Jeremy Traasdahl

Well, here we are for another episode together. This one, I think we’re going to talk about a lot of things. Ultimately, I think getting paid faster and more is always the most important thing for our contractors. That’s what it seems that everybody wants to talk about. And so I think we’ll talk about that. I think we talked about a couple of our client success stories, our success stories, kind of how we have developed over the last eight years to become who we are today.

And so I think we could start there, we could talk about some of our clients, or we can talk about some of, some of the successes that we’ve had, successes that we’ve had, as a company.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. Perfect. Maybe some specific, issues facing contractors, different, you know, specific line items on their invoices, different things like that, that create challenges.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. Pumped.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. I think if we wanted to start, I would talk about I mean, there’s a couple companies that come to mind. One of the things that I think we’ve done really well, especially early on, is we’ve partnered with the right companies, the right contractors that have really seen our value and then used our value to grow their businesses.

Jeremy Traasdahl

I can think of three contractors off the top of my mind. One started they were doing about 12 jobs a week, you know, in size. They grew over the last six years because they probably started with us in year two. They had grown over the last six years to doing 70 to 75 jobs a week, right.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Exponential growth because we were able to eliminate and frankly, full credit to those guys. But they used the, the additional funds, the additional resources, the additional speed to collect and reinvested into their company. That’s one example. And, and I can think of two others in, in near identical, ways. Use the additional cash flow, use the speed to cash flow invested in their own business growth, buying vehicles, advertising, marketing and said, well, because I have this and I have the time, the extra time, the extra time where I’m not dealing with trying to negotiate it every invoice I’ve now outsourced that. And now my brain is solely focused on my own core business.

Josh Ehmke

That’s the idea, right? Is to be able to alleviate such a huge portion of their business, which is their AR and tracking down payment, alleviate that from them. We’ve talked about this in other episodes where, you know, contractors liked to contract, like that’s what they do.

Josh Ehmke

That’s where they like to focus. And if we can help alleviate the AR, headache and systems for them so they can focus on actually that part of their business and continuing to grow that part of their business. Those are the best. When we come across contractors like that and, and partner with them, it’s exciting to see their growth and be able to help them reach their goals of growth.

Josh Ehmke

That’s been super exciting to see. So, and there are quite a few of those examples that come to mind thinking back over the last eight years on and what we’ve been able to do and the relationships that we’ve created with those contractors along the way. You know, I can think of a handful that have really become, you know, friends where I’ll probably have for life outside of whether OCS continues to do their billing or not.

Josh Ehmke

So it’s kind of been neat to see that, and that growth with them, as far as some of the other things that, you kind of intro with, you know, I’d love to kind of jump into, some of the headaches that contractors have on the daily outside of just collecting. Right. Maybe they’re getting pushback from carriers as an attorney looking at this industry, I’ve been able to, participate in and, advise through different, you know, events on the importance of doing certain things in the industry and as a contractor, what certain things that can be done should be done in order to

Josh Ehmke

protect yourself. One of the things that comes to my mind is, you know, asbestos and asbestos testing, a lot of pushback coming from that. It’s, when you dive into the, the federal regulations, oftentimes even, you know, and you look into the requirements behind that, it’s not just about, you know, any home that’s built after a certain year.

Josh Ehmke

You have to, you know, you shouldn’t test or anything built before that. You should test. That’s really not what it comes down to, right? It comes down to even liability and protecting yourself as a contractor. You know, we know that ACM asbestos containing material is constantly coming into the industry. You can go to Home Depot right now and buy it, you know, because it’s these things that are made overseas are not always regulated.

Josh Ehmke

So there is ACM in everything today still, we’ve seen, you know, newer construction come back and test positive for asbestos containing materials. We know you have to test commercial buildings. We know you have to test any buildings that have four or more units. Those are buildings that are all built from the same materials as these homes that are being built today.

Josh Ehmke

So logic would tell you, you should be testing the new homes if you fail as a contractor, do these things, you know, that opens you up to liability. So different things like this, we’re able to help with contractors. But, oftentimes contractors are hesitant or they’re scared to do that or, maybe they don’t understand why they should, a lot of them say, well, if we don’t, if we bill it, adjusters going to be mad at us.

Josh Ehmke

Maybe they won’t pay it. There’s different line items like that that, the contractors will always get push back from with the carriers, whether it’s the asbestos tests, it’s the thermal imaging, whether it’s overhead and profit. There’s all kinds of line items, air scrubbers on category two or even category one losses, you know, and again, I look at it maybe from a slightly different perspective, coming from the legal side of it and wanting to protect, you know, these contractors from exposure to unnecessary liabilities by not taking these steps.

