Insights with Florida’s Premier Hurricane Claims Lawyer: Daniel Tighe

Mission Control Podcast

In today's episode, Mike is joined by guest Daniel Tighe. With hundreds of millions recovered and over a decade of Florida Property Damage Claim experience, Daniel's firm (Tighe PA) is Florida's leader in claims management in response to Hurricanes. They talk about how Daniel got started in the industry and go on to give insights into the ways insurance companies have changed in recent years, exposing fraud and much more.

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Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:00.666) Welcome back another episode of the Mission Control Podcast. I'm your host Mike Stearns. This episode is proudly sponsored by you guessed it, Ascend, Digital Agency, and the team at Roofer. If you need instant roof quotes, clean and pristine proposals, which will give your prospects no choice but to buy from you. Make sure you hit up the team at Roofer. There's going to be a description with a link and click it. Let them know I sent you and you'll be happy you did. We have a very special guest today. Hello, Daniel Ty. How are you?

Dan Tighe (00:30.51) Hey, I'm great, Michael, how are you?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:32.794) I'm doing very well. Thank you for coming on the show. We're very grateful for your presence.

Dan Tighe (00:39.47) Yeah, absolutely, it's a pleasure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:41.305) Yeah, so you're down in Florida, yeah?

Dan Tighe (00:45.646) Yep, and it's starting to get hot. We got the summer weather kicking in. Also means hurricane season getting in the swing here.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:52.923) Yeah, what is it like 100 degrees there right now?

Dan Tighe (00:57.038) It feels like probably 105 to 110 and it's not going to let up for a couple months.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:02.555) That sounds fucking terrible. Once it gets past 85, I become like a toddler that needs a nap. Very frustrated, irritated, and it's not for me. So I love it for you, and hopefully everyone else that's enduring that heat is embracing it with open arms. It's just not for me. But then again, you guys don't have the three degree weather with a foot of snow, so I'm sure that's not for you. It all works out.

Dan Tighe (01:28.91) Yeah, that's the old joke is you're not stuck scooping, shoveling sunshine down here, you know?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:35.292) Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm. So hurricane season's upon us. So you work with a lot of contractors. I work with a lot of contractors. And we love contractors. Thank you all for tuning in. How did that start?

Dan Tighe (01:50.286) Yeah, great question. So probably unlike, you know, other lawyers who got in this field, I kind of discovered it in an interesting way. So I went to undergraduate my master's in business at a small school called Rollins College. And my, you know, from there I went on to UF Law, I went to New York. It was practicing law up there between Florida and New York doing some different stuff. And I connected with my undergraduate roommate who's still a big figure in the industry, Mike Weckerly. Shout out with C.

CSS, Contractor Supplement Solutions, good guy. But you know, I was just catching up with him. Hey Mike, how's it going? You know, great, I'm in roofing. okay, roofing, good, how's it going? Great, sold six roofs this week. Bro, no one's selling six roofs in a week. You must be doing restoration. And sure enough, he's like, yeah, we're doing restoration. We had a hail storm and I'm like, whoa, hail in Florida. He's like, yup, hail and wind and damaging these shingle roofs. And...

I just said, hey man, how can I help? I'm a lawyer and he says, well, I don't really know. I said, well, what do you do with your denied claims? And he goes, damn, they're denied. What can I do? They're not gonna pay them. And I'm like, bro, I sue insurance companies for a living. Let me try one. And that was probably a...

little over a decade or maybe more ago. And sure enough, you know, I laugh about it and obviously using a little artistic liberty. I had Mike in one ear, the adjuster in the other. I didn't know anything about roofing, anything about contracting. You know, I knew contracts well enough. So he's telling me, you got to argue this, you got to argue that. So I'm working this claim. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, had the claim paid in full, had my attorney's fees paid separately in addition to the underlying claim value. And he did the roof. So it was like everyone was happy. And I was

I was like, Mike, this is awesome. Like love helping people love being able to work with people that I like and respect and my friends. How many guys you work with? I work with 40 guys. Great. I'm throwing a happy hour. Let's go, you know, let's see what we can do. Let's see how we can, you know, help more people. So that was the, the humble beginnings and, you know, started out doing a lot of small shingle roofs in central Florida. And through the years was able to build the practice up and, you know, kind of level up in sophistication and my understanding and the value I could.

