Deductibles? - No Problem!

The head coach at Contractor Coach Pro and your host on Contractor Radio. Contractor Radio. The idea behind it is to help you guys as contractors improve your game, give you some strategies, some tactics, some tools, advice and interview experts and industry movers and shakers to help you with your business. We hope that this has been something that's brought you a lot of value. And it is sponsored by us, Contractor Coach Pro. And so we devote time each and every week to trying to bring you the best of the best. And today we're gonna be talking about a very hot topic across the nation. We're gonna be talking about deductibles and what those mean. There's lots of states that have laws for them. Texas being one of those ones that's just brought it into the equation. And we wanna talk a little bit about that. We're gonna talk about some of your options and. And how you might get over this hurdle of, especially in the state of Texas, which I always call it the Wild West. Very set on this idea of taking care of people's deductibles. We'll talk about what that means too. But we brought somebody in today I'm super excited to have on. He is with Fund My Deductible. He's actually the founder of it. And I could not be happier to talk about this because some of his people that he struggles with are some of the same people I struggle with whenever it comes to this. So I think we'll have a pretty cool conversation about that. And so I want to welcome in Chris Kincaid from Fund My Deductible. Chris, welcome aboard, man.

Hey. Hey, Jim. How are you doing, man?

I'm doing pretty good. Doing pretty good. And so we're going to talk that, like, that's a word, like almost a cuss word in our business. Deductible. Right. As soon as you hear that word, there's like all this for or against, and. And you get this concept of like, hey, people signed a contract to do that. And then you have the other people, well, I'm a contractor. I should be able to charge what I want to charge. And so we're going to talk about some of that fun stuff. But before we get there, just give us a little background, like, you know, what you were doing before, what brought this all about and kind of where you're headed.

So, yeah, the deductible, it's, you know, it's one of those. When you're in the conversation with, you know, selling a roof, when do I breach it? You know, how do I breach it. So I'm a contractor by trade. I've been the Restoration industry since 2001 and first storm was Omaha, Nebraska and chased some storms, realized that's really tough on my relationship and so now live in Lubbock, Texas and I've got a roofing contractor. And so I know the problems. I've been there, you know, we're in Texas and so, you know, that's my background. So I'm a local company. I don't chase much. I definitely have respect the guys that do it and do it well, there's some that do it well and there's some that don't. But there's a lot of good, you know, big chasing guys out there. I just, you know, set my business model up a little bit different, stay local commercially. We'll go, you know, go out. But. But yeah, so you know, The House Bill 2102 came out and it's got some teeth. And you know, we were all, you know, we wanted a level playing field for those that have us. We're trying to do the right thing from the get and it's just, it's tough to compete with, with guys that are habitually doing it. And so the law came out and we, you know, you know, how can we make this convenient? How can we make it work? Reading the law, it says with an executed finance that, you know, the depreciation could be released. And so we were going to do it in house and we started crunching the numbers on or you know, funding these in house. Okay, Mrs. Smith, you know you got $2,000 deductible, it's paid out over a year or two years or whatever term we wanted to set. But we realized if we did an average of, I think 15 deductibles on an average of a three year term, we're going to touch that over a thousand times. And that became so cumbersome to keep up with and office help and that. So we started with software and created software to do it and kind of got us to where we're at but before that. So after we decide, after we got the software going, look, this is a great deal and I feel like it'll help the industry do the right thing, give people the opportunity to do the right thing and so to offer it to other people. There's some guys in our market, they're like, dude, this is, this is awesome. Can we use this? So we created fund my deductible FMD and soon after that we got, you know, Sarah Burns with RCAT she helped really push us and, and we kind of started getting, making some small waves and the first, first hurdle we hit with Steve Badger and you know, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? I don't think this is, you know, some, I don't say scary emails but they were, you know, they were, they were, they meant business and basically stating he didn't know if what we were doing and he'd allow his carriers to accept what we were doing. So with the help of John Hoteling, we have a relationship with him. We went and met with the authors of the bill Cabriglion and Zafferini flew to the state capitol with Hoteling which is one of, I told you, one of the cooler, cooler days of my life. If you don't know John, he's a, he's a, he's quite, quite the attorney and just told him what we're doing and got their blessing and said, you know, look this, you know, it hurts our model if people aren't paying it because that was one of Steve's concerns and it's a valid concern that a lot of these contractors like okay, yeah, we're going to fund this in house and or FNB is going to do it. Make your first five payments and stop. We were clear that like look, this hurts our business model for people to do that and so it doesn't make any sense. And so, you know, weeks later John and Steve had a meeting and at the end of it Steve believed what we were doing was righteous and we're trying to do the right thing and it says it in the law. And so we've got his blessing now. So we did a 180 and it's good. You know, it's very rare that John and Steve will agree on something but I think FMD is one of them.