Josh Ehmke

And then when I see adjusters kick back against that, I’d be like, oh, we’re not paying it. You shouldn’t do those things. It gets a little frustrating from the legal liability standpoint. But, what, what have you seen or, or anything that you want to touch on with those specific line items that you’re going man if contractors would only, like, stand up for themselves and do this or that.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I think that it’s interesting because we’ve evolved just as a company on like what, How we how we approach things. Right. And there are some things that like we’ve seen over the last eight years, right, that have just changed, and not to name names because I’m not going to do that, but like one company that would pay service call, and every time, by the way, most companies pay a service call.

Jeremy Traasdahl

But about 4 or 5 years ago, one company decided we’re not paying service call anymore. And there’s no real legal, backing. There’s no real legal justification. There’s no real justification at all for not. It’s just one company decided we are not right. And so it’s those type of things that we’ve seen just over the last eight years where it’s like, man, that doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Jeremy Traasdahl

This three trade thing we’ve talked about probably multiple times, regarding overhand profit and there’s three trades, there’s a three trade rule that came into effect. It felt like years ago. And then and it’s still being talked about today, but even less than it used to be talked about that argument has just become less. It’s just like we’ve seen again over the eight years, just the different flows that that insurance companies, or carriers have changed.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. Right. Yeah. They’ve changed different things. And so we’ve been dynamic and tracking that. Right. We’ve been dynamic in in making sure we know what has happened, what is happening, who is paying for what. And, and I think that’s giving us the ability to, to really have a strong position, against some of those line items. Right.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And to your point, I think some of the contractors are like, I’m just not going to add it because I don’t want to deal with the headache. Right. You know, I, I don’t want to deal with Jim at X, Y, Z Insurance Company saying I’m not paying for that. And so therefore I’m just going to remove it because like, what are what are my other options.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Right. I am just going to remove it.

Josh Ehmke

or not do it altogether.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. Or Bill the homeowner and then the homeowners upset with me. Right, right. And so anyway, I think that that’s been one of those things in terms of cash flow management, in terms of how to get paid more faster. Right. It’s like you’ve got a bill for things you do.

Jeremy Traasdahl

That’s our position. If you do it, you should bill for it because it’s most likely reasonable to be done. And if it’s not, then the carrier has no obligation to pay it. If it wasn’t reasonable, you know. But Bill, for the things that that are done, if you don’t know what those things are, there’s a thousand reference guides.

Josh Ehmke

The IICRC is where I’d start to say, what? What am I allowed to do? And paid get paid for. Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a fear in the industry of billing for certain things. Right. There’s, you know, the fraud word that gets thrown around a lot. It’s fraud if you do that. Why is it fraud if I take in asbestos test?

Josh Ehmke

OSHA tells me that I have to protect my employees on every demolition job that I do. And so I have to, under OSHA, taken asbestos test. Why is that fraud when the law requires it? Why is it fraud? When I put an air scrubber on a category two loss to protect the homeowner? Why? You know, it’s, there is fear attached to billing for certain things when really they’re things that are justified and not just justified, but you really should be doing.

Josh Ehmke

But based on how insurance companies and adjusters have specifically positioned certain line items, it’s created almost like this. Well, that’s just not how the industry operates. Well, just because something doesn’t operate in a certain way doesn’t make that the right way to do it. It’s the way that people have done it because they backed down from actually doing it the right way.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I think it’s and it could be fear and it could just be sheer laziness. It could be like, I don’t want to deal with that. Right. Or it could be I don’t want to tie up my cash flow that I need tomorrow, because I have three line items on there that an adjuster doesn’t want to pay for.

Jeremy Traasdahl

That’s a good point. And so therefore they’re like, I it’s going to delay my process. I’ll either not bill for it or I’ll be super fast to concede it. To get to get cash in the door, which is a tough leverage position to be in.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah 100%. And it’s easy to understand, you know, a contractor is hesitance to do that.

Josh Ehmke

But, some other specific examples of maybe where OCS has been able to step in and help solve a problem for contractors. We’ve talked a lot about, the assignment of benefits in the past, you know, but I’m not sure we’ve ever gone super deep into what OCS has done in order to protect that assignment of benefits and not just protect it, but really implement it and use it as a tool in this industry.

Josh Ehmke

We almost make it more standardized in the restoration space. So maybe we can dive in a little bit on the assignment and, and number one, briefly, again, just reiterating why it’s important and, maybe some things that OCS has done to help pave the way for contractors to benefit from that. AOB.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I think first and foremost, obviously the AOB is powerful because it’s it is a powerful direct pay authorization.

