IAM2370 – Founder and CEO Transforms Data Into Actionable Insights for the Public Adjusting Industry

Title: Transcript - Thu, 30 Jan 2025 18:36:32 GMT

Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2025 18:36:32 GMT, Duration: [00:16:55.29]

[00:00:00.24] - Ted Pastestos

Now, I think we've built like a really, really great franchise offering. And what we're selling to you is an opportunity to say, hey, come into this built out system, right? Where we've learned, you know, we've experienced all the follies, we've learned, you know, kind of all the nuances and the pitfalls. And our commitment or obligation to a franchisee is to guide you through that so that you don't have those so that we can get you fast and quick to profitability.

[00:00:25.03] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

[00:00:52.60] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Ted Potestos. Ted, excited to have you on the show.

[00:01:00.77] - Ted Pastestos

Hey, Gresh, how's it going, man? Nice to be here.

[00:01:03.59] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on ted, and of course, even more excited to talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. But of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Ted so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Theodore Podestos, or ted, is to transform data into action and leverage it for policyholder advocacy. He's contributed to the public adjusting industry by increasing value to consumers and adjusters alike, developing systems, methodologies, and investing in various software platforms that reduce claim friction. One such technology is Claim Machine, which utilizes weather data to give public adjusters, roofers, restoration companies, and home service businesses leads on impacted properties, increasing their efficiency in sales. In 2023, Ted brought on a fellow insurance claim expert and leaders to create Tigard Adjusters with the goal of developing an effective, affordable franchise that nationally defines the public adjusting industry with innovative excellence. And since establishing Tiger Adjusters, he has recovered. They have recovered over millions of dollars in settlements for hundreds of client claims. And one of the things that we were talking about before we hopped on is Ted was saying so much about how a lot of what they do is for those people that want to advocate so your first responders, those people that are really trying to make the world a better place, which is why I love everything that they're doing. He is also a former member of the Army National Guard with an honorable discharge. And Ted also trained as an army medic and a signal support system specialist. He's 40 under 40 in the Houston Business Journal, and he also is the winner of the Franchise Young Conferences Shark Tank pitch event. So, Ted, you're doing awesome things. Excited to have you on. Are you ready to speak to the IMCO community?

[00:02:42.86] - Ted Pastestos

I'm ready to go. Gresh whenever you got. Whenever we can move forward, we're good to go.

[00:02:46.87] - Gresham Harkless

Okay, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

[00:02:53.91] - Ted Pastestos

You know, I think a lot of people kind of, they come up with, like, what you just read through right now. It sounds like, you know, the copywriters that we hired did a really fantastic job, kind of, you know, kind of. Kind of, you know, judging it up a little bit as well, I like to call it. I can promise you it wasn't that fancy when we started and how I got into entrepreneurship, to be honest with you, I think. I think I always had the bug for entrepreneur. But, you know, with this business, I think it started until 2019. Before that, I was in the corporate space. And to be frank, you know, I left the corporate space because my last boss was just such. Such an asshole, man. He was just super toxic. And. And so the environment just wasn't. I just. I mean, I wasn't digging the vibes. Like, you know, it'd be on, you know, going to work every day. And I was working Monday through Saturday as a project coordinator for a multifamily acquisition firm. And, you know, and. And it got to the point after you know, maybe a year or so where I'm walking into work every day, I'm like, I got anxiety, you know, because this guy was just off the walls. And it was just, you know, and the. And the money was, you know, it was. It was solid. It was a corporate, you know, corporate salary. You know, money was showing up every two weeks, but it just wasn't worth the grind. And so, you know, I actually left, you know, and, you know, I ended up going to a co working space and with like $7,000 in savings and said, I'm gonna start a business, and then ended up linking up with one of my co founders, Stuart Severino. He just by happenstance was at that co working space. And we vibed and we started a business called Predictive Solutions. It was a martech business. I've got a background in geographic information systems, like lead generation, demand generation. And so you know, we linked up, and Stu's got a really heavy background in Martech. So we. We decided that we wanted to start, like, a marketing technology company to focus on lead generation. And this was at the end of 2019, beginning of 2020. And so we started selling leads to contractors like roofers and public adjusters and, you know, and plumbers and, you know, people in that space. And then all of a sudden, wham, like, Covid happened, right? We were doing really well with the lead sales Covid hit. We were like, oh, man, what are we going to do? You know, like, you know, we're making pivots. And so a couple of our clients from the public adjusting space reached out to us and said, hey, like, the leaves work really well. You know, we want to do some fee splits with you, but we weren't legally allowed to do that without the public adjuster licenses. And so we went. We got the license. I actually got the wrong license, to be honest with you. I got the wrong license when I first started. And I went and worked for Allstate for, like, three weeks to kind of learn the back, back side of the business came back out. And then me and Stu, I live in Houston, and this was on the back end of that year's storm season. So me and Stu got in the car, we drove out to Beaumont, Texas, which is, like, right on the border with Louisiana out in East Texas. And, you know, we posted up in, like, a Red Roof Inn, just calling, just picking up the phone, calling our own leads. You know, Stu's at the door. It was a pretty rundown motel, so Stu's at the door with the pistol. You know, just make it. We want to stay safe, you know, and all joking aside, but it worked out really well. We got a lot of signed contracts, and the business kind of took off from there. So, you know, it was not what I call a linear path. It wasn't a straight line. There was a lot of hustle involved and, you know, a lot of luck.