Yeah, that is unusual for Steve Badger to agree with anything that has to do with the contractor. Right. I love that guy really. Like he's, he's advocate for his people and that's really, you know, who I would want on my side if I was in that situation. We've had our run ins but there's respect there. I hope it's cool to hear that he is now on board with this. And really I think the reason and a lot of it is that it is through software, it is trackable, it is something that you could test that and really and truly this is a business for you. Like you're making money doing this so it doesn't do you any good to get four or five payments, you want to get them all because you're getting a slice of that piece of pie. And so it wouldn't make any sense and should make sense to everybody else. So this deductible law got passed in the state of Texas. This is a law that's been passed in other states. The ones I'm most familiar with are Minnesota, Georgia and Colorado. And so the same problems are happening here that happened in those days. Just getting the word out, making sure everybody knows and having some type of bliss out there to say, hey, this is what it is. Getting the insurance carriers on board to, like, notify their homeowners and really and truthfully like that. I think the biggest hurdle is getting contractors to believe in themselves enough that they're worth the deductible.

Yes.

That they're worth that work. And if you do good work, I don't see why you wouldn't feel that you're worth what the insurance company is saying. It's going to cost to get that work done. So I think that's our biggest hurdle, like, to get that belief, to get that education out there, to get this situation where we quit competing on price and we start competing on value. Like, what do you bring to make you worth that amount? So that's what we're working on here at Contractor Coach Pro. We've been doing it for seven years. It's slowly but surely getting better. I think guys like you and several others, many of the RCAP members are all on board for this. And so it's been cool to kind of see this happen in Texas. The one thing I know in those other states, as I was going through with those guys, is it takes a while. And nobody wants to hear that. Right. Everybody wants it to be magic. September 1st of 2019. Everybody knows, and they just pay their deductible and everything's easy.

And all the contractors, the guys that are still doing it, you know, I keep hearing that, when are they gonna get busted? Cause it's obviously still going on. But I do know, and we are dealing with Badger and some others that are, you know, like, getting the guys that are not doing the right thing and to get it where there's some consequence for, you know, and everybody wants it yesterday, but, you know, it's coming. And they didn't, you know, they went through so much to get this bill passed. I mean, this was contentious on both sides. I know. It went to like, nine at night. I know. I mean, it was. If you. If you go and watch watch it, it's it's kind of comical, but. So there were some concessions made to get it passed. One of them was, you know, the original one, I believe, had it where, you know, the homeowner had some skin in the game, the homeowner get in trouble, which, you know, obviously that would be good to be beneficial and get it collected if the homeowner had, you know, had some consequences with. For them. The other one was that, you know, and that I believe, I don't like it either, but nothing's perfect is the fact that the carrier has the opportunity to waive the deductible. And, and so that, that, that creates some, you know, definitely some, some issues. But to get that pass, they had to make some concessions to get it, to get it going. And so they got it passed. It's not perfect, but it's a start, you know, and it, it helps level the playing field for the guys that are really trying to do the right thing to, to collect the deductibles. Because, you know, when you've got guys in the market, there's, you know, there's guys in the market that do it every now and then to sell. And there's one that's like, that's their business model. And it's tough when you're trying to compete on that. And in Texas, you know, These deductibles are 1 to 2% of the, of the insured value. So, you know that, I mean, average is 2,500, $2,000. So it, you know, that cuts right into your profit or it cuts it in half easily.

So, yeah, like, I don't want to take half the profit away from the equation, especially when I do great work and I feel like we deserve it.

And that's exactimate. What we're talking exactly is an average of the high and the low in the market. So in the average price and then cutting it in half, whatever their deductible is. So I mean, man, you can't survive on those margins and some can on super large volume. But, you know, not, you know, you're taking a lot more liability. Not, you know, there's problems that come up with jobs and you need to be able to sustain a company with margin and to go, you know, to get through some of that. If you're not, you know, somebody doing 3,000 roofs a year, it's just, you know, it's not sustainable for somebody doing 20 to 50 roofs a year covering every deductible.

I don't know, we usually, we used to do 2,3000 roofs a year. And I wasn't willing to cut that out just because I was doing volume like we deserved it. We did good.

That's why you were killing it then.

Yeah, we were doing okay. We're doing okay now. Roofs weren't the price they are today back in those days. I mean, that's been the amazing thing, too. You've got the couple of things going on. Roofing is pretty much doubled in the last 10 years due to material price increases, the cost of metal and the cost of labor. All of those things have gone up dramatically. And then you have the other thing working against you that deductibles have risen from. I remember the days when they were 250, $500. I still collected those, too. Just so you know, like, I didn't say no, you get out of that. But now they can. You know, if you're in like. Like Lubbock and Dallas and some of those places, you get 1 percenters most of the time and then some 2 percenters. If you're a coastal county, either right on the coast or one end, you can be as much as 4 or 5%. Like, you literally like a pay out of pocket for your roof because you just don't have enough room there to have the insurance company cover anything. And that's, I think, calculated on their part. I think it's wrong. I think it's something that. It's not like they're losing money. I mean, you see the reports. We all look at that stuff of what they actually make, and so I get frustrated over those things. I don't think insurance is there for what it was originally intended for, which was to take care of you when bad things happen. And now it seems to be a little bit more about how much dividends are the shareholders making. And that's my opinion. So don't have a whole. Yeah. Don't have a whole bunch of attorneys chasing me down.