Dan Tighe (04:03.488) bring to my valued contractor network and partners and then also to handling larger losses, more complicated stuff. It's been a lot of fun along the way.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:17.636) Love that. So somewhat serendipitous in the beginning, and it turned out to be one of those rare deals where everybody wins and everyone's happy. And look at us now, thriving. You touched on something there that I think is really important. And there's some parallels between what you did and I think what a lot of contractors should do. And some do, some don't, but you tried something different.

Dan Tighe (04:28.622) That's it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:40.701) just by virtue of having conversations with somebody you knew, right? Drove in, tested the waters, worked really well. And then the next step that you took was like, all right, I'm having a happy hour, right? So we're doing like a networking event to see how many more people we could help. And I think the parallel is like when...

Roofing contractors have the they have the ability to align with adjacent verticals within their market, right? So whether it's a drywall guy, a landscape guy, HVAC guy, like you guys are all selling the same customer and you can form alliances, refer people back and forth to one another if you guys have people you trust within your network. So kudos to you to setting up that networking event, because as you know, it can be very powerful, but often underestimated from what I see.

Dan Tighe (05:25.71) Yeah, I appreciate that. And what I look at is part of your marketing mix, right? And that's something I'm sure you guys at Ascend are, you know, very adept at helping people build out. You know, you don't want one channel. You don't want a feast or famine based on, you know, maybe a storm work or whatever, whatever it may be. You know, that's so, you know, certainly love that. But also too is finding like -minded people. And then the way you phrased it was people we can help.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (05:40.443) Mm -hmm.

Dan Tighe (05:51.054) And I love that, right? Because that's the mission. You know, at some point you've done, you know, your successor contract, you've done hundreds of thousands of shingle roofs. What's driving you on the next shingle roof, right? It's not, you know, maybe it's a partially love of the craft or, you know, but at that point, the money's marginal. You know, really you have to care deeply about what you're doing. You have to keep in mind that we're literally protecting people's homes. We're literally, the work I do, and I talk to my, you know, my lawyers, my staff, you know, we're putting people's, you know, roofs,

over their head, man. This is important, significant work with real true meaning. And that means that even those smaller claims or smaller clients or the annoying client who calls every day. Well, listen, what's the mission? The mission is to provide awesome service, to provide top in class legal work, but also awesome service, right? And help put them back in their home. So this is, you know, we take the work series and I think keeping the focus on the mission.

is that North Star to make sure you're making the right decisions trickling down all the way through your organization.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (06:56.988) Preach brother preach. I love that.

Dan Tighe (06:59.822) Thank you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:00.252) I listen, I am I tell my team, I tell my prospects, I tell my current customers all the time. Like we strive for a couple of things. And at the forefront of what we aspire to do is not only provide the best results, but provide the best experience. If I go to a steakhouse, you can give me the best steak that I've ever had. But if I'm waiting 15 minutes for another refill on my water and everything is just lagging behind and the waitress feel makes me feel as for the waitstaff rather 2024 waitstaff, I'm sorry, makes me feel as if I'm doing them a favor by paying

patronizing their business, right? The experience is shit. I'm not going to go back there regardless of how good the steak was. So I tried to look at it through that lens.

Dan Tighe (07:37.038) 100%. I love that analogy.

Love that analogy and I've used that before countless times because it is, it's true. Like you can have that sizzling steak come out just perfect, medium rare, a little char, you know exactly how you like it. But if you get seated by the kitchen and the wait staff doesn't pay attention, you're going to have a terrible experience. Not only are you not going to send your friends there, you're not going back. And then if it gets to the point, you may have people leaving bad reviews and that sort of stuff. But I guarantee a steakhouse that's run by a mission driven owner who says,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:49.052) Mm.

Dan Tighe (08:09.28) not serving stakes, I'm providing incredible bonding experiences for the people that were fortunate enough that take their time out of their day and spend their hard -earned money here. That guy's not going to have that experience in his business.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (08:23.679) That's an absolute fact. And I want to touch on something else you said. You said a marketing mix, right? Like we don't want to have dependency on one acquired lead source or marketing channel. And I couldn't agree more. And I always tell people like, hey, I'm a fat kid at heart. And I look at different lead sources and marketing channels as like cookie jars, right? And, you know, I want to pull as many cookies out of every cookie jar that I can, right? Be diversified. Don't be entirely relying on one. There's also like a fine line of like spreading yourself too thin, especially when you're doing like paid advertising.