Jeremy Traasdahl

It does way more than that. But it is that, at the very least, and one of the things that has helped us in terms of OCS just being faster to collect is we try to get the majority of these checks sent to the contractor directly or sent to us, out of the property owners hands so that there’s not one additional person to go chase down for this money.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Right. In the rare cases, which I do believe, they are rare cases that the property owner decides they want to keep that money. We’ve gone back to the carriers and we’ve said, hey, there’s an assignment of benefits here. It’s your job now to go track down that money from the property owner. But because you were supposed to pay us, we’ve had a lot of success doing that.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And so I think that’s one of those powerful tools to just, just improve cash flow speed to say, hey, this is this is where the money should have gone, and let’s go make it go there. Obviously we’ve been on in legal, legal fights regarding the AOB. And I can’t even remember the years, years ago now, we in the state of Arizona, we went to the Court of Appeals and won that case.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And that was a big, a big win for us because it did prove what we always knew to be true, which was the assignment of benefits on a post loss. A post loss assignment benefits should and can and is warranted. And it’s powerful and it does not, change what the obligation of the insurer is.

Jeremy Traasdahl

They’re required to still pay. Yeah. And they just are paying a different party. And so that was a big win for us. I remember here in Arizona, and then I know we’ve had those wins throughout similar or similar wins across the

Josh Ehmke

jump in by way of quick disclaimer on that. Not all states have, laws that support post loss assignment of benefits.

Josh Ehmke

So become familiar with your state’s laws and know whether or not you can use them. If not, if you’re in a state that does not allow the assignment, get involved with that state, you know, see if there’s an association you can join to try to push the legislature to open up these, these laws. When you think about it, in the medical billing space, imagine what would happen to the American economy if all of a sudden health insurance companies no longer had to send payments directly to the medical care provider, and they sent it to the patients?

Josh Ehmke

I, for one, have never received a health insurance check from my health insurance companies, you know, and that happens for a reason. It’s because there’s a services performed by a doctor, and that doctor needs to be paid and insurance. The law is set up to protect that doctor’s payments under the assignment of benefits. And that’s kind of where the concept of the AOB in this industry for us kind of came from was the medical side.

Josh Ehmke

Right. And so, the fact that they that some states carve out this post loss assignment provision and their, legislation against restoration contractors specifically while still allowing it in the medical space makes zero sense to me. It really doesn’t. I mean, homes are a consumer’s biggest asset most of the time in this country.

Josh Ehmke

And without that assignment of benefits, which is the contractors best guarantee to get payment for the work that they do on a covered claim, you know, they’re only, Their real other recourse is to go and file a lien on the home, which is now you’re putting that consumer in a way worse position, because oftentimes these consumers don’t know what to do with the insurance check.

Josh Ehmke

You know, they don’t know what where it goes, what it’s for. And so they’ll spend it to, you know, just yesterday we had one come through where the where I found, there was a case I was working on where the homeowner got the check and they didn’t know. They thought it was theirs. Right. They thought that the contract had already been paid by the insurance company because of the contract.

Josh Ehmke

And so when they got the check, they were 100% convinced that was their money, that was their compensation for the loss that they went through. And it was to help them put their life back together. And we kind of had to educate the homeowner and be like, hey, look, that’s actually not your check that was actually supposed to go to this contractor.

Josh Ehmke

Here’s the paperwork from the insurance company that says that. But it’s, it that happens every day because most homeowners don’t have a water loss, like regularly. Most of times it’s their first one and probably the only one they’ll ever have, you know? And so they don’t they don’t know the rules. But, it’s interesting to see that.

Josh Ehmke

So that was my quick disclaimer and rant on the importance of assignments of benefits. But, yeah. And there’s different ways that OCS can step in and has stepped in to help the contractors, especially when the homeowners do get the checks like that. You touched on that. So, are there any other you talked briefly about the service call, but there’s always going to be line items like that, whether it’s a service call, it’s, you know, dry times, you know, one of the, one of the new themes that I’m hearing in the industry right now is, you know, even with the preferred vendors that they’re only allowed

Josh Ehmke

to dry a structure down to like 60%, and that the carrier will not pay for anything beyond that once they reach that benchmark of 60%. The carriers like done.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I mean, that argument’s just going to hold no water, no. but yet they’re doing it talks about the dry standard. And what’s required in the dry standard. So wild. That that’s the kind of stuff that’s happening.