ACV policy. Lovely.

Yeah. I mean, well, they're gonna. They're gonna tilt the playing field in their favor because they have shareholders to answer to on profitability. So let's. Let's set that to the side for a second. We can talk about how we get frustrated with insurance companies till the cows come home. How does fun mommy deductible actually work? Like I. I say, hey, I want to. I want to try this out. How does it work?

So to. To be clear, it's a great question. So we're. We are not. I don't say we've created this niche, but it's just funding, funding a payment over time. So you know, I'll go back to, you're sitting down with Mrs. Smith and you know she has $2,000 deductible. There's no qualifying, there's no interest, anything like that. The most intrusive thing we need is your date of birth. And that's so we can report to the credit agencies if they don't pay. But so what we do charge is we charge the contractor 6% of the funded amount. So you know, a thousand dollar deductible, you know, 60 bucks, there it is. So and, and then, and then we charge right now, which I think is extremely reasonable, $50 for the whole company. I don't care if you have 100 salesmen or 10 salesmen or 5 salesmen, $50 subscription renewal fee to, to do that. And so you know, one of you know, a lot of contractors asked, well I can just do that in house. Well, you know, that's what we thought we were going to do. But you know, we, it becomes, it becomes a task and a chore where you're taken away from your office help doing that and dedicating a lot of time to that. And so what we do is, you know, we automate that process where they can set up a funded payment on a set term with the homeowner. So say, you know, we're going to do, it's got $2,000 deductible, do 12 month term. And so we set that up in FMD and it automatically can go ACH debit or credit card. So they get that set up and the payment date set up. And after the first payment is made, they will get their executed funding agreement which will be recognized by the insurance company as an invoice or a financing agreement so that the depreciated amount will be released. So that's, you know, that's the gist of it. So it's the contractor paying the percentage and not the homeowners. That's what there's no qualifying or anything like that. And you know, if you're going to process a credit card, it's 3% or around that anyway. So you know the guy that say we knew this in house, then obviously then do it. But it's going to be hard to do when you're it costing you 3% to run credit card and stuff like that too. So, so now what we do is we collect the funded amount. So Mrs. Smith paid, you know, her $200 this month. @ the end of the month we were doing Quarterly payouts. Now we've got our system, I don't say more tweaked, but with the software, when credit cards run and you know, stuff that I'm not an expert at but have become, we're doing a monthly payout. So for example, if you've got 10 salesmen and you know each salesman sold, you know, it'll break down what each salesman is their percent. So we all know that the deductible should be, unless it's a 2%, is mostly profit. So what we always say is you can pre cap those jobs out and everybody pays different. Some pay profit, some pay gross, but you can pre cap jobs out and, and, and go ahead and pay on their commission. If you're paying that structure and then every fake payment that comes in on that job after that should be profit, and then you just add your commission split to that. So I'm an example of a contractor. Let me see if I can. But that was their payout. This is a real one, $3,436. You can see the salesman, you know what they did, who, you know, what, you know, Corey Meadows, he had three customers and that was their payments. There was a total of $324 this month. And then whatever his commission is or gross, you pay him off of that. So in a nutshell, that's how it works. We give the reporting to you. It's got open API where you can download it into your Excel or your, your programs and see exactly what your company's doing and that way you can track it. So it's kind of the Cliff Notes version of it. But we tried to keep it extremely simple. Always said, I want my 12 year old daughter to be able to go and fund a deductible and keep it simple. So that's what it works. I mean, that's how it.

Started. Yeah. So there's a lot there to unpack a little bit. And I don't want you to scare anybody because you said one of those dirty words that has to do with contractors, which is open API. They don't, they have no clue what that means. It just sounds like technology and I'm scared to death of.

It. I just learned.

It. So what that means though is that they supply you their information on their sales reps. Right. Like how they pay and stuff like that. You guys help them get that into the software. Is that something they put their own guys in and put in what.

Their commissions are, provide the information of what was paid? Because there's so many different Ways these companies do that. So we just say give the report on the amount collected. So, and then we will send an Excel spreadsheet and they can down that, load that into QuickBooks or whatever they need. But then they just, it's their, the only thing they have to do is apply whatever method of, however they're paying their salesman to do.

That. So if they're like 10% off the top, if it's 10% off the top, it's just gonna take that number and say, here's 10% of that and that's what you should pay your guy. But if they're, you know, 40% of the gross profit or crazy enough, 50% of the gross profit, they then it'll just split that number. And that's all pre done because I put in my guy's name and how he gets paid and then it spits out a report for me. Is that correct or is it.

Just, it's just the total amount funded.

Because. Okay, and then they take that number and just put it in.