So in those instances, like it's important to have clean data acknowledge what's working, what's not, where your leads are coming from and then making this database decisions, you know, premised off of those guidelines. So that's my piece. Yeah, man. Now I want a fucking steak. A nice ribeye.

Dan Tighe (09:10.058) You're the actor.

You're the expert on that. So, you know, obviously, deferring to you, but I do love, you know, what you're saying is data driven, right? And I've been down the road with, you know, countless marketing agencies really before I got in a, you know, this kind of roofing niche, and storm restoration niche, I should say. and it was always, you know, there was never data. It was like, yeah, it's looks like it's going well or, you know, and I'm a data driven guy and I don't know how you met, how you manage something if you can't measure it. Right. And that's so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:15.966) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (09:42.432) So I appreciate the approach that you take with that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:45.886) Yeah, some of the stuff is qualitative, but it should be more quantitative than qualitative, especially if you're doing digital advertising. Not everything is attributable to say, hey, this person started here, and then seven clicks later they finish here. But for the most part, you can do a pretty good job on using data to deduce what's happening, attributing efficacy of different marketing channels and what's going on. So that's why I got into digital marketing. I love the idea that, hey, we can prove value. It's hard to argue with numbers. So yeah.

Hmm. So you started with in central Florida, mainly Shingle Roost, but you've evolved into you're more of like a high end white glove service for large loss. Is that accurate?

Dan Tighe (10:29.422) Yeah, so there was kind of an intermediate step there too. You know, I had kind of built this reputation here in Florida and I really, you know, what I do is I'm looking for relationships. I always have been, I'm the guy who answers his phone. You know, I lead the firm, but I'm not too big to text someone, call somebody. If a client's having an issue, even though, you know, one of our associate lawyers is handling, I'll pick up the phone and make them feel good. Like totally, you know, like that's, to me, that's just running a good business, but also driven by,

you know, my values, who I am as a person, I found a good fit here, where I'm working with people I like, trust and respect, and I don't mind making the extra call. So what happened was I was working in central Florida, running a great practice, having a lot of fun, meeting a lot of great people.

And then we started getting hurricanes. We didn't have a hurricane for all, for about a decade here in Florida, major hurricane. So, you know, there wasn't a ton of action down here. Sure enough, 2016 we had hurricane Matthew, 2017 was the epic hurricane Irma, which was a major hurricane swept through Naples, Orlando, you know, and really cause a lot of damage over a huge swath of the state. And what happened was there, a lot of guys nationwide came down to work this door.

So what do you do if you're a contractor and you're coming down you don't know the claims game here in Florida Well, you call other guys who are contractors or you call your guy at ABC supply and say what are these guys doing? I was very fortunate because of the investment in time and learning that I took You know to kind of figure out this market that when people would ask that question to other Contractors or other people in the industry all of them would say you got to talk to Dan Ty you have to call them And of course I'd answer that phone man

you know, there were no off hours. Let me put it that way. And,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:17.628) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (12:19.118) You know, it was wild. I was driving around back and forth between I looked out now in Jupiter, Florida, but you know, Palm Beach, Florida, Naples and Orlando. It was like a three hour triangle and sometimes I do two turns a day for meetings and just try to arm guys with the right tools to know how to handle what they were allowed to handle themselves correctly and then let them know that when they do have those specific claims that they really shouldn't or can't handle that we're happy to help them out with that and take that on. So we really built a

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:29.468) Mmm.

Dan Tighe (12:49.024) a big reputation on commercial and then tile roofing became a specialty. I actually helped develop some of the better arguments that are now very effective and used industry wide. So just having that passion, again, going back to who we are, values, wanting to help people. If you're a lawyer who just checks in in the morning, checks out in the evening, you don't do that extra work, man. And I'm sure your listeners, if they work with lawyers, a lot of them don't answer the damn phone.

