Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
Bringing together local businesses and neighbor of the Tri-Cities region. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Skip Mauney helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around The Tri-Cities.
Is your business serving the residents of Tri-Cities? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpTri-Cities.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 168: MAX4: Bridging the Gap Between Contractors and Insurance
What makes Justin Land with MAX4 Claims Specialists a good neighbor?
If you've ever felt lost in the intricate maze of insurance claims, this episode is perfect for you. Join us as we chat with Justin Land, co-owner of MAX4 Claims Specialists, who brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective on navigating the often-confusing world of insurance for contractors. With years of experience, Justin has honed the art of bridging the gap between contractors and insurance companies, ensuring that both parties understand their rights, responsibilities, and the necessity of cohesive communication.
Throughout our conversation, we uncover how many claims are denied—not due to a lack of damage—but because of improper documentation. Justin offers invaluable insights into what contractors need to understand when submitting claims, and the common misconceptions that can lead to frustration and confusion. His passion for ensuring that contractors are equipped with the right information to advocate for themselves is palpable. It’s about shaping a better experience for everyone involved and ensuring that claims don't fall through the cracks.
Furthermore, Justin shares heartfelt stories about the human side of business, how vital empathy is in maintaining strong client relationships, and why proper communication can turn a business challenge into a learning opportunity. This episode is filled with key takeaways that will resonate with anyone in the contracting field or those looking to better understand their insurance options.
Listen in to learn more about how MAX4 Claims can elevate your understanding of the insurance process and significantly boost your claims success. Be sure to subscribe, share, and leave us a review if you find value in this discussion—your engagement makes all the difference!
To learn more about MAX4 Claims Specialists go to:
MAX4 Claims Specialists
864-350-8825
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monning.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast of the Tri-Cities. So we have a very special guest with us here today and I'm really excited to learn all about them and their business and what they do. So today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, mr Justin Land, who is co-owner operator of Max for Claims. Specialist Justin, welcome to our show.
Speaker 3:Hey, thank you, skip, Happy to be here today.
Speaker 2:Well, we're thrilled to have you, like I said, excited to learn all about you and your business. So, if you don't mind, why don't you start us off by telling us about what you do?
Speaker 3:Sure. So Max4 Claim Specialist most people just call us Max4 or Max4 Claims Essentially we serve contractors. We do that for residential and commercial contractors, but we basically bridge the gap between the insurance carriers, the clients the contractor serve and the actual work that needs to be done and paid for. So we make sure that all of that process gets smoothed out and we make sure that we get better results for our contractors so they can serve their clients at the proper level.
Speaker 2:Wow, Pretty unique actually. Yeah, we love it Awesome. So, Justin, how did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:Great question, man. So it starts out with my father. So we are a father-son duo, we are co-owners of Max4. And so back in 2008, my father, ray, was downsized from his finance job and was kind of looking for what was next. He has construction in his background and a really close friend of his said hey Ray, if you will consider, I think you'd make an incredible adjuster. And my father said man, I've never heard of that. What is it?
Speaker 3:And so he said it is a position that helps kind of get the right damage. That's been done. And then it's an independent adjuster was what he was doing and that was specifically for insurance carriers. So my father said, hey, why not, let's give it a shot. He went through the training, he apprenticed for a while and then he got picked up because he's a little bit older and so you know he's not out partying every night. You know he kind of has. He has that gray beard, gray beard. And so he moved up through the ranks fairly quickly and then began to work, storm after storm after storm. And so when it comes to hail and wind and earthquake and all of this stuff, ray, my father's kind of worked it. He likes to say he's done just about everything but volcanoes. So, lord willing, we're never going to have to do a volcano. Volcanoes, so, lord willing, we're never going to have to do a volcano.
Speaker 3:But through that process he always did it from the perspective of the insurance carrier. And what he began to see over and over and over is that the contractor really didn't understand what the insurance carrier needed to pay on proper damage. And so you know, there's a lot of stats out there skip, but just to give you one. I mean the majority of claims that aren't paid for it's not because there isn't damage, it's because it's improper documentation.
Speaker 3:And so we were fighting that right and left, right and left, right and left, and ray said, man, this just isn't good. You know, these guys need to be trained a little bit. We need to bridge this gap. So he honestly felt like he was supposed to kind of step over to the other side and jump the fence is what he says and kind of take all of the knowledge that he attained and was trained with. He had done that for several, several years as a top adjuster. He is called a senior file examiner, so he actually was the top of the top. He was doing all the training. He was training large loss for commercial client you know commercial carriers, different things like that and so what he wanted to do was leverage all that skip to serve the contractor as one of their greatest tools for profit.