There. If it's a thousand dollars and they're, they're 10, obviously the company would know, okay, Craig gets $10 hundred dollars. If it's 40 commission, then he knows he gets his 400. It just got too complicated. We thought about that, but with the software, I mean, you know, I always say it's like my wife saying, hey, can we move this wall? I know it's a load bearing wall us. Like, we can't just move that button. Like, oh, that's a $30,000 button because of the way of everything, the logic. So, but we felt like that was simple enough to like just let them apply their own commissioner payout to their, to their staff or.

Salesman. So every, every contractor that's on fund, my deductible gets a report by sales guy and overall of what was funded and then they take that and pay commissions accordingly based on whatever their system.

Is. Correct. So go ahead.

Sorry. So what that says to me is like, it's kind of like me, the contractor saying, hey, I've organized a payment system for you, Mrs. Homeowner. And then they pay. However, whatever those terms may be. We'll talk about that in a minute. But as a, as a rep, I've got money coming in over time. As a company, I've got money coming out over time that I may not have ever gotten before. It may have been a situation where I was used to eating deductibles and it's kind of the way I went about doing things. Now I Got this dumb law that I got to deal with, and so I want to make that easier for my homeowner. And then I get this check that I never got before, just showing up once a month. And it's kind of the same thing for the rep. Like, he's got this check on all these jobs he's sold. It seems like I might not go anywhere if I knew I had money coming in as a sales.

Rep. I mean, really for anybody that was covering any or all of them. You call it found money, you know, but that. The dirty, dirty name for a. You know, a dirty word for an owner is draw, you know, depending on how you have your company set up. But, you know, if you have a Salesman that funds $100,000 with deductibles over a year or two years, and he's paid out each month as creates a residual income for him to. To get off a draw and. Or, you know, or whatever method you have going and to. And to get those deductibles collected. And, you know, we always say, if you can collect the deductible, you know, do it, you know. Absolutely. But a lot of times, I mean, people are on fixed income or they just don't want to pay it, but they know they have to now. So we say use it as a tool in your tool belt. Because we had a situation with two big contractors, and it was a $50,000 deductible. And so this guy's got money. It was a $5 million home in the Metroplex, and one company offered to fund the $50,000 over a year and for zero percent and no qualifying, and it helped him win the award. I mean, there's other factors in play, but, you know, having that as a tool, you know, to fund that out. So it's like, if you're gonna buy furniture, do you want to, you know, do you want to pay for it right now, the $10,000 furniture or 50,000 for the furniture? You want to put it out over a year for nothing? Well, I'm put it out over for a year. So it's a good tool to use in your arsenal of selling tools. And not every job, you know, if it's a 2% deductible, then that probably is going to be cutting into. Cutting into the quick. And, you know, you might say, I need half down. You can fund the rest, you know, and also, not to skip around, but we've, you know, we're also creating an expensive button to fund every fund anything else. So, you know, higher margin Items like, you know, solar vents or riser ridge or Z ridge or a Class 4 shingles. You can show somebody how their payment will be lower to put on a class four shingle than it. Than the money they're gonna save a month. So they should be making money and funding that out. So we're. And also with. With my company, we had some bad debt from, you know, the guy that's dog was dying and spent all the roof money after he put the roof on to save the dog. And I get it, but, you know, at the end of the day, we need our money. And so we set up. We had, I think $68,000 worth of bad debt. And we had one of our girls that was untrained to do this, just go and set it up, and she set up $28,000 with her bad debt in about a week. And so that was completely found money. So it's just another more of it. We figured out it was more of a virtual tool than just deductibles. It's a mechanism to get people to pay. So what we've learned is if you give people the ability to make payments and to do the right thing without hitting them, you know, all at the same time, then a lot of times they'll do that because, you know, the $200 payment for the guy that's dog died wouldn't be able to pay us any other way. And so that's, you know, it's money we're getting in. And now I don't have to, you know, leave this house. And that takes me to the collection part. People ask, well, how do I know I'm going to get paid? That's. That's probably the main question we get because this is not traditional financing. And my response is, number one, they're homeowners, they're not renters. And so they care about their credit. And we report their credit and if we have to. So after we go through our collection process, we're not a collection. We are not a collection company. But after we go through the process of trying to get that at 45 days, if we deem it's uncollectible, we'll go to the contractor and say, all right, John's contracting. Mrs. Smith is not paying her obligation. And you have, in most states, you still have at least two weeks to file a lien to secure that. So. But my answer is most of these are homeowners that care about their credit, and they don't want that to be affected, especially for a 50 to 100 to $200 a month deductible payment, which kind of jumping around, also takes me to the terms. We leave it up to the contractor to set the terms. Our minimum is $25 a month, no matter what the deductible is, or 1% of the deductible, which I would not recommend. That puts it out at about eight years. You know, there's those companies that were covering every one of them anyways, that might sound great to them, you know, so. But we leave it up to the company to say, all right, John's John Roofing. Like, look this fun fnd things, great, but we're only gonna do six months or we're only gonna do a year, or we, you know, we'll do two years. So it's flexible in that.