You know, so we're different and you know, that's kind of what's got us to this place where, you know, we still help some of the companies that we started with, with some of the smaller stuff, but we've now kind of got a network for some of that. And our focus really is like you identified really on the commercial or more sophisticated high -end homeowner who really needs that white glove service. We're not the lowest cost option. We're not trying to be the lowest cost option. If your, you know, guide to success in how you choose someone to help you with this.

problem is just how little you can try to pay them. First of all you're not going to get good results and second of all you're very much not a fit for me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:54.66) Yeah. When did you realize that?

Dan Tighe (13:58.83) And that may have some crossover to your business, right? If they're just looking to pay the cheapest guy and that's how they determine success is finding the cheapest provider, does that usually work out well for them?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:13.307) No it doesn't and you know there's gonna be a lot to go back to here in a moment but you know I will have somebody that comes in with a

with a website that was built by another company and was built years ago. And it's just, foundationally, if we're doing SEO, there are things that need to be intact and developed at the ground level to give you the best chance for long -term success. So people oftentimes, they're not too happy when I tell them, like, well, we would only do it if we built you a site, because a site's expensive, which I understand. But again, you're making an investment into somebody that's going to do things the right way for the long -term strategy, right? And it's, you know, I went to

When we've been asked, like, hey, can you do SEO on our site or can you just revise our site? It's like, you know, I don't know if you've got a shingle roof that's 12 years old, maybe it's got a couple of years left, but there's a bunch of damage on it. Like, would you want it repaired? Would you want us just to do a layover so that those underlying issues are still there and eventually are going to make you have to re -rip everything off and put on a new roof? Or do you want us just to do the new roof, right? And we're just going to rip it off and do it right the first time. And if cost is...

If cost obstructs our ability to do that, like that's fine. It's not always the right time. How, when did you realize that? I know, because it took me a few years to realize this. And I think a lot of roofing contractors even kind of kind of struggle with this. Like when did you realize that like not every customer has to be your customer?

Dan Tighe (15:38.958) Yeah, it was a long and I'm not going to lie, somewhat painful journey for me at certain times because, you know, like I'm sure a lot of business people, you know, I could be considered guilty of trying to, you know, do too much and maybe not having the bandwidth, keeping up with it. The intentions are always good. I'm working 24 hours a day. We got the team firing, you know, as much as we can and all that. But still your ability to sell can sometimes out clip your ability to produce. Right. So.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:43.898) Hahaha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:49.242) Mm -hmm.

Dan Tighe (16:08.864) You know, I kind of learned that the hard way. I had a partnership that unfortunately didn't work out and we've moved on and rebuilt things a lot better kind of under my direct supervision to solve some of these problems, which has been huge pain, but huge blessing in disguise. And you know, when I rebuilt this platform, what I said was, I'm going to look first at results, of course, right? Because you're hiring a lawyer, you need top, you know, top, top legal work. That's going to be first. But second, we're looking to service. What is the service?

is that experience right? We use our steakhouse analogy. Okay we got great steaks and we got the chef cooking them up just right.

But how are they coming out? Are we getting people? We want to build a business where the experience is so good that we're building exponential growth in the markets that we want, that we choose. We don't want to be everything to everybody. We want to spend our advertising and marketing and business development efforts wisely where we have a good return. And what I mean by that is where we're working with the type of people we want to work with, not necessarily just ROI.

And, you know, so it was a little bit of a painful process. Worked it out and, you know, it is what it is. But, but I think when I had that chance almost to blank slate it, I said, what do I want to build? What's in my heart to build? I don't care. I run through walls, man. Like anyone who's working with me knows you call me any time of day. I'm texting with guys. My poor wife hates it, but she gets it. You know, you know, these are my guys, right? And I'm looking for a limited number of people who want to say Dan's my guy.

back and have a relationship, obviously, within what, you know, technically not permitted a direct referral, whatever, with the lawyer bar rules, but like a personal relationship, right? If you call me about something else, I'm going to give you my time and because I like and respect you. And so I kind of was able to, you know, clean slate, rebuild it back with the vision that I wanted. And I'll tell you, it's been awesome. You know, the call we get, we look forward to client calls now. We look forward to, you know, our, our valued contracting partners.

Dan Tighe (18:14.608) reaching out to us because we know their clients are happy and they're happy. It's not like, no, what's the nightmare now?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (18:18.874) Right. Yeah, I love that. I think sometimes...

