equipment is just a soft wash.
My name is Cagney Rogers, owner of Fair Chance Claims. Like Lee mentioned, we've been best friends for a long time. And, uh, you know, we've done a lot of work together. I've been working hurricanes in the State of Florida since Hurricane Matthew. And a lot has changed in the the insurance space. Um, the, uh, they seem to can change the rules whenever they want to. And so, you know, people like me, Harvey, Lee, we're constantly educating ourselves because we're, we're in a changing landscape, and we have to help our clients because that's what we're here for.
You know, a lot of mistakes that we see is really just kind of waiting on the insurance carrier and thinking that they're going to do well, kind of what we paid them to do. And, uh, when something happens, to take care of us. And so a lot of people end up in this trap of waiting and waiting. And, uh, so really, you've got to take control. Like Lee said, and it takes a team. Um, it takes a lot of effort, a lot of energy. And, and so it's really showing the insurance company how much they owe you. It's not letting them tell you, hey, this is how much we owe you. It's really, you need to know what's in your policy. You need to know everything that they owe you. And then when you submit it to them, you need to have someone that's done their diligence. And accuracy is key because I see a lot of people submit outrageous, crazy estimates. Contractor spent, you know, an hour on site and is asking for a lot of things that's not in the policy. And it's really not the contractor's fault if he didn't know, you know, what, what to put in the estimate for you. And so that's where the team comes together.
And then when you're submitting the stuff to the insurance carrier, you really need someone like Harvey that's looking over everything with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that we're not making mistakes. Because when we're submitting this to the insurance company, we're saying, hey, this is our loss, this is how much you owe me. And now there's a set of timelines that that come together, and that they have to abide by. And then before that, you're really not putting their feet to the fire. You're just kind of hoping and praying that they're going to do the right thing and pay you out. And unfortunately, it's a very small percentage that that actually happens. You know, maybe Hurricane Matthew, things were a little faster. And, you know, a lot of people got some fair settlements. Maybe in Hurricane Irma, but, um, over the years, we've seen more and more people that have struggled, made mistakes, and it's costly. Association, a lot of money. And they've, you know, it's not fair for the, the cams. It's not fair for the board. And, you know, it comes down to education. So thank you, Lee, for putting that bin on because, you know, if we can avoid, um, if we can help people avoid making some mistakes, just one association or two properties, then then we've done our job because it really isn't right. And someone has to stand up against these, these greedy corporations and their corrupt claims practices.
How did you get through that so fast? Well, it really came down, well, it came down to documentation, really. It's, uh, knowing what the insurance Co owed and painting a clear picture of why they owed it. And really, you know, submitting all those documents, pre-existing damages, and maintenance records, having all that together. And that the proof of loss in submitting that packet, that that loss packet to the insurance company in a timely manner. And that also being able when the insurance carrier adjuster got on the phone, making sure that he had the authority to, to even discuss the, the claim at that, that point, at that level. And so once, you know, it's very rarely has happened where when you get an adjuster that has the authority and is actually willing to close the file. And so we, we had satisfied the policy by submitting everything to the insurance carrier the way it should have been submitted. And all our supporting document was in line. There was very, very little gaps in our, uh, argument. We were accurate. We had everything together. And the insurance company paid. And that was like 90 days from from the date of loss. And that doesn't happen very often. And it's 4.8 million dollars. So, um, you know, being able to get through these files quickly and at least give the association a number that that's reliable. It doesn't always happen that way. Um, a lot of people, I see a lot of times where they, they get an estimate for 10 million, and by the time it settles, it's 7 million. So there's this big gap of expectations. So really, if we can educate you, we can be clear, transparent, and accurate throughout the whole process, then the chances of your recovery and a satisfied association is is a lot higher.
Put your kids together. Harvey Cohen. Thanks, buddy. I'm Harvey Cohen. Like Lee said, first of all, I just want to say thank you, Lee. You know, I like working with Lee and Cagney because they're like me. I want to educate people. I want people to be informed, make right decisions, and and and make their choices based on the on the real issues. You know, and so I really appreciate you guys. I've been, we've been in business for over 20 years. Everything that we do now is all geared towards property damage insurance claims, and that's it. So it doesn't matter if it's a small one. If you, if you guys are, you know, cams, if you have a, whatever, a pipe leak, we can help with that. If it's a 20 million dollar claim, we can help with that. And everything in between. So, uh, please, you know, grab our card. The same as Lee, we'll come out and do an inspection. We'll come out and, uh, review your policies. Also, for all the cams, we're certified by the state to provide continuing education credits. So we can come out and do like a presentation, presentation, like a lunch and learn. And it's informative, and it's fun. And, you know, we eat lunch together, so it's all good. And you get credits for that. So please let us know if we can do any of that.
So let me start with the proof of loss. It's very important to have that be, you know, most, if not all policies have a provision that say you must provide a proof of loss. Some say you have to provide it within a certain period, or else we can deny you. Not only that, they don't send you anything or tell you, right, hey, you have to fill out this form. Here's a form to fill out. Give us this information. No, they just wait until, you know, you, it's too late. And then you go, hey, I have a claim. And they go, did you file a proof of loss within 60 days? No. Well, guess what? You know, I mean, they don't really get away with that. What happens sometimes as attorneys who don't really know what they're doing will file a lawsuit too early. And then they go to court, and then in those cases, they can kick it out of court and say, well, they never filed a proof of loss, a sworn proof of loss, and they can get those thrown out of court. So it's important, like Lee said, that you have to have people that really know what they're doing. You know, this is what we do. You have to have, like Cagney was saying, that, uh, uh, an insurance policy expert that can review the policy and talk to the contractors and say, hey, here's a roadmap of what we need to have and what we need to do.
I'll give you an example. We've had cases where there's 50 million dollars in policy limits, and they only have 10,000 dollars in mold coverage. Right? So you can imagine, only 10,000. If you went in and your contractor said, yeah, we got to do all this remediation and dry it out, and it's going to be a million dollars. What do you think the insurance company is going to say? Yep. They're going to go, we agree 100%. All everything you see here is a mold, and it needs to be remediated. And so here you go, here's 10,000, and we're off the hook for the million. So it depends. You know, you have to look at the policies in a certain way, know where you're getting yourself into. And I mean, that's that's such a big, big issue that I've seen where associations end up, you know, holding the bag because they hire these guys who don't know what they're doing, or they didn't bring in, uh, you know, an expert on policy, and they write up a claim for a million dollars, and they do all this dry out, remediation, and tear out all the walls, and they give you the bill. Guess who owes that bill? You do. The insurance company doesn't owe that bill. You're the one who signed the paperwork with the contractor. So you owe it. So it's important to know, you know, who you're dealing with, what you're getting yourself into.
Man, what's your name? Janine. I want to give you a lot of credit too, because I've seen this happen a lot where we have claims that are really good and solid, but insurance companies will fight and fight and fight and drag us into federal court and file all these crazy motions and drag it on and on until our clients are like, look, just take half as much as you know what they're offering. And, and we tell them, like, listen, let us do our, you know, like, let us keep going. I'm telling you, it's going to go good. But ultimately, you know, many times people, they're just at the end of their wits, right? So they, they're like, whatever you can get me, just get it, and let's be done with this. Others involved in the process, they know that like on board, some people are only there for two-year terms. So they know they could push you for two-year terms. And then hopefully they have another board that comes in, and then they go, well, you know, the previous board was crazy. Here's, you know, you guys, let's just close this. And they want to close it on. And we're like, no, this, we're not closing it. And, and so they work against us, even though we pay our premiums. They work against us. And it's very sad. And like we would say too, everything's your fault. Like, if you're on the board, or if you're a cam, everything's your fault. Like, it's your fault that we even had a hurricane. It's your fault that things aren't being fixed properly. It's your fault that the insurance company didn't pay. Everything's your fault. And then all of those people that, that they were like, just, I need this thing done. And it, and it makes people want to just take the money and run. When so I give you honestly, a lot of credit. We've had some, I had one where, uh, uh, we were asking for, I think like 13, 14 million. The insurance, the art, our, uh, board said, look, just take 6 million right now. Let's be done with this. And we convinced them to let us go through, finish this process after we've been fighting with them in federal court for years and all this other crazy stuff. And we ended up getting them 12 and a half million. And they wanted us to take six. And, and we really, like, just let us go finish the process. You know, but they were so tired of everything that they would not go forward. They wouldn't let us, you know, fight, fight. And, and you have to, right? If you don't fight for your own rights, nobody else is going to.
That says from now on, they can't drop you solely for the age of your roof, right? So if your roof is 15 years old or older, you can go get, uh, uh, you know, an inspection. And, and as long as they say you got five more years of useful life left on your roof, the insurance company can't drop you for that. But guess what they do? They know. They, they, they, they go, yeah, here's three different reasons why we're dropping you for. Or they go, we're not dropping you. Which we were talking about earlier. We signed up a big association, and they were paying like 125,000 or something like that a year for their premium. And after the hurricane, they go, over renewing you. We're not going to drop you because they're not allowed to, just so you all know. They're not allowed to drop you just because you have a hurricane claim or open a claim anyway. So they go, yeah, we're not dropping you, but we're going to increase your premium to 1.2 million a year from 125,000. So, you know, okay, yeah, we're not dropping you, but they're not going to be able to pay for that. So these guys had to go get a new insurance policy that, you know, excluded all their roofs until we can get them their money to put in all new roofs. And then they can go back and get a policy that will cover everything.
15-year-old rules and really going to matter because with us, the insurance company came back and said to us that we, our, our roofs are old. And therefore, we're not, we're not going to pay for them. And you guys never took care of your roof. So let. And I went through 42 boxes of old documentation. We put together multiple Excel spreadsheets showing all the improvements we made on our rocks, and that we were not neglectful. We did what we were supposed to do during the life of that rough. And they still argue. They still say nope. So I don't think the 15 year is going to make a difference if the insurance company wanted to. They're going to say you never took care of it.