Aspect. That's super cool. I wasn't aware of that, that you could. That it's up to me, like, whoever I'm talking with as a homeowner, I can make some judgments and have a conversation about budget and stuff like.

That. Yeah. And that's what gives you the deal to make the deal. I mean, I said at a thousand dinner tables and sold a thousand roofs. And it's like you're constructing a deal. And before, when you might have been taking care of the deductible, you know how that was part of you structuring a deal? Well, this way, I mean, if they have the ability to make, you know, a payment of, you know, minimal payment, $25, even if it's a $2,000 deductible, if you can't sell that roof and get that deductible, then something's wrong.

Right? Yeah. That would not be the choice I would make. If I was a contractor today. Sure. I'd be like, nothing more than a year. And we use the. If I could, would you close? So if I could reduce your payments out over 12 months and allow you to pay that out, would you choose us today and. And see if we can get that type of thing taken care.

Of? I know how you feel. The feel. Felt found. I know how you feel. I felt the same way when I went to buy furniture, but what I found is I was able to fund it out for a year, and it was a win.

Win. Yeah. Because I get to keep the money in my pocket and use that money to further my finances instead of your finances, which is always great. So fund my deductible. Sounds pretty simple. How do people get in contact with.

You? They just go to our website and sign up or they can contact at fundmydeductible and we will send them some information and walk. The sign up is very easy. Just depending on how big your company is. It takes anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending on how many salesmen, but it's all automated. Um, one thing I have difficult to talk about is the portals and that's a weird new word for me too. But so when you sign up you'll have three. You'll have the admin portal for the contractor which only the admin for the company will see the owners and then they will, they'll be able to see all their salesmen and then all their, the salesman's homeowners and then the salesman will have their own portal where the salesman just sees his business and what he's done and he can log in and see all the deductibles he's got funded and when they're going to pay and all that. So we have the salesman portal, the admin portal for the contractor. Then we also have a policyholder portal or the homeowners portal where they can log in and make a one time payment if they want and get caught up. The only thing they can't do is extend or is decrease their terms where it's beneficial for them. They can increase their terms to pay it off faster or they can make a one time payment to do that. And that also reminds me, that was one thing like with that we figured out because we don't want anybody, you know, trying to scam the system or anything, but you don't get the executed funding agreement until they've made their first payment. So we realized that, you know, if they signed up and they, they did the agreement that they, you know, they could get the, get the executed funding agreement and then, then try to cancel. But so when you are funding a deductible with your homeowner, you have the option of when do you want the first payment to start? Because you know, some people don't want to pay until the roof's going to go on or close. And so if you know your company's about a month out, say all right, Mrs. Smith, we'll put it at about a month out and at that time it's going to, it's going to charge. And then after they made their agreement, so you don't get it just when they sign up, they send it in, they cancel and they don't, you know, they don't do.

It. So this funding agreement, is that something that you guys send to the contractor once that first payment's.

Made. Yes. After the first payment's made, the salesman gets a copy of it, the homeowner gets a copy of it, and the office. The roofing office gets a copy of it, and so do we as fmd to know what's going on. So that way, everybody has it. And insurance companies here are definitely. In Texas are starting to require proof of payment of the deductible, especially Farm Bureau Cypress. I had one from Farmers the other day, and we have not had any issues with them accepting our agreement. And if you do, John Hoteling would love to know about.

It. Nice. So I always ask my guests a few questions that may not necessarily pertain to what we're talking about. So I want to talk about you for a.

Second. Oh.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Surprise, surprise. So the first question I always ask everybody, what's your greatest achievement today? And it can't be about getting married or having kids. That's two kids. Yeah. So getting none of that stuff. Like, we know that. So. And I'm getting you out right.

Now.

Right. Like, if it wasn't gonna be the wife and kids, now I'm not. You're not gonna get in trouble. So other than that, what's your greatest achievement to this point in.

Life? You know, I mean, I would. I wasn't ready for that one. You know, I just have to say it's. With what we're trying to do with the roofing industry and some positive change and, you know, being a contractor and now changing hats to something else that's related to the industry and trying to do the right thing is something I'm very proud of. And a lot of the. You know, one of the best things we did is just started going to some of these conferences and meeting people like you. Met you at a conference and. And, you know, all these really influential people in the business, and you. You and I kind of talked about this. There's kind of a dark side and then there's the, you know, the other side. And it's like they're all at the conferences. Right. So it's kind of neat to be able to network. And. And I would just say that a lot of the relationships I've made in the last two years, you know, the Reeds are some awesome people. Hoteling Philip Sanoff. There's a bunch of people that have helped us, you know, as a contractor and as fmd. So I just. I'm really proud to be able to represent the industry in a positive form of change, or at least I hope it is. I know, you know, it's not a perfect law, but I think that, I think this is a. Gives everybody a good tool to do the right.