The way that the roofing industry promotes it, there's a lot of coaches, a lot of people screaming from the rooftops, work on the business, not in the business, right? And people become obsessed with working on it, not in it. And I think that kind of clashes with the personal touch, right? As you move closer to working on and not in the business, I think people are less likely to engage in those things directly, or even their lower level employees, which is fine, but I too am of the same mindset where, you know, we've got systems, we've got processes, we have a team, and when we onboard a class,

and like after they talk to me for the initial consultation, they go to Charlie and then they work with the team from there. But I'm always like, you know, don't hesitate to reach out to me. Like you have my phone number. I work all the time. I'm sick. I love my sickness. My medicine is working. It's OK. Yeah, for sure. You know, so like I always implore people like.

Dan Tighe (19:12.874) Yes. Yes. Yes.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:17.53) Even exactly. I'm like, I don't work at the micro level of your campaign every single day. Like Charlie, Ashley, Dan, like that team does. But like if you have specific questions that you want to talk to me about, I mean, it's nothing for me to get up to speed, hop in and then have a discussion about it and just be like a true strategic partner. Because I think like that's what we want to deliver. I think that's what people deserve. And I think, you know, as far as like our competition, I think that's where they lack. So and ultimately, it makes me feel good at the end of the day. Right. When I've got to stare at this ugly

face in the mirror while I'm brushing my teeth and like are you happy with what you're doing? Are you doing the right thing? Right? That's our six core values. Do the right thing. Have you done the right thing? I can say yes and then go sleep like a baby. It's fine.

Dan Tighe (20:00.878) Yep.

No, I love that. And I mean, what you're talking about there is, you know, it's actually pretty similar to what we do is I'm working on the strategy, the big picture issues. You know, I'm working on the, you know, large important client relationship stuff. You know, if you're a follower of EOS, more of the visionary type role, you don't want me handling the day to day on your claim. I'm not the best suited lawyer to, you know, be all in on this one claim and get it to the finish line and research the new case law. You don't want me doing that.

You want me helping you at the intersection of business, law, service, you know, all these great things that I've been able to get good at and combining them to one thing where I'm truly special at that rather than, you know, and the nice thing is we have lawyers that are amazing.

at that one specific claim and pushing the adjusters and doing that, probably the same thing like, I'm not hiring you because I want you clicking the buttons on the keyboard. That doesn't make sense. And you know, it's funny, just, you know, sometimes contractors are like, wait, you're not my lawyer. I'm like, no, I am your lawyer. I'm not the lawyer for, you know, filing this motion on this claim. I know exactly how it works. I developed the strategy on how we do things. And then we have a team that's really

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:59.834) Alright.

Dan Tighe (21:19.92) dedicated, myopically focused on executing the strategies that we've put in place. So now that means, hey good news, you've got someone who's obsessed with it, they're waking up doing it, they're going to sleep doing it, and you've also got a guy who doesn't have his head in the daily grind who can help you work out better strategies, help you network, help you grow your business, help you build systems and processes that will take you to the next level.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:46.138) All right. Love it. Absolutely love it. I'm glad we're having this conversation today.

Dan Tighe (21:51.598) You tell.

Yeah, you can tell I'm a little passionate about this stuff. And, you know, I hope that shines through cause I love it, man. You know, there's people who say they haven't worked a day in their life. Like even the tough days when, you know, it seems like nothing's going right. You're getting some, unfortunately, some, you know, client problem, this, that, the other thing, like, you know, at the end of the day, I'm smiling. Like that makes you feel alive, you know, solve the problems, you know, kick the doors in. I got a good buddy of mine in the industry. We joke. It's like, you know, like we're shovel guys, right? Like, you know, shit, we got some.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:55.674) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (22:23.632) trouble. All right, where am I showing up and I'm bringing a shovel, bro. Like, let's get to work. You know, it is what it is, man. I don't know what the problem is, but if you call me, I'm there with a shovel. Let's fix it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:26.682) Bye.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:34.234) Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I...

years back I got licensed to do real estate, not for anything other than like look for investment opportunities on the MLS and things like that. And I sold a few houses where it was just like, hey, you just got to list it, do the paperwork and then negotiate, which like negotiating super fun doesn't take much time. But I got to tell you, even just having to do like the disclosures, like the lead paint disclosure, then the COVID disclosure, the buyer agreement, the seller, I mean, it got, I felt like every minute that I was doing real estate, I was fucking working 20. Right. And I don't feel that in what I do.