[00:06:33.31] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you so much in sharing that. So I want to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more on, you know, what you landing on with Tiger Justice. Could you take us through a little bit more on, like, how you're making that in impact, what you all are doing there to kind of support the people that you're working with.

[00:06:48.18] - Ted Pastestos

And so if you're doing. If you cross over into franchising and you haven't invested and taken the time to set that up the right way, then you're Actually running afoul of legal compliance mechanisms. And that's not how we run things over here. So then we made the decisions, my partners and I, to do the rebrand, we rebranded into Tiger Adjusters. We went down the franchise road. We invested super, super heavy into operational support and trainings like online proprietary modules, building out processes and protocols and operations manuals, et cetera, to really be able to kind of set the foundation to support future franchisees before we ever started attempting to sell franchises. And so beyond those sort of what I'll call like pillars of support, you know, which most franchise systems will have, you know, we kind of try and take it a step further, right? So not everybody's going to come in with, you know, super sophisticated or well developed, developed, you know, business fundamentals, right. And so I actually look at myself and some of my other partners like, you know, three or four years ago, you know, would I have sold a frame, you know, today, you know, if we were setting up some barriers, like, would I have sold myself a franchise? Probably not, right? Or some of my other partners, but, you know, not to tout our own horns, but we're pretty good operators and so wanted to make sure that when future franchisees are coming into the system, you know, yeah, we've got those pillars of support that just about every other system should or does have. But then we go above and beyond, right? So things like, you know, marketing segmentation plans for their territories, right? Reaching out into those territories and setting up B2B referral relationships, you know, as, as folks are going through, you know, their training and onboarding when they purchase a new franchise, you know, working on the back end, processing, you know, so when they sign in our business, when they're signing claims, you know, jumping in because we've, we've got a scalable system, you know, on the back end with the tech and everything. So we're able to jump in to that individual's operations at the unit level and say, hey, you're having some challenges with these claims. You know, this is paper that we're going to turn into money once they get processed and help these consumers, you know, and we're able to jump in remotely from anywhere around the country and assist in getting those, you know, brought to the finish line. And so I think those sorts of support mechanisms are super important. You know, I got, I'll put, I'll tell you this, like, you know, we, I think, built a really, really phenomenal service business and now I think we've built like a really, really great franchise offering and what we're selling to you is an opportunity to say, hey, come into this built out system, right? Where we've learned, you know, we've experienced all the follies, we've learned, you know, kind of all the nuances and the pitfalls. And our commitment or obligation to a franchisee is to guide you through that so that you don't have those so that we can get you fast and quick to profitability.

[00:09:48.78] - Gresham Harkless

Right? Absolutely. And, you know, obviously sorry to hear that, you know, you went through those challenges and so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:10:05.04] - Ted Pastestos

I mean, I hate to be kind of a cliche, but I'm a heavy ChatGPT user and I don't use it in the same way I think that a lot of people use it. So, you know, we don't use it for copy. As an example, like we have, you know, we've got folks that, you know, that do, you know, copywriting. And there's a reason for that. Just, you know, I'll throw this out there. Is that the way that Google, Google, the Google algorithm weights artificial intelligence copy? You know, the words on a page, it weights it, it deranks it a little bit so we keep that authentic. But I actually use it to, to set up conversations with an objection. So there's actually a term, it's called prolapsis, which is the, it's the Latin word for, or phrase for the anticipation of an objection. Right. And so what I like to use chat for is, you know, I'll go in there and I, I'll gain. I will game out different scenarios on ChatGPT to help guide my decision making. And I'll ask ChatGPT to create objections, whether it's for a sales process or it might be for maybe, you know, governance. Right. For cap table governance and things like that, you know, and, and kind of have like this, you know, ebb and flow within the conversation of chat. And if I can't beat chat, then I've either I got to figure out a better strategy. Right. And so, you know, I use it to kind of help refine, you know, refine my decision making a little bit.