Thing. I would agree. Yeah, that law is. And this happened in those other states that I mentioned before too. You got to get an inch to get a mile. And so it's like a first step. I mean, I don't know how many years ARC has been trying to get that kind of stuff done and didn't get done. And then finally we got at least a little bite. We got one inch. And now that we got inch, we're going to be like a bulldog. We're just not going to let go. And hopefully we get to the point where there's licensing. To be honest with you, I think state licensing is important. Protects the homeowner who really. And truthfully, I'm all about, yeah, we help you contractors, but the idea being that the consumer finds somebody that they can.

Trust. Insurance, wouldn't that be, you know, they mandate they carry insurance? I am very, you know, I'm conservative, but at some point, if you're putting a roof on a. Whatever value house, you know, 50,000 to a million dollar house, don't you think it's a good idea that that contractor carry insurance? I mean, local level, we've tried to get that done and Lubbock and that was, it was another can of.

Worms. But yeah, seems kind of important. I would really use that to my advantage and carry insurance. I know that. So question number two out of three. What's the most valuable piece of advice you've ever gotten that's helped you move forward in.

Life? I would say, man, you know what? Golly, there's a lot of them. You know, one that I use a lot is, you know, dogs eat and pigs get slaughtered. And I don't, you know, from whether you're playing poker or you're, you know, it's like, do the right thing. Don't go, you know, I mean, I'm gonna say don't go for the home run, but just, you know, be reasonable. Whether it's, you know, whatever, whatever you're doing. I think that's one just to kind of keep you not humble. But just like, you know what, let's just, that's fine, let's go. Let's rock and roll with it. And then the other one, you know, I. I've got a bunch of quotes here, but there's no illusion greater than fear itself. And so a lot of the stuff with FMD that we start like, you know, you know, you know, at the end of the day everybody's worried about, you know, not worried what people are going to think. It's like, okay, well you know, we get this and we've got some backlash from some people that this is the stupid thing on the planet. Well then, okay, then I guess you're gonna, you know, just, you know, have the. In any business, just, you know, let's do it. We didn't have it all figured out with FMD at all. But I think what I'm telling my, my 12 year old daughter, she just read rich dad, poor dad and making her, not making her, but like, you know, trying to understand the value of a dollar but just the fact that we didn't have it all figured out. And you don't have to have anything, everything figured out but. And so don't let the little things get in your way when you're trying to accomplish something. It's the big things, the biggest and the biggest, okay, biggest piece and we'll figure out the rest later. And, and most of times, and that's what you do also as a roof coach is figure out you knew you had a good system. And then like. But oh, there's, you know, there's a lot more to it. Let's get it tweaked and we'll get it refined. But I think not another thing. So not getting bogged down and starting something out perfect. And you know, everybody knows don't be afraid to fail, but just the, you know, not having something exactly figured out. Just go with it. Shoot from the hip. And that might be, you know, some people, that's the stupid thing I ever heard. But shoot from the hip and get. As long as you can work through the problems, you know, and have smart people around you, it'll.

Help. That's pretty good. I might not necessarily agree with the shoot from the hip part. I like to have at least a formulation of a plan, but I don't. That doesn't mean I have all the figured.

Out. Good plan but like, you know, I'm just. If we were to sit down, try to get everything figured out with.

FMD when we start, started like you wouldn't even be.

Here. We couldn't get off a high center. So terminology but you.

Know. Yeah, that's that paralysis by analysis.

Thing.

Yeah. Overanalyzing something and you figure out why all the reasons why you can't do it and you, you kind of put yourself out there, you say, hey, I'm doing this thing. Well now you can't Quit, like, you gotta fight through because you can't let people down. You can't let yourself down. All right. Oh, and I want to make one other thing clear before we hop off of here. It's not just Texas, right? Like, you fund deductibles anywhere in the nation. Is that or 38 states or something like.

That? Yes, yes. And we've almost got all the states. And so, you know, whether or not there's a, you know, a. It's a law in every state to pay your deductible, there's just loopholes. Right. So, yeah, we have contractors in just about every state. And if, you know, I would have had this as a tool even for the. The law, I would have definitely, you know, it been not harder to collect with because Texas is tough because, you know, a lot of them get covered. But it would definitely been a tool to employ to. To collect those deductibles for people trying to do the right thing and, you know, people on fixed incomes to people that have money. So. But. So, yeah, and I think, you know, it's. Changes are coming, and the insurance, you know, I think it's. It's going to start, I think Oklahoma, they're talking about doing that same law in Oklahoma. So it's coming everywhere. So I think it'd be better for companies to be proactive and be ready. They should be collecting them anyways. But if not, using this tool to be ready for.

The. For the change, as long as we don't just forget about it. And we were the squeaky wheel, we will get the grease at some point that, hey, this. This is a thing. We just got to be consistent. It's going to take time, and that's cool. Like, there's time to get this thing done. Okay, last.

Question.

Okay. My favorite.

Question. Oh, here we go. When you're.

Ready. Yeah. So we all only have so much time on this planet, Right? We all know that at some point it comes to an end when that happens. What do you want people to remember about Chris Kincaid? What do you want them to have in mind whenever they think of you on that.