Speaker 2:Wow, very interesting. Yeah, well, what, what are? What are some myths or misconceptions in in the insurance business? Yeah, great.
Speaker 3:There are several. Insurance is probably one of those fields, you know, where people don't quite understand it very well, unless you work for the insurance carrier itself. And so I feel like that's kind of our strength as a company is we bring that expertise and that you know, expert level, eyesight and perspective to our clients. And so I would say there are lots of misconceptions, skip. The biggest one I would love to maybe talk about here that would serve, is that the insurance carrier should pay fully for the damage that's been done on every storm, like why do you need a claims company like Max for? Shouldn't the insurance company pay for everything to the building owner or the roofing owner? Isn't that going to be taken care of anyway?
Speaker 3:Well, here's the fact, and that is a very big misconception. Here's the fact is that the burden of proof is on the client and their contractor. Ok, so an insurance company is there to indemnify their customer, to take them back before the storm happened, back before the damage happened. But it's simple stuff like this For instance, if a contractor says, yeah, I've run into rot on this building, an insurance carrier will immediately go oh, rot, well, that's a problem. You should have seen that earlier. The client should have seen that earlier. That's probably not our fault, we're not going to pay for that, but if that contractor had been educated a little bit to say, hey, it's not water rot, it's water damage, and let's find out the origin of that damage.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about the event of that damage and let's talk about if this is the responsibility of the insurance company to pay for that damage. So there's a whole vernacular, there's a whole software package. I mean our company writes exactly like an insurance adjuster has been trained. We use the exact same photo report in the exact same format. We use the exact same software insurance carriers use and we know their language. So it's literally like carriers speak Russian, contractors speak English.
Speaker 3:You're never going to come out with a good result in that. But if you have somebody who truly understands not just the language, percent of the damage that's needed on every job that's damaged. But it just doesn't work that way. There's a lot of fraud out there. There's a lot of shady people out there. You really have to do it with professionalism. It's not an art form, it's not something you can kind of pick up and dabble in. It's not. It's a profession. So claims writing is a profession and you should be extremely educated and have learned how to do that over time with many different carriers. So that's probably the one that sticks out to me the most.
Speaker 2:Very good, very good and good to know actually. So, outside of work, justin, what do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:Oh man, love it. We're in such a great state here in Tennessee. I love to fish big time. That's my thing. Love to fish with my boys, I love to get out in the woods. You know I travel a lot with work. We have clients all over the us and canada, and so I love the, the northwest pacific, northwest and montana, and you know, love all that, uh, but that's kind of what I do for fun. What kind of fishing? Oh man, I mean I'll do just about anything. I like deep sea, but my favorite's river I love trout fishing. So I was up at saint regis, montana, not too long ago and out on a boat, man, it's just gorgeous, you know, I love it too if you can put me in a place. That's just gorgeous. And not just fishing, but fishing with the right people in the right place, man, it brings a whole new perspective to your life, you know amen, brother, I'm with you.
Speaker 2:I'm a trout guy too, so oh, good, good, that's good.
Speaker 3:What's your favorite fishing hole?
Speaker 2:Oh wow, that's a tough one. Around here there's several, but very thankful to be close to trout water, Very close to trout water. South Holston it's pretty cool. Okay, green River in Utah is probably my favorite place that I've been.
Speaker 3:I'm taking notes. There you go, there you go. We'll talk more after.
Speaker 2:Great, awesome. So let's switch gears for a second. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you've overcome, whether professionally or personally, and how it made you stronger in the end?
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, there are several that stick out, skip, but I'll say probably the first one is as a business owner. For me, probably the greatest hardship is providing such a valuable service and wanting the absolute best for your client in such a way and then, maybe due to anxiety or stress or whatever's on that client's plate whatever may be on my plate, you know that, not reciprocating, you know. I'll give you one scenario here and this is kind of how I grew through it. So we had a client that we had been serving really faithfully for about two years, phenomenal results. I mean, our returns we were bringing was night and day before they had us to now.
Speaker 3:And we had been working with those guys for a couple of years and I realized they had an outstanding payment of about 90 days and every month I would try to reach out hey, it's your term 14, it's day 20, what's going on? And then I realized they started dodging my emails no responses, no phone calls picked up, no text. And then I realized they started dodging my emails no responses, no phone calls picked up, you know, no text. Back and forth. Everybody went, went dead, you know silent, both partners. And I thought, man, this has been two years. And so I began to kind of stew a little bit, you know, and get a little angry, a little bitter, and I started sitting on that for a minute and my father and I talked about it, and so finally I realized you know what, and my dad probably brought this wisdom to the table, if I'm being honest. But I think we realized, hey, this is unlike this client. So what's going on, you know.