[00:11:35.76] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's huge. And so what would you consider to be a little bit more what I call a CEO nugget? So this could be like a word of wisdom or Piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell a franchisee if they were thinking about the business or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self this.

[00:11:52.62] - Ted Pastestos

I think it's Carl J U N G. But he said something along the lines of, you know, real life starts at 40 and everything up until 40, you know, you're just doing research. And so if I had to go back in time and tell my younger self something, I probably tell myself, like, you know, hey, like, you know, chill out, you know, it's gonna be okay, you know, you know, play it slow, learn as much as possible, you know, refine your skills, understand that, you know, some of life's challenges are to your benefit in the long run, you know, and just kind of go with the flow, you know, Because I think when, at least for me, you know, younger and kind of coming up, you know, you're so eager to be successful, you're so eager to get out there. And, you know, and then sometimes what. At least in my experience, what ends up happening, you know, when you're in those 20s and, you know, kind of early to late 20s, you know, you're running as fast as you possibly can and you're making mistakes that you didn't have to make along the way. So, yeah, you're not gonna beat the clock. You know, nobody's making it out alive.

[00:12:56.79] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. If you run into my younger self as well, Ted, tell him that as well. So what would you consider to be your answer for my absolute favorite question, which is the definition, what it means to be a CEO? Our goal is to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on this show. So, Ted, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:12.98] - Ted Pastestos

I can tell you it's not half as much fun as I thought it was gonna be based on what I saw on social media. I think for me, it's. What it really means is that at the end of the day, it's, you know, I'm accountable and responsible to other people. Right? So I spend my day working with my team members on the leadership team and then folks that aren't on the leadership team in the admin roles and then speaking to franchisees and then speaking to consumers at the unit level. And at the end of the day, I'm here to serve every single one of those people. Right. It's just in a different way. Right. So what that boils down to is that my daily, it consists of me engaging with people that I have a responsibility to, and then every Once in a while, some problem gets thrown out there that I'm responsible to solve that nobody else is in a position to solve. And if it was an easy enough problem for somebody else to solve, it would have already got solved before it got to me. So, you know, it's, you know, I think that that's been my experience as a CEO, Right. I mean, you're just constantly at a place where you're engaging with folks that you have responsibility to and you're solving problems that only you are in a position to solve. And that means that every day showing up matters. Right. You know, I had a, I had a trip recently. My wife and I took a trip to Europe and there was an issue that we, you know, that the company had that I had to deal with. And so because of the time difference, I ended up on the phone, you know, until like 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. You know, we were gone for almost three weeks, but I ended up on the phone till 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, you know, for probably seven to 10 days of that period. Right. You know, and that's not, it's not a good look if anybody's married. It was not, you know, wasn't an ideal situation, but it was the reality. Right. And nobody else was in a position to kind of do that. And so, you know, it just, it requires that attentiveness to the business.

[00:15:23.30] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that accountability, that responsibility. And always joke and say that every entrepreneur, CEO, business owner is part time firefighter. So you sometimes you have to put those fires out and those fires don't wait sometimes for you, you have to go and, you know, attend to them as much as you can. So I truly love that definition and perspective and of course I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people can get ahold of you, find about all the awesome things you and the team are working on.

[00:15:54.50] - Ted Pastestos

I can be reached@tedigeradjusters.com and if you go@tigeradjusters.com onto our team page, you'll find an opportunity to, to book on my calendar. So you can do it right on the website there.

[00:16:08.14] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, I truly appreciate that, Ted. Of course, to make it even easier, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can reach out to you, find out about all the awesome things that you all are doing.

[00:16:17.59] - Ted Pastestos

All right, have a great rest of the day. All right, Grim, Thanks. You too.

[00:16:20.51] - Intro

Thank you for listening to The I Am CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at IM CEO. IM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNationCo. Also, check out our I Am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.