Day? Oh, yeah. I'm gonna have to go with my kids and being a good father first and being, you know, a. A leader to them into my family, a Christian leader, raising my kids the right way, and somebody that's. It's always trying to do the right thing, sometimes to a fault. I feel like I'm too. Too honest. My wife, you know. Oh, God, that's Chris. He's gonna tell the Truth, you know, but just somebody with. With integrity that, you know, try to. Try to do the right thing and appreciate, you know, appreciate the small things in life, too. But probably not the best answer in the world, but, you know.

That'S. That's a great answer.

Actually. Like, my dad when I was 3, and so I didn't have a father figure, and so it's kind of like I've had to not make my own, you know, because I didn't have those things I did with my dad raised by a single mom. And so it's one of those, like, I'm creating that. And so I didn't have that. That, you know, to look at, to do. So hopefully I'm doing that right and, you know, be remembered for. For.

That. So here's one thing I'll tell you. You're there, so you're doing it right. Okay. That's important. No, that's something to be proud of. I think if we could all be good dads and Christian dads, the world might be a different.

Place. And good husband got to be a good.

Husband. Yeah, well, that one I'm always concerned about. You ask my wife. She might not always agree. I do my best, and I believe you do, too. I got to meet your wife. Just a glancing blow there, and I see you guys on Facebook. You guys look happy, and it looks like you're doing a good job. So, Chris, anything here at the end you want to. You want to share other than what we've covered.

Already? Well, I will say that we've kind of had a pause on really pushing FMD because we've integrated with a traditional finance company you and I talked about where we offer down to 600 credit score, the contractors paid directly and ready a 0 dealer fee. There's a few guys doing that, but if you go to FMD Holdings.com, you'll see where you can fund a deductible, and then in the middle, you can finance. And then we have one more leg that we've worked on. It's just a traditional credit card processing where it's $20 a month and no BS fees and 2.5% for credit, debit everything. So that's something we haven't. We kind of been holding back to. We've got everything because we don't want be confusing. But now that we've pretty much got all that set, we're about to really try to take.

Off. So you gave it a glancing blow earlier, but now you brought it into the equation. So let's talk about it for a second financing, you guys offer that and we actually teach that as coaches, like, hey, why don't we just finance this whole thing if that's a better option for you? And we take into consideration budget and, and morals and ethics and stuff like that. But if they have something pressing them that's a high interest type deal, use this as an opportunity to take that money, get that high interest thing paid off and reallocate those funds into a lower interest situation, like financing this particular thing. And so that's another offering that you have. So what's the difference between funding and financing? And let me see if I get it and you tell me if I'm missing anything. So traditional financing means that there is some type of dealer fee that the contractor may be paying. It's usually smaller, but the homeowner is actually paying the finance charge on top to that finance company where funding is saying, hey, we've got this big number, $2,000, and we're going to break it up over a group of months and I'm going to pay the fee, you know, this fee to make sure that that thing happens. Is that a pretty fair assessment of the.

Two? Absolutely. So, yeah, traditional financing, you know, it's usually a high interest rate and a low dealer fee or a low dealer fee and a high interest rate. Some of the ones that are coming out are zero dealer fee. But at the end of the day, so, you know, traditional financing, Jim's contracting, as soon as it's executed, it's getting paid in full for or when, when the work is complete. Right. And then with funding, you're setting that term up on your own terms to realize your profit. But obviously the, it's so much easier to fund something with, you know, no qualifying and all that kind of stuff. No interest and nothing off the homeowner except just, you know, sign up and doing it. But again, there's a time to finance and there's a time to fund and there's a time, you know, maybe not to do either, you know, but it's one of those is they're both tools to construct a deal. And you know, right now cash is king. So financing might be a good idea because they need that money, you know, right now to do something else where they just lost their job. They still want to get the roof put on, but you know, they're going to make payments on that to the finance company. And then while, you know, also get the roof put on because the finance company paid the roofing company to do it. So the F funding works with super high margin products which is deductible should be, you know, all profit in most cases and just, you know, high margin items where you can realize your profit at whatever term you want to set to construct a.

Deal. So I want to like really drive something home here that as I was driving back from meeting with you last week, I was rolling it around my head like as a contractor, would I do this or not do this? This. I sure hate waiting for my money. Like that's the part like I hate waiting like that. And what I really came to grips with is well, yes, when I first start with fund my deductible, I mean it might be a year before I get paid out everything on that job. But I'm not planning on being in business for just a year. I mean if that's the plan, don't do fun my deductible really. But if you're planning on you think about it within a year's time. Now it's just rollover. The money that you're putting into getting funded is being replaced by the money that was already refunded. If you're following that year format type of situation, whatever your format is that you choose to do with as a contractor, I would be about a year personally. So I may have to wait a year to realize all my profit on that. But at the end of that year there is no difference at that point I'm getting it either.

Way. 6 does 1/2 the.