Josh Ehmke

You’re right. But that is, that’s the stuff that will always happen. Right. Yes. As these types of things. But, any other line items, Jeremy, come to your, your mind on No, I mean, I think that I think that this will be a thing that we’ll deal with forever. Today it’s this tomorrow its that. Yeah. I think you’re right.

Josh Ehmke

It’s easy to harp on a couple, but you’re right. Today those are the ones. And tomorrow will be something else. And the good thing is, you know, like we’ve talked about so many times, is OCS based on, on, the sheer volume of claims that we process, we’re able to recognize those trends a lot faster.

Josh Ehmke

How to counteract those trends and how to deal with them. We had previously talked about some of the benefits that OCS can provide to a contractor, you know, when they, when they sign up with us to do their billing, which is talking about their, their back office stuff that’s over the AR you know, we previously talked about the expertise or at least the training that, OCS employees bring to that accounts receivable process, where oftentimes contractors are just finding anybody to come in and chase money without the ability to actually justify or understand why certain charges are on the invoice, to help the insurance company understand why that was done.

Josh Ehmke

Outside of that, Jeremy, what type of benefits, does a contractor gain on the AR staffing side of things?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I think staffing and again in the state of the industry, we, we see this regularly employee’s staffing attrition, turnover like this is one thing that everybody deals with. And obviously for contractors it’s the majority probably on the field side.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Right. And technicians and staffing and hiring. For us, obviously we deal with the same thing. But what we’ve been able to do is just be really good and efficient at training and developing. Right. Because again, it’s our core business. Right. And so, I can imagine when the back office staff is having constant turnover and attrition, they’re dealing with that.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And then they have to onboard somebody new. They have to train them in that very nuanced part of their business. And then six months later or a year later, that person’s gone and they got to do it again, right? And they got to do it again, and they got to do it again. And frankly, then one of the things, too, is like when contractors have big months, small months, big weeks, small weeks, one additional person is not always just like the answer, right?

Jeremy Traasdahl

They can’t just hire. So one person’s overwhelmed. And then what happens then is they’re overwhelmed. They’re unhappy. They leave. Right. And so this is one of those things that I think frankly, going into this business, starting OCS, I didn’t think was such a value add. Yeah to contractors. But we have the ability to fluctuate in big numbers. Right.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Because we have a lot of contractors and a lot of claims. And so therefore we have the ability to say, hey, one contractor doubles next month. We can absorb that quickly, right? Because we have the capacity to do that. If that contractor doubled and had their own internal back office, it’s just a heavy lift. They could pull it off for sure, but maybe not at the cost of 1 or 2 of their employees because they’re overworked.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Right. And so staffing, I think it continues to be a thing training and developing a new employee in terms of the back office is hard to do because, again, it’s a nuanced part of their business

Josh Ehmke

giving that training the time necessary to actually get the benefit out of the training you’re seeking. It’s not just a couple hour training and you’re done.

Josh Ehmke

It’s a constant handholding process to help educate, train and get that employee to the position to be able to do their job.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel because that employee that’s right is not going to be there forever. You know, oftentimes because it’s a hard job, negotiating with adjusters is a hard job. It’s not always super fun.

Jeremy Traasdahl

You know, you’re just tracking money, you’re negotiating the invoices, and then you’re tracking that maybe to a homeowner that could or couldn’t be happy, you know, and it’s just like it’s never a fun job. And so like, right. I think that just I mean, you look at turnover in general, but like contact centers have high turnover. That’s call centers right.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Adjusters are high turnover positions. Right. That makes billing back office staff for contractors a high turnover position as well because it’s probably a hybrid between those two things. Right. And so and it’s a challenge that we have here at OCS is the turnover right. That’s our challenge. That’s our challenge we get to take that challenge on We’ve been efficient at making sure that we’ve been spearheading

Jeremy Traasdahl

Right. The onboarding process, the training process to make sure that we are, again, absorbing that challenge easier than a contractor would be able to

Josh Ehmke

because we’re not worried about training technicians to go out in the field and do the job. That’s right. We’re training one job. So we train employees to do this. That’s our that’s what our focus is.

Josh Ehmke

So I, I’m glad you brought that up. I think that’s a strong benefit to OCS like you said, that we didn’t quite anticipate, from the beginning that, the contractors have. So, yeah, with that man, I, I don’t think we have much else to talk about on that subject today. I’ll go ahead and wrap it up.

Josh Ehmke

You know, again, if you want to contact us, please do. We’d love to hear from you. Love to hear your feedback. Specific pain points. Maybe even, to see what you guys are dealing with. And, and love to chat through some of that stuff with you guys, but, oneclaimsolution.com. Check us out. Contact us.

Josh Ehmke

Love to hear from you guys.