Optimizing the Hail Out of Weather Data

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Contractor Radio. I am your host, the contractor coach, Jim Johnson, also the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro, where we help contractors lead their businesses better so they can scale them and hopefully achieve that personal and financial freedom they were looking for whenever they started their business. If that sounds like something that you want to do, just hop on over to our website@contractorcoachpro.com, click on the assessment button. You'll do an assessment of your full entire business. And from that assessment, we'll have some information on you so we don't have to ask you a bunch of questions. We can actually do a coaching call with you. Not a sales pitch, but a real coaching call. It's free. It doesn't cost you anything. And the worst thing that could happen is you get some good advice for the next two or three steps. Maybe the best thing that could happen is you decide we're a good fit for coaching, and we would love to work with you. Either way, we want to serve you well because that's what we do here in the home service contracting industry and serving you well. We're going to talk today with a guy that's been doing it for quite a long time. He's a really good friend of mine. I've known him for a long time. He's actually been an emcee, and he's announced me at shows before. Once I heard his excitement and his voice, I was like, dude, you gotta introduce me for this thing I'm gonna speak at. And he's gotten to do some of that kind of work. It's been kind of cool to watch over the years as he's grown. And I'm excited to talk to him because the service that he works for I actually used this year. I intentionally had Allstate as my insurance company, knowing that at some point I was going to have a hailstorm and that I would have to win. And I wanted to walk that path of what a homeowner would have to walk and the service that he works, Hail Trace. Help me navigate that, and we'll tell that story at the end. So hang out for the entire show. But without further ado, I want to bring in the man, the myth, the legend, Matthew Grassmire. Grassmire, good to see you, brother.

You're too kind, Too kind. Good to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

You've been around for a little while now in this industry. Like, you've got a reputation, and that's a good one, as far as I know, throughout the industry. So it's always good to be on the show.

Yeah, man, it's always great talking to you, for sure. Yeah, I've been around a while. I've been in the industry since 2016, so, you know, right at eight years. So, yeah, it's been a minute. We're approaching a decade pretty quickly. Be here before. I know.

Funny thing is, you're one of the few people I've brought back a second time. Those of you, if you like today's show, you go, hey, that Matt dude's pretty cool. You might go check out his previous episode with us called Power of Moments. We did quite a while ago because of a book that he referred to me that I thought was really valuable. Actually, it's helped me quite a bit. And Matt's just that kind of guy. He tends to be super helpful to whoever he runs across, but contractors in particular. So give us kind of the rundown. Matt, like you've been at helltrace since 2016. What does that look like over the years now? It's eight years later, Nine years later, man.

It's, it's, it's been a journey. It's been a lot of fun. I mean, in 2016, I started as, I'll put quotes around this director of operations because I think I was the sixth employee here. And we're just a small family run business. You know, Derek and Leah, you know, kind of started this thing and they're, you know, they did their thing for a while and then hired some meteorologists. And I don't know that we needed a director of operations at the time. So that's why I put quotes on it. So I came in and just did whatever I needed to do. But you, you know, through that I learned a ton and, you know, helped hell trace grow from a six employee, $450,000 company to, you know, a four and a half, almost $5 million company over six and a half, almost seven years, you know, 30, 30 plus employees. And just have had such a great opportunity to meet people in the industry like you, you know, Nathan, you know, with, with your team as well, Tommy, like. And I don't know, just because I'm so energetic and I put myself out there, I have had the opportunity to, you know, be an emcee of a few shows and be the emcee of our own traveling show a few years ago. And, you know, I guess operations has been my wheelhouse for the last seven years or for the first seven years of my experience here. But now in the last year, I've Moved into a new role, which is outside sales. And so I am heading up the outside sales department here at Hail Trace and all that comes with that. So that's kind of the 30,000 foot view. I guess. The short, the short of it is I was operations, and that's kind of my. My gifting. And then now I've moved into outside sales a little, little bit outside of my comfort zone.

But I was gonna say operations. Guy moving into sales. Well, what in the world has happened in this world?

You know, this is, this is kind of. This is how I look at it. Like my, my role in operations was to help as many people as I could, and sales is no different. I'm just. I'm just helping people. Sometimes that means, you know, getting them on a hailtrace subscription. Sometimes it doesn't. But at the end of the day, like, if I'm helping people and I'm helping as many people as possible, and that's the frame of mind that I'm in, I'm going to be successful. Hailtra is going to be successful. In worst case scenario, I make a new friend and I, you know, make a connection with somebody who might need something from me or I might, you know, reach out to you later for something like, we may cross paths again. Either way, I'm making friends and I'm helping as many people as I can.