Other. Yeah. So that part really kind of hit home with me. On the drive home I'm like, yeah, I'd probably do it. I'm not planning on being in business just a.

Year. So if it helps you sell, you know, always if it helps you sell one more roof a year, it's worth, you know, the $50 a month we're charging and the profit you're going to make off of that. And because that job should still be profitable, just not, you know, realizing all of it until the term that you set or your salesman set and that's, you know, as leader of your ship, you might say, look, six months, that's all we're going to do or a year or 24 months or whatever it is, we had to set a limit on it. But you know, and I have sat down with little old ladies that just they don't, they're on fixed income and either before you were going to cover the deductible to make the deal, let's be honest and sell the roof or now, you know, you just Realize that profit at whatever term you're going to set and, and make it's. You're able to construct a deal. And anybody sitting in front on the dinner table, that's something that a lot of guys didn't like with this. I look, everything's the same. Everybody, you know, well, you can still, you know, you know, do your upgrade and stuff while collecting the deductible. And I think flexibility in any type of payment option gives your company a leg.

Up. Super cool, Chris. The more I delve into it, the more I learn about it, the more I'm like, hey, this is probably something that we'll. We'll definitely coach our people to, because there's one adamant thing that when we work with somebody, collect the deductible. I follow the law. Don't get yourself in trouble. Don't get your homeowner in trouble. Don't get your sales guy in trouble. There are many options. There's many options to getting that thing done. Do the right option for that particular circumstance, but don't. Because there's. Wording is important. Like, Like, I don't know how many times. And I put this post out. This is why I had you on here. I put this post out on Facebook today. Anybody out there that absolutely knows of somebody eating deductibles, let me know if you've got proof. And I got. I got texts of contracts, I got Facebook messages of contracts. I got signs that literally say it on it. And so those were like, hard proof. But there was a. And that was maybe 10%. The other 90% was, well, my homeowner got told that so and so is going to take care of their deductible. And I'm like, I clue in on words, okay, like, take care of. What does that mean? Versus eat? Like, those are two very different words. Take care of means, hey, maybe I'm using some ACV funds to help offset that for that homeowner. And so that's a possibility. And when you know that that's a possibility, it's all in the wording of things. And I see that a lot with contractors going so and so's eating deductibles or not getting deductibles paid. In most cases, they're using creativity that's legal to get those things done. So what's.

That? ACV money. It's legal to do. You know, that they're upfront money. Our office help when you know, because people call, you know, and say, hey, can y' all take care of the deductible and we say, we can. We can help you with it.

Yeah. What do you mean by take care.

Of? Commit fraud. But if you tell that homeowner, yeah, you have to pay it and. Or, you know, or. Or not that we can help you with it, and they'll just hang up. It happened, you know, whoa, Tell. Yeah, we can help them with it, but we're not gonna. We're not gonna absorb it. But if you tell them that on the phone, then they'll just call somebody else and says, yeah, we can cover it, you know, so this at least gets up an opportunity to present. And if they still don't want to do the right thing, my salesman walk away every time. And it's, you know, it's just one of those.

Things. It's one of the things we actually teach salespeople is like, words are powerful things. You know, there's a big difference between help with take care of and eat. I'll pay your due, Duck. Like, those are different ways of saying a similar thing that don't mean the same thing. And so when the homeowner asks us something like that and says, hey, you know, my neighbor over there has Joe Blow roofing, and they said they're going to take care of their deductible. I want to know more about that. So what does that mean to you by take care of their deductible? Are they going to pay it for them? They're going to cut a check to the insurance company. How does that work? Work? Have you gotten the specifics on what that means? But once you get into that conversation with them, it starts to dawn on them that, you know, Billy over there isn't really having his deductible paid. He's using some of his other funds. There's something else going on there in a lot of cases, and we get confused by that simple thing of so and so is going to take care of my deductible. We need to do a little.

Investigation. I can't believe I lost that sale. They had. They had to cover that.

Deductible. Yeah. And they didn't. They just did some. Something creative and legal. And so you got to be aware of that. Chris has been good. Really good. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for taking a risk. You're jumping out there with this fund my deductible thing. I think it is a good thing. I think it's useful in a lot of cases. I think across the nation, we're going to see deductibles more in those 1 or 2% instead of $500,000. And so I think you're ahead of the curve on that, and I think it's going to be something that's really cool and cool to see you're still thinking, like, financing and some other options out there. It'll be cool to watch you guys grow over the next couple years. So thanks for coming on and being a guest.

Man. It's an honor to be here and to be in the same company, somebody like you. And thank you for what you do. Well, really, what you do for our industry. And, you know, it's. It's just doing the right thing. You don't have to do what you do, especially. And you're helping contractors get better. So for the whole industry, thank you. And thank you for having me on. And it is a pleasure.

Man. I'm just a guy that has a particular set of skills. That's about it. Just like anybody else. Otherwise broken and sinful and trying to get better every day. So thanks for coming. It was our honor. And we'll catch up with.

You. Talk to you soon, man. Thank you.