Just so you don't know, like we keep a digital file. So whenever you talk about before and afters, when we ever talk about maybe your roof doesn't need to be replaced, you just need to maintain it. If I go out and inspect 100 properties, and there's a roof that has five years of life expectancy, and you want that letter, you're gonna get that letter. And the reality is, is like, you know, if you could, you know, find damage, of course, you should file a claim. But if there's five years of life expectancy, document whatever repairs you do, keep it in an online file, and have somebody that can prove to the insurance company. It's one of the biggest arguments is you didn't take care of it. It's wear and tear. And that's what's so nice about having a contractor all the time. You may not have anything on lots of your properties now, but if you, if you get us to do the inspection, we'll keep all the documentation for you. So that when it does come up, we have the evidence. I recommend that so much. Just to get, no matter what, get an inspection done. Because whether they find damage or not, at least it will provide you with information for the next time. Right? If they, like I was saying, if we have some kind of damage this year, and, uh, uh, the insurance company goes, oh, no, that's not this one, that's the other one. Or they try to, whatever benefits them, they're going to try to wiggle their way into it. But at least if, if you let RCA come out and do an inspection, you'll have the documentation that you need to show whether or not there was damage.
Step number one, you got a whole list of properties. We go out to every property. We get you pictures. We put them in a virtual file. You know, if you need a roof quote, a roof repair, I don't want you to think that we're only after roof replacements. We have a warranty division. We have a repair division. Joe wanted me to come up here and tell, you know, we're roofers. So if you need a roof to have a five-year life expectancy, so you can get an insurance policy where you've got. But at the same time, you should go ahead and let Harvey review the policies. We should go ahead and investigate all the roofs that were in the path of the storm. You should find a list of all the properties, you know, that are 10 years old and older. If you're getting a roof, if you need a roof estimate, by all means, give us the opportunity to earn your business. At least you'll get more information that will help you get a better deal from the guy that you're using. Chances are, you'll probably use us, but we want the opportunity to do an estimate. He wants the opportunity to review your policy. And so we've got inside the folder, a survey. And in that survey, it just talks about out your claims, talks a little bit about your detail. And, you know, we want to now kind of break this down and shake hands and wrap this up because it's been a little long, mean, lots of information. But the reality is here, um, you know, we want to meet with you all individually. We want to go to your properties. It takes time. This is just the beginning. And we want to invite y'all back. We're going to be doing this again September 1st through 3rd. It's more of a personal development, real estate. If you're into another networking event that might educate you more on the business side of things, then, you know, let us know. We'll give you a ticket just for coming here. More importantly, we want to help you out with your claims. We want to do a policy review. And any final message for them? No, that's it. We really appreciate everybody coming. Not really. I, I mean, right. I can't thank you. Thank you all enough. We have it. Thank you guys. Please. And that is a wrap right there. Behind me, we have a board, a condo association. They're getting a claim out of the public adjuster and legal process, and they need a roofer. It's definitely a million dollar job. But you know what? We met, uh, property management companies, largest property management companies in the country, 1600 properties. That could be really good. But I think we had a management company here with about 150 properties, all in Southwest Florida. And they had a bunch of highlighted properties that they want us to inspect. Go through their entire portfolio. And educating these property managers on some key things like this contract administration. They had no idea about it. And a lot of, like, big property management companies are able to add massive value to their organization. I'm going to share with these property managers this contract, and it can add a lot of value to their company. So I would say we have these forms. These forms inside of each one of the folders. It has a questionnaire. And my wife is over here. She's collected almost everybody filled out an answer to the question. We were able to get a ton of interaction from the audience. And we're putting the final touches on a million dollar deal right now that's just coming out of legal. I'd say this event was the most successful commercial dinner that I've ever done. And what's funny is success. Lee's clues. The first time this event happened, I went to someone else's event. I actually got the letter through one of my clients. And dude, it's called the Art of the Swagger Jack. When you see something that works, then take it for yourself and do it better. That's exactly what I did. Now, I showed you how we did it. Go out there and do it for yourself. Hey, click the link in the comments. I'll help you get this done. You want to blow up your business? Look, it's residential, it's commercial. You need more leads, you need more sales people. We got a proven system. I showed you how we did it. Now let's do it together. Put, click the link in the comments and fill out the application. Look forward to working with y'all. Also, this is right next to the conference. Dude, we're in view of the Luminary Hotel on the water here in Fort Myers. I invited many of these property managers to our conference. I said, everyone here that attended got free tickets. So September 1st through 3rd, Wes Watson, Bradley, Dave Meltzer, real estate investor, successful roofers, contractors. It doesn't matter what you are. You need to come to Fort Myers, Florida, September 1st through 3rd. Blue Collar American Dream Conference. All right guys, comment below what you thought about this awesome episode. Till next time, we're out.