So what's funny, all these years, I never really asked your title. I just knew you were always like one of the key players over at Hell Trace. And I always assumed that you were kind of in the sales department because you, you know, we meet at events, we hang out events. Yeah, you were always at the booth. You were always talking to people. You were always talking to them about how Hell Trace works and, and how it can be helpful to them. We just automatically assume like, hey, this dude's in sales. Now, I understand that you were handling a lot of the operation, and that happens in a young company where we kind of jack them all trades and then we kind of get moved into what fits our talents and skill set. And for all these years, I kind of thought your talent was sales. You never had a problem talking with people. You're a hungry guy. You're helpful, you're empathetic. Like you're all those things that we're looking for in salespeople. And so how has transition been for you?

I mean, I think at first it was a little rough because it's, you know, it's a lot different. There's a lot more pressure. You Know, because sales, it's like an outside sale, specifically, like, if I don't hunt, I don't eat. So, you know, with. I think everybody that's at a. Let me, let me back up. Everybody that works for a company is in a sense a salesperson for that company. You are, you are part of sales in some way. Whether that's, hey, who do you work for? That's a sales opportunity. I work for a company that does this. Like you're in sales. But as far as directly impacting the bottom line, you know, my first seven years here, I wasn't, I, My work wasn't directly contributing to sales and like, revenue that's coming into the company now, obviously, like, I am contributing to the bottom line. Processes, culture, all that stuff is, is part of it. But then you move over to sales and it's like, if I don't, if I don't get on the phone, I'm. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna make any money. So I gotta figure this thing out. But it's been, it's been a lot of fun and, you know, just like my, you know, my first seven years here at Hail Trace, there's a lot of things that we didn't know and there's a lot of things that I had to figure out. So I've always been pretty good at. Okay. I mean, I got Google. So let's figure this thing out. Let's, let's, you know, let's use the resources at my disposal. Let's, let's, let's go. If I got, if I got to call a thousand people a day, great, let's make that happen. I don't. Because I think most, most salespeople will find like, yes, you do need to call. And yes, there is a, there's a volume aspect to it, but the quality of the call and the touch points is, to me, at least what I found is way more important than the number. Because I go into every interaction thinking there's really two ways this could go and I'm okay with it. Well, I guess three ways this could go. We're going to be a good fit for you, or we're not going to be a good fit for you. If the answer is yes, great, let's get you set up. If the answer is no, cool, that's fine. The other outcome would be, do you know anybody else that this could be a good fit for? So if that's, if that's how I go into it, my feelings aren't going to get Hurt. Because if you got thin skin as a sales guy, you're not going to last very long because you get told no a lot. And when I, when I started introducing, hey, you know, if I'm on the phone with you, hey, Jim, my name is Matt. I'm with a company called Hail Trace. And we start talking, you know, I would love to understand you more as a company because we're not a good fit for everybody. And if we're not a good fit for you, just tell me. That's okay. No, no hurt feelings here. We just move our separate ways. Love to help you any way I can. If that's getting you on hilltrace, great. If that's pointing you in another direction, great. And that just kind of sets the tones like, okay, I've got an out and I'm not, I'm not going. I'm so desperate for the sale. I've got to make the sale and I'm going to tell you anything to get you on a Hill Trace plan.

Yeah, that's, that's always the worry with sales guys. Right. Like this has been my world for. See, I got started in sales truly when I was about 18. Before that I was selling, but I was an entrepreneur. I had my own landscaping business and so I had to sell. But I didn't really understand the like the skill part of it was just relationship. Sales would be the best way and pretty easy because I'm a kid trying to make my way and most people were pretty cool with that. But as you, as you get older and you learn more skills and all that other good stuff, you're right. You gotta kind of have thick skin a little bit. People are going to tell you no. The real job is to have as few people tell you no as possible that are the right fit for you. And I think that's the important part. You really nailed something on the head there that when it comes to sales, if you're not a fit for them and you do sell them something, all you do is do them a disservice yourself. A disservice. And they're not going to be a customer for very long and they might end up with a bad taste in their mouth, a bad review and all the other good stuff. And, and I liked how you started off with questions like asking people what it was that they were needing in their business and trying to solve problems. And I kind of allude to that being a solution selling methodology instead of the kind of the old school hard sales methodology where we build long lasting Relationships, sure.

I learned a long time ago. Well, not a long time ago, but a few years ago. This is a very helpful piece of information. Leaders are determined by the information that they receive rather than the information that they disseminate or give other people. So if I know about you, I can sometimes make the call, hey, man, I don't know if we're a good fit for you. I don't think we are because it doesn't sound like you actually need us. And man, sometimes people, they'll get that. They'll go, wait, no, I don't think that's true. I actually do need your. Not that it's a mind game, but like, sometimes they're like, wait, no, no, no, no, wait, what do you mean I'm not a good fit for you? I am a good fit for you. I should have hatch race. But if that's my mindset and if that's a salesperson's mindset, like, you're going to be way more successful and you're, you're not going to be, you're not going to put yourself in a position where like a used car salesman is one that you. Everybody, everybody thinks about. Like, think about, you know, a used car salesman, how, you know, everybody's got that image in their head of like, this guy's going to try to twist your arm. He's going to, he's going to be hounding you. Get, you know, get, do this, buy this. And nobody wants to be viewed that way. So I just view myself as a helper that just happens to have a transaction on the end of some of my conversations. So.

Well, this is a whole new approach by L Trace too. Like, for years it's been. It is organic, organic marketing, your hail forecast and all those things. Just the awareness of our small community of who you are. A lot of inbound leads, I would imagine over that time and inside sales guys being able to, you know, follow that process. But you've identified probably from leadership and your own input that in order for us to scale even further and to grow as a business, we, we need to probably do some of this outbound sales. Because funny thing is, even in our marketing and all that stuff, just a small percentage of the people that are really likely candidates for what it is that we offer, hear about us, see us are engaged on social media. They might be really busy and doing what they weren't doing. Whatever. They don't go to events, they just haven't been exposed to you yet. And if we don't reach out and do that with them, they're never going to know about us. So what was some of the decision making that went into, like, this is a new thing for health race, right? Outbound marketing.

It is, it is very new. We've never done anything like this because like what you said, organically we've been able to produce a lot of incoming leads and with a small, you know, workforce, you know, we had one, maybe two sales guys for a lot of years. And the organic leads that we were able to bring in that, you know, they don't really have time to do anything else. You know, there were some conversations during the fall, hey, you probably a little bit more time. But even then, like, as we got better at, you know, our organic reach, even the fall, there's a, you know, a good stream of leads coming in towards like, okay, I can't spend, you know, three, four hours doing outbound stuff because I've got so many leads and follow ups I got to do because I'm making sales that way. So again, forecast all those events. Like people want to know, you know, what we think, where the hail is. And we gained a really good organic social media following. So I mean, anytime, every, every day, we probably get a few leads from our forecast, you know, go live at noon Central standard time every day. Probably some, some leads that come in, especially March, April, May, June, we're getting some leads every day from that, from that forecast that we do every, every day.

But which if you do nothing else on an outbound sales call, leading them to the, hey, we might not be a good fit right now, but here's a link to our forecast, here's a link to our social media, like, this is something you should probably follow. It might add to your business.

Exactly. And that's a really good point. And again, that all goes back to how you frame what you're trying to do. Are you trying to help somebody or are you trying to sell somebody? And again, I mean, it was like a switch flipped as soon as I was like, you know what, I'm just, I'm looking at this as helping as many people as I can. Then it like, it changed everything. But within our leadership members last year, June ish, July ish, we started to have some vision meetings about what does the next five, ten years look like for Hail Trace, where do we want to be? Some of the numbers that we were, you know, aspiring to, some of the goals that we had just they weren't going to add up. If we didn't add, you know, there's, you Know, new products, there's. Expand your market share. There's lots of streams to bring in revenue. But it always came back to, if we don't go scale our market share and bring new people in, outside of the organic stuff that we're doing, we're not going to hit those numbers. And so through some conversations, myself and Derek just going through this process, like, okay, what is this going to look like? How are we going to make this happen? Kind of just came down to, okay, well, somebody's going to come in. Somebody's going to come in and learn this position. Somebody's going to learn Hail Trace. Somebody's going to learn a lot of the, you know, how to talk to people. I said, let's just go. Like, let's go. And so I'll do it. And so end of 2022, I officially stepped into this role. Kind of beginning of 2023, about that time, I stepped into this new role and said, okay, let's. Let's see what happens. Let's see if we can go hunt some. Some accounts and some. Some clients that have never heard of us instead of just having everything come in. So let's scale this.

This is interesting to me. This is like, super, like. Cause our assumption is everybody knows Hell Trace, right? What's your experience actually, like. Like, as you started to reach out and started to, like, you know, I'm sure you have a big, huge list of people that you've already interacted with somehow or another, and then you're going, okay, who else exists out there? What'd you do to find them? Number one. And then what's the interaction been like back and forth? Have they been receptive? Been, you know, a lot of putting the brakes down on you? What's it been like?

Good question. There's a lot of layers to that, I think, first and foremost, like, knowing who you want to target. Because, like, there's. I mean, there's. So there's thousands of roofing companies in the United States. And so if I were to just throw a dart at a list of roofing companies, I could call one. Well, you know what? I don't. I don't want to call a roofing company in Alaska because they don't need my service. So we can eliminate, you know, the. Almost the entire West Coast. So you're losing Alaska, Hawaii. Let me back up. I understand that geographically, Alaska and Hawaii aren't technically the west coast of the United States of America. Before the geography geeks try to come at me. But you lose Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and California. There's just not a ton of hail in those states. And then you kind of come in, you got, got Nevada, you got Utah, Arizona, more wind over there, but then you got Idaho, Montana. So geographically you can kind of fix, okay, what are the areas? Obviously Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado. Those are like the three main states for us. Right. And what I found, because it's interesting, you go, okay, probably everybody in Dallas has heard of us, man, not even close. We like, I would say, I would say less than 20% of Dallas roofing companies, like know who we are. Now obviously that is a guess, but like there's so many roofing companies in Dallas who have no idea who we are. And that's, that's been very interesting. It's very eye opening to, to think.

Eye opening and opportunity creating, it seems.

Like to me a lot of opportunity. So the first thing that I did was come up with an ideal client profile, like who are the people that we want to, that will use Hail Trace that we can, you know, sell our product to or that would be a good fit for our product. And that kind of came in and I kind of, I guess just put that together and you know, did a lot of filters and found, you know, found a list of people who, you know, are out there. And then you gotta filter them against our system and see, have these, do these people, are they already customers? Once you do that, man, you start, you start calling people and to your question about what's the response? Probably a mixed bag. There are some people that, what's interesting, there are some people that have heard of us, but they've just never thought or thought to reach out or thought they needed to reach out. And so there are some conversations where it's like, hey, have you ever heard of Hail Trace? I typically will ask that in some form or fashion. The conversation. And some of you, yeah, you know, we have, we've just never needed Hail Trace. You know, the guy who is just, you know, he, the guy who lives in Austin who gets a five star.

What makes, what makes you say that? Is my next question.

Well, so in the context if I, if I live in Austin and a five star event happens on September 24th and the entire town of Austin, Georgetown just gets pummeled with four and a half inch hail. Do I really need a hail map to let me know where all the hail.

Let's take a step back for just a second because we're assuming right now that all of our listeners know what Hail Trace is. And we got a wide variety of listeners. Just real quick what Hell Trace is and does and why this is so valuable and important.

So hail. So I, this is not an official statement, but I'll, I'll tell you what, what I view Hail Trace as is a sales efficiency tool that specializes in forensic weather and we help people leverage data. And to me, there's three types of data that you can leverage with Hail Trace. There's the weather data and then there's your data and then there's the prospective data. So the weather data. Obviously you want to know when a storm's happened in an area. You want reports for that. Like we can help you find where areas have been impacted by severe weather, whether it's hail, wind, tornado or hurricane. So we can help you on the weather data side and then we can help you leverage your data. So you could literally give us a list of 100 people, 100 contacts that you have and you know that's past customers or just anybody you have a relationship with. Anytime they're impacted by a storm, we're going to automatically send you an email with a list of all those people that are hit by hail or when. So if I got 100 people, 50 of them get popped by 2 inch hail, I'm going to get a list of all 50 of those people. So there's no guesswork. I don't have to, I don't know which one of my clients have been impacted by this storm last night. I automatically know. And then the third piece is the prospective data. You can get address, specific contact data, name, address, phone, how long have they lived there? Are they the actual homeowner? You can get some really good information like that to help you understand one, the demographic and two, like some of the marketing or marketing strategies out there to try to put yourself in front of those people.

I have a question. How deep does the demographic data go? Does it have like home value, income, that kind of stuff?

Does it have, there is a lot of that layer to it. Yeah, there is. So you're gonna, you're gonna get things like. Well it'll, in some cases it'll give you. No square, square footage will happen on like commercial, we have commercial data too. So like you could get square footage of a building on like the commercial data, but like residential data, it's going to have just your basic name, address, phone, email. It will have home value and it will have, it'll have like a median income for that, like zip code. Are they the home, are they the confirmed homeowner? And then it'll have like sometimes it'll have like auto information, like what kind of cars do they have or what kind of cars are associated with that person.

You got to do some hail dent repair, right?

Well, you know, a lot we do sell to PDR companies, which is a small, small percentage of our customers. But you know, they do like that information, like what kind of cars do they have? If it's a 2003 Toyota Corolla, probably not going to try to repair their gates.

That would be important. That's really cool. The thing I find most important out of all that was the customers I already had. Like, I'm going to upload everybody I've ever done. And as they. For whatever period my workmanship warranty is. So I've got this workmanship warranty that's five years, maybe 10 years, whoever it may be. I'm going to keep that updated once a year. Go, hey, this is what my number is. Because I would look at this would be. My approach is you send me the data, right? Like, hey, these homeowners. And I'm going to assume it's like probably an email list, maybe a CSV file or something like that.

It's an email with a CSV file.

See, I'm going to pump that right into my automated marketing system. And I'm going to notify every homeowner that we have to set up an appointment. Not that we need to or would like to or would want to, but we have to set up an appointment to verify their warranty. Like they come out and go, did it survive or not? Because if it went beyond our warranty, we need to do something about that, obviously. And I would have, you know, hopefully thousands, knowing me, with the size of company, I would have. We would have a lot of leads right away, just immediately.

Yeah, that one's powerful. Exactly. I think that's probably one of the most powerful tools we do have. And I think about it just in terms of information that you can track on customers or just connections or people that you relationships. Because like if I just put in customers that I did last year, like, okay, and I did 100 roofs last year, and I start with 100, there's a pretty good chance that even if they get impacted by a good storm, probably not going to need to do anything with their roof. Right. But in the course of my, you know, talking to people, if I get up on a roof and the roof is fine, like nothing needs to happen. Great one. Tell the customer that to put them into hill trace because once they're in there, I'm going to notify you, but the key is putting the information in there that is valuable to you. So if one piece of information is the weather data, another piece of information is when was the roof first installed? If I know that, I know the weather date, that's really good. Then the third, if I know the roof type, if I know this is a 3 tab shingle that's 10 years old that just got hit by 4 inch hail, I'm probably gonna, hey, let's go, let's. Like whoever is first to that person is probably getting that job. And so if I'm not marketing my customers, somebody else is. So I might as well be proactive in that and say, here's my list. Like you were saying, put it into the automated marketing. Hey, when, when's good for us to come out? We're coming out to your neighborhood tomorrow and Wednesday. Which would you prefer?

Yeah, I, I see a lot of the argument of the, the contractor themselves. Like, dude, there was a hailstorm. I know where to go. There's hail. I don't need hail trace to tell me that. But what you really do need is for Hell trace to tell you exactly where to go. The homes that you've already worked on, the homes you've already had interactions with, those are your best. And then the third one is, where's the ideal place to go? Yeah, I know hail was all over the place, but where's the best place to go? Because like you said, speed to lead wins and speed to the, to the right lead leads to success. Like this idea that, hey, yeah, there's a hailstorm and I'm just gonna go run around like a chicken with my head cut off versus being very strategic about it. I think that's what pays for Hell Trace just in itself right there. I could pay for hell trace in a day for my whole year just by having the right strategy to going after the right places at the right time. Do you guys see that a lot with your customers?

Oh, yeah, Oftentimes people do. I actually, I'll tell a story about a customer in Edmond. Through a 10 year career, he's never had us, never thought he needed us. He's got 10 years of experience. A few guys that work for him throughout 10 years, and the other few guys that work for him, they had about 3,500 contacts that they either done a roof job or done general contract work for or just had done an inspection for. Storm came through April of last year. We, we pro or we retroactively ran, ran a We read his list through our system and found 20 or 1600 contacts that were impacted by that hailstorm. And we just did a little math equation with him. What's this worth to you? His average profit margin for each roof was about $5,000 per roof. Right. So if you take that times 1600, you've got an $8 million opportunity right in front of you just with the people that you know. And I think it's important for, for roofing contractors to do this type of thing. Like, what is, how does the math actually work out? No, he's not, but he was like, man, I'm going to be working these contacts for the next year and a half because these are people that we have good relationships with. As long as I'm reaching out to them pretty quickly and not, you know, not just sitting on it for a year, we're probably going to get a large percentage of these people just because we know exactly who is impacted. And to your point earlier, like, sure, do, do I need to be, do I need to sit in Austin and have a 4 inch hailstorm come through my town to know where hell hit? No. I could walk outside and I could see a roof across the street from me, probably with some skylights out. But am I, am I really going to manually look for every single client that I've ever had and see if they were hit by the sale storm? No, you're not going to have time to do that. So we've taken a guesswork out and said, here you go, you got 100 contacts in Austin. All 100 of them were hit by. Here you go, talk to them.

Yeah, speed, delete, man. That is absolute importance whenever it comes to storm work and really any other kind of work, like the second somebody contacts you or has a reason for you to contact them, if you do it immediately, it's top of mind. It's just that important. And it stops them from actually like looking for anybody else. Like I could imagine. Hailstorm hits. The guys that did my roof call me within 15 minutes and say, hey, we need to come out and look at your roof. I'm not calling anybody. I'm just going to hang out until they come look at my roof. I got my guys. The other thing that I really like about, and we coach this a lot in our sales process is whenever, whenever we're out canvassing and doing some of the cold stuff, whether it's a straight up cold door knock or it's a neighbor of somebody that I'm working with, I can actually like pull up their house inside of the hailstorm and say, this is your house right there and this is the hail map. So you have had something happen. You need to get an inspection. We're inspecting every house in this neighborhood. When would you like me to do yours? Now, or would you prefer for me to come back tomorrow? And it's so powerful to have just that little piece. Even if it closes 10% more sales, it more than pays for what I'm paying for. Hell, trace, do you have guys that use it like that?

Oh, for sure. I think information that is pertinent to us is always more emotionally valuable to us than just information alone. So if I'm shown, and I mean this, I think this plays out across industries. This isn't specific to our industry, but if you're standing in front of my house and saying, here's your house, here's a storm, here's the swath of everybody that was hit by 2 inch hail. There's your house right in the middle of it. Let's zoom in. There you are. You got hit with 2 inch hail. That is really powerful to me. And then you take that a step further and you can say, while I'm looking at your house, would you like to see every storm that's ever impacted your Property? There's been 10. Like, here they are. When was your roof replaced? And I've had guys tell me, like, they'll go to a house and go, yeah, I don't think anything happened to our roof. I think, you know, it didn't really sound like a ton, so I think we're okay. And they go, when is your roof? When is your roof replaced? The house is, you know, the roof is the same roof that was on it when it was built. Okay, when was your house built? 2006. Oh, okay. Well, did you know that you've had 13 events since 2006 at your house specifically? Oh, no, I didn't know that. Do you think it would make sense for me to get up on the roof and do an inspection? Yeah, probably. Okay, 13 events. Yeah, that one that happened the other day probably didn't do a ton, but there's probably something up there that needs to be looked at or repaired or replaced.

Well, I think we forget sometime. As storm restoration contractors, we assume that the homeowner knows what they need to know. And so they walk outside and they look at their house and they go, all my shingles are there, so I'm good. Right. But they're not really because of what hail does to a roof. You can't really see it from the ground. And unless you have the trained eye for it, in a lot of cases, even on the roof, you can get up on the roof and go, all my shingles are here, I don't really see anything wrong. And you have all this damage to your house. Unless it's just absolutely obvious, which does happen in some cases, but I would say 90% of the cases there's damage to the roof and the homeowner doesn't even realize it.

I would take that a step further and say most homeowners don't even know that their roof was hit by hail. And I will use, I will use an example that's very personal to me. Everybody remembers Covid 2020. Everybody had to go home and work from home for at least two, three weeks. It didn't really matter where you were, you were at home for at least two, three weeks. We had a pretty good storm in my neighborhood. Well, sure, sure. I think we're on like day, you know, 10, 40 of 14 days to slow the spread now, so whatever. So we had a storm in my neighborhood. I'm at home, I'm working from home. Storm happens. I take Trafford outside, he's looking at the hail he's picking up, he's like, can we save these? This is so cool. So clearly our house has got, you know, golf ball size hail. My whole neighborhood gets golf ball size hail. Well, I talked, I was out, me and some neighbors, we just were like, okay, government says we can't really be around each other. Let's just hang out in the street. You sit in your driveway, I'll sit my driveway. We still need to talk to each other. So we just hang out. Hey, how is your guys roof okay from that hailstorm a few days ago? What hailstorm? You were home. You were literally home. It was during the middle of the afternoon, you guys were home. And I started asking people on my street, hey, about this specific hailstore. I just wanted to know. Nobody knew that their house had been hit by hail.

That's wild.

Okay, obviously this is speculation, but like I would say, most homeowners probably don't even know that their hail or that their roof is hit by hail. If they didn't know while they were home, you think they're going to know if they're gone? Like I was at work in a hail storm hit my house. I may not know if. I don't know. I don't know. And if you're in Houston or San Antonio, it's really hot and the hail melts before you get home.

Oh, yeah. To me, it is wild how much we assume that the other people out there in the world know what we know and they just don't. So let's track onto something. Everybody understands what Helltrace does. Now, there's been some new things that you guys have come out with over the last couple years. One of those being the certified reports. So what does that mean? Because I, I really don't know, to be honest with you. Like, how is that different from the other report that you give us that's like in the app?

So the certified report is different than the one in the app. And I guess I should back up and talk about the one in the app. Within the app, you can order a automated report for any address that you click on and it's going to give you a PDF with every event that's ever impacted that property. But when you talk about the weight of that report or the weight of reports in general in an argument about causation of damage, and I'm going to speak to something, I'm not an expert in this. I just know through talking to our clients that is part of the process is like, okay, how, okay, if we can agree that the roof is damaged, now we have to figure out. Now we have to agree on how. Because hail hitting a roof versus somebody taking a hammer up there and putting some, some dings on a roof. That completely different conversation. Those are two completely, completely different things. So those automated reports, they don't hold a lot of weight because it's just, I mean, it takes our information that we've already put in there and it just pulls it out and it's just, it is what it is. It's an automated report and there's not a lot of backing to it. So the certified report is done by a meteorologist. I mean, these things are like 30 page reports. I mean, they're hours, probably takes two weeks to complete these reports. And what we found with a client of ours who's an engineer who does. And these are, these are really geared towards more large loss commercial claims. But what he has stated.

What. I used this last year. Now I know what you're talking about.

Okay, so if, if I know that it's going to take, you know, 12 to 18 months with an adjuster to figure out causation and we're going to go back and forth, back and forth, it would be in my best interest as an engineer or public adjuster or a commercial roofer to know exactly what caused this Damage. So these reports help cut through that argument of causation. And our customer has told us it's cut about 18 months out of his time as he's talking through, like, what actually caused this thing that happened on the roof. And we're batting a thousand for those.

So I have a question. Is there a difference between the certified reports and the forensic analysis that you get? So what's the difference between. Because I think I had the forensic analysis, some meteorologist there spent forever looking at my exact property and saying, yes, this is exactly what happened here. Now I'll tell the whole story because I told everybody I was going to share this a little bit. Whenever I bought my home, we had to get new insurance. My wife did all the research. She's amazing at that. And the most affordable thing that we could get was this company called Lighthouse. And so we got that, like, great, awesome. This is good. I think six months later, Lighthouse said, we don't insure in Texas anymore. And we had to go find another one. And so the next one in line was Allstate. And I went, no, it's like, no, I'm not doing that. Then I thought about it for a second. Well, you know, this might be an interesting case study if I ever get to do it and share it on my podcast and kind of how this whole thing went down. And I did back almost a year ago now, because the storm is on March 5th of 23. I shared that it happened, but I don't know if I've shared the results of it because it was a long, drawn out battle. And. And so I made my claim. First off, I got to tell the whole story. This is kind of interesting. I'm at my house and if you're in the storm damage restoration thing, you may know a guy named Dan Walreck. He. He sold $18.3 million.

He's a big teddy bear.

Yeah, he's an amazing dude. One of my best friends, I brought him into the industry 24 years ago, 25 years ago, trained him and everything. He worked for me. And he's been in the industry for a long time. So he's built up this big following. So whenever there's a storm, everything goes really good for him. But he came down to do our top rep event and talk about what he does and how he does it at that event and stayed overnight with me. We stayed the last night we were here and we had a hailstorm and he woke up. I woke up, it was like 1:15 in the morning. And we're Standing in the living room, and we're looking. And it's like 20ft from the glass in my living room to the outside cover of my porch, right? And I have stones of hail hitting my window seven feet up in the air on a line drive, just coming through there, being that hard. And driven hail there anywhere from an inch to inch and a half. I'm like, oh, man, one of these windows is going to bust and all this stuff, right? So I take video, take pictures, all that jazz. We go back to bed, wake up in the morning, and we're like, let's take a look. And sure enough, there's hail damage. And I'm like, okay, here we go. And it's all over my steel building and every Everything. So call, make a claim. He goes home, calls, makes claim. They come out. What do you think they did?

I'm gonna guess they said no.

Yeah, they didn't. They. First off, they sent a ladder of Cisco. They didn't even send a real adjuster. They just sent some dude takes pictures.

Seems like that's right out of the playbook. Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, it's out of the playbook. And I went, yeah, I know who you are. And I. And I go, hey, look, I know you can't make the call, right? Nor are you supposed to say anything to me, but just between you and I, what do you think? Like, he goes, man, for sure they're going to take care of this thing. And it goes in. Nope, doesn't take care of it. So I call him, I say, hey, look, man, I've been on my roof. I can see it with my own eyes, and I haven't told him anything about who I am. And I said, I need a reinspect, and I don't want a ladder assist guy. I want a real adjuster that's been trained to identify damage. Because I'm bringing a roofer out now, and we're going to give us some pictures taken. So roofer comes out, takes his picture, ladder assist comes out. Again, they deny it. Roofer sends in his stuff. Again, they deny it. Then I get a PA involved. And so the PA Comes out, and we didn't sign a contract. He's just a pa. He's doing it out of the kindness of his heart. So he writes a whole report. We send it to him, still denied. So I called Derek and I said, hey, Derek, I understand that you have some kind of new product out there that I want to really brag about. If it's actually as good as you Say it is, I need the report on my house. I'll take care of it. It's going to take a couple weeks. I'm like, cool. And this whole time, they've been very, like, on top of it with Allstate. Within a day or two of contact, they contact me back, the whole bit. So I get this report back and I see it first, right? Like, they emailed it to me. I see it first. I'm like, holy cow. This thing's like 25 pages long. I start reading through it and I'm like, what microburst? What's going on there? And the thing from Allstate was, well, we don't have any wind reports of winds high enough to do anything except for eight miles away. So that. That doesn't apply to you, right? And I went, no, that's not accurate. So the meteorologist does this whole thing, signs off on it. I believe it even says something where he's going to. He would. Is willing to be expert on this particular thing. So I get that and I go, okay, cool. I call him and say, hey, I've got a report, you know, that I got taken care of on my house from an actual meteorologist that does this kind of stuff, and I'm going to send it to you. I expect to hear something. So send it to them radio silent. I couldn't even get them on the phone. I tried to call them twice. Nobody would. They'll call me back, right? For a month. For a month, nothing happens. I'm like, what the world is going on here? Then all of a sudden, a check shows up, just boop. Like out of the blue.

As one does, don't call. You just send a check, which had.

Some paperwork with it, which wasn't accurate, of course, delayed. And I defend that all stuff, and forgive me, anybody that is against this, I'm sharing my experience as a homeowner, not as somebody in this industry. So I had to go through the whole thing with my roofer, get all the pricing worked out, deck person, metal building, all this stuff, get it all put together. And so literally how I feel as a policyholder is that I had to do all the work to get what was actually owed to me paid to me so that I could get my house repaired back to the way it was before the storm, which seems backwards. Seems like they should do all the work. That's what they signed on for. That's the contract that they have for me to indemnify me for the damages to my property. It's very frustrating. And I, and I, and if I didn't have the knowledge I have and the context I have, where would that have gone for 99% of other homeowners? And I think that's the game that gets played out there. So explain the difference between the certified report and this forensic report thing that I got.

Oh, actually, okay, so you actually got a certified report. So you got what we call the big, the big boy report. So yeah, the forensic report is taken. Our client actually calls them the check cutter. So the forensic report, it takes a date. It would take your date and your address and one of our meteorologists would go just download the radar data. They go through it frame by frame and say, okay, I can determine from this data that I have that 1.5 inch hail occurred at this property on you say, March 5, whatever the day is, take some.