Speaker 3:And so I think the struggle for me, skip, is, as I had this definition of ROI, you know, my return on investment, right, that's what every business owner looks at. Well, it's so selfish, it's return on my investment, right, and so it's a completely one-sided perspective of doing business. Well, we realize our real value is relationship. That's what we've built our company on, that's what we love, that's what we love to invest into. We can make money anywhere. You know that, Skip, I'm sure you understand this. We could do anything we wanted to do, make money in any industry, but we've so chosen to do it here, and it's because of the relationships, and so I just called this guy out of the blue.
Speaker 3:I mean, literally, I kind of took off all the baggage I had mentally set it down to the side. I took a deep breath. I gave this guy a phone call and I said, hey, man, and I said thank you so much for answering. He goes oh, hey, you know what I said hold on, hold on hold on. I said, hey, I realized that you're 96 days past due on this invoice and it's a large one. But here's the deal. This is very unlike you, man. What is going on? Is something happening? Fill me in, man, what's going on? And you could just hear on the phone. The guy just took a deep breath and pause and he just started breaking down.
Speaker 3:Skip, you know, a 50 year old man, just a contractor, his entire life, right, this is a burly dude just started breaking down, you know, and he was crying a little bit and sniffling a little bit and just saying, hey, my life's falling apart. You know, my wife and I are on the verge of divorce. Like just things are just crazy right now, man, I'm so sorry. I said, man, it's all right, that's all right. I said I tell you what man this phone call. I hope that you see that we care more about you than just the money, you know.
Speaker 3:And we talked for a little bit and he surprised me, skip, I don't know where you're at in your faith or your audience, and that's okay. All I had to offer the guy at the moment was, hey, can I just pray for you? And he was like, yeah, sure, that'd be great. And then he shut up on the phone and he was driving in his truck, so I was just kind of doing the whole nice kind south thing, you know, like, oh yeah, we're southern, I'll pray for you. You know we were moving on. No, he literally wanted a prayer right there in that moment. No-transcript. We've got to court a little bit better who we work with and why they decide to work with us. That's on me, you know. And then we want to make sure that I mean, what's the alternative? Skit, treat people like crap. No, we're not going to do that. You know we're going to do business the right way with the right people, the best we possibly can, and so you know that scenario turned out pretty good, you know.
Speaker 2:So learning Awesome, awesome, yep. Power of prayer, brother.
Speaker 3:That's it.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. So, justin, if you could, if you could think of one thing that you'd like our listeners to remember about you and about Max for claim specialist, what would that be?
Speaker 3:Oh wow, that's awesome we want to be known as a company who injects belief into others. Ok, so believe, believing that you can do it. We hear all the time, oh, supplements are too hard, or supplements aren't worth it, or I get great results in supplements, and then we go. Well, you know, what do you? What are you judging that by? I don't know. Well, we believe there's probably greater out there for you. Why don't you? Why don't we teamwork together? Why don't we partner up, you know? And so if there's one thing I want Max for to be known for, I want us to be known as a company that when you give us a phone call, you're going to get off of that phone call and you're going to believe that there's possibility, that there's potential, and whether we work together or not, you're going to believe all right, those guys just fired me up, they encouraged me, I'm ready for whatever is next.
Speaker 2:So if any of our listeners are interested and want to contact you, learn more about what you guys do and how you can help them. How can they? How can they learn more?
Speaker 3:but quite simply, man, you know we serve contractors and roofers. So if you're a commercial contractor or residential roofer or or whatever, we, we are probably a great phone call to make. We, we don't charge for our discovery time and so we're happy to jump on the phone with any listener. And you know, the best way to do it is just max4claimscom. It's real simple. You've got our phone number there, you've got an email there. Really really easy. But just go to max4claimscom, hit that connect link. Hey, I'd like to set up a call.
Speaker 2:It comes directly to me. That's not marketing. It literally drops in my inbox. That's the very best way, skip, awesome, very good. Well, justin, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time today and just to tell us all about you and MaxForce Specialist and moving forward, we wish you and your dad and your family and company all the best.
Speaker 3:Hey, thank you so much, man. It's a joy to be on today.
Speaker 2:Well, we're thrilled to have you and love to have you back sometime. Thank you, Skip. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. Go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom. Or call 423-719-5873.