I could have a 15 -hour day and don't get me wrong, sometimes I'm exhausted, but I could work two hours in real estate and it would feel way worse than working 15 hours on what I do every single day. I agree. Find something you love to do.

Dan Tighe (23:19.662) Yep. Well, and I'm sure you've, yeah, I'm sure you've earned that privilege too, right? When you started up, you didn't just say, hey, I'm LFA and I have this great staff. Like you got to build it, right? You got to, you know, and I said.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:33.658) We had four people.

Dan Tighe (23:35.662) You got to take a bite of the shit sandwich first, you know, like, and that it is what it is. And likewise, like, you know, that was my background was doing, you know, wearing a lot of hats, doing everything I've done, you know, state court trials, federal trials. You know, I joke now, I'm like, if you see me in a courtroom, must mean I'm a defendant, man. I shouldn't be in that courtroom.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:37.882) Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:54.586) That's so funny.

Yeah. And you know what it did and I think that a lot of the audience that's going to listen to this, they can relate with this. It's like, OK, so you start up a roofing company, right? And you're doing everything. You're doing sales, you're doing marketing, you're doing supplementing, if you're doing storms, you're meeting with adjusters, you're fighting the claims. You're doing all this managing the production, ordering materials. And it's like now what that allows you to do and while being baptized by fire, it allows you to understand those roles very intimately. Like being a roofer and running a roofing company are distinct.

different things, right? You have to, there's a change of mindset that has to take place if you're going to eventually be successful, especially at scale. And I think when people start hitting like a million and a half, like the one man band owner operas, they start to realize that really quickly. It's like, fuck, I got to find some people that I can trust to do things that need to happen. And because I've been, you know, manging on this shit sandwich for the last 12 months, I know exactly what needs to happen in order for me not to be force fed a shit sandwich next year, right? So it makes them like uniquely qualified to

Dan Tighe (24:27.47) huge.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (24:56.348) to not only bring people in, but train them specific to their market and what their challenges are within dealing with their customer experience to make sure that what's duplicatable, I guess, is a process that is everything but what they don't want to happen.

Dan Tighe (25:13.454) Yeah. I mean, that makes all the sense in the world. And again, we, we like the EOS, you know, traction, Gina Wickman, kind of training. We're not strict adherence to it, but you know, we've built out our own style, our own processes. And, that's kind of, like you said, that's probably the toughest jump is from the guy doing everything himself to getting a couple, you know, employees or team members, whatever that are, because then you have to think you have to stop and you can't just do, you have to build processes that are repeatable.

and scalable and that takes a little work. It takes some deep thought. Also, if you're that one man band and you're getting successful, now the phone's ringing and you got to make this and then on top of that you got to do all this stuff because and we see the same thing with law firms. There's a lot of great lawyers out there who are one man show and as long as you don't give them more than you know eight claims, they're going to do a great job.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:47.514) little work.

Dan Tighe (26:05.486) Most likely, whatever, right? They may not have other resources, whatever, not for the purpose of this discussion, but like they'll be fine until they're not. And once they're not, they're really not fine, you know? And on the other end of that too, and just because we're getting into it, you know, there's kind of, for me, there's kind of a sweet spot and it may be similar to contract and maybe similar to marketing agencies. Once you get too big, you also don't give a shit.

You know, it seems that way. The experience falters, right? Because the guy with the big name who's been doing it forever, he's on the door. That guy's out sailing, you know, doing whatever the hell he's doing. And he's not paying attention to shit. And, you know, he's got some other three layers of management who are then saying, here's the experience you want. So there's, I believe just in my experience, there's probably a sweet spot where, you know, you got a solo practitioner probably doesn't have the resources you need. If they haven't been successful, they don't have the resources. And then if you see some,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:38.169) Right.

Dan Tighe (26:57.776) organization scale too big, you're just a number. The relationship, it's more transactional, you know, so it's interesting, like you said, watching guys scale from kind of that one man band. And probably it helps having a lot of the pressure taken off by working with partners like you who can produce leads so that they can at least not deal with that portion, you know, going out networking or whatever they're doing, banging doors. They can at least outsource that and then buy some time back to work on the other stuff.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:27.962) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that I agree with your point, like with scale. A lot of the times you compromise the quality of the experience because there's there's more of a disconnect, right? And there's like small issues become disproportionately more burdensome as you grow. Right. And a lot of the times it's a reflection of a few things. It's either you lack systems and processes. You haven't evolved like your systems and processes as you continue to grow, because, you know, what works for you process wise at a million is going to look different.

than at seven million, right? And then the other side of this, like people, you know, they have these things, they have the boxes checked, like this is our SOP for this, this, this, I've got these seven fucking binders, but nobody managing, actively managing the staff, holding them accountable to those processes, training and developing those people within those processes. And at that point, what the fuck are we doing here? Right?

Dan Tighe (28:19.95) Yeah, and then add to that recruiting, hiring, and training.

You know, not just the managing, getting the right butts in the right seats and you know, how do you even go about hiring and all that? And again, I've been through all of it. So I laugh coming out the other end now. And now we've got processes to build processes. You know, but it's, you know, but again, and you and I seem to be similar in this vein. Like I like working. I'm not going to go sit on the beach for, you know, five days like that, which would be terrible for me. I like building. I like helping people. So like I can look back and laugh at those 15 hour days.

and say, hey, wasn't that fun? You know, at the time it was tough, but wasn't that fun?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:01.37) Yeah, I mean, it's to your point about sitting five days on the beach, it's so funny. Like even if I, based on my schedule, if I've got a day where I don't have much going on, like in theory, I get excited in the moment. man, I can't wait till Thursday. I'm light Thursday. I've got one meeting, don't got much to do. Like everything's caught up and then Thursday comes. I'm like, I gotta fucking get something done. Like I feel, I feel useless if I'm not getting like.

I'm an anxious person and my cure to anxiety isn't eating benzodiazepine, it's like going out and being productive, getting a workout in, doing things for work, accomplishing shit. That brings me a level of satisfaction that nothing else can. It's fucked up.

Dan Tighe (29:41.39) Yeah, I know what you're talking about and I definitely feel a similar way.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:45.915) I envy the people that can sit there for two days and just enjoy themselves. I just can't. I haven't figured out how. Told my therapist, like, if I have a slice in life, I play my slice. I've never fixed the mechanics, right? I just obsess over different things, right? And it's like work, working out, family. But work's a big part of that, because it makes me feel really good being productive, whatever. And he's like, you should work on that. I'm like, that's why I'm paying you the big bucks.

Dan Tighe (30:09.102) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (30:13.006) I think that's part of the human condition too is, you know, like, and what I, I don't purport to know anything about the bigger picture, unfortunately. I wish I could share that with you, but I think humans, you know, like we're builders by nature. You look at every civilization, it's always about building, improving, and then that aligns, I feel good when I'm doing it. So, you know, this is probably something towards the direction I need to be moving, you know, and I, like you, I get a good feeling out of it.

the outcomes are good. The more work you put in, the better outcomes you're having as well.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:48.187) Absolutely, love that. So what are some of the challenges that you're seeing that roofers are facing right now as it relates to the things that you guys are doing for them with large loss?

Dan Tighe (31:01.262) Yeah, sure. So obviously we've had a lot of changes here in Florida over the past couple of years. Insurance crisis and legislative sessions have been eroding rights of policyholders, which makes it very difficult to get a full and fair recovery, which then trickles down to the roofing contractors or general contractors who are traditionally restoration based working these storms. It used to be that these homeowners and policy owners were getting a very fair shake. Right. And if they weren't,

There were some tools that I had as an attorney where we could level the playing field against that big bad insurance company. Unfortunately, a lot of that has been eroded and it really, I use the word unfortunate, it probably goes beyond that to fraudulent. You see the work that Doug Quinn and his team at the American Policy Holder Association are doing to uncover systemic corruption at the very least and fraud, probably a more accurate term between regulators, legislators.

and insurance company leadership, but they've eroded a ton of rights. So getting back to how that works with roofing contractors and restoration contractors is this business, they don't make their money when they knock on your door. They don't make their money when the claims process is going on. They only make their money when they build the roof and collect the check. So it went from a situation where an insured would have a valid insurance claim, right? So covered peril in the right...

policy period and damage, we'd get them paid out in full or darn near close to it. And the contractor would be very happy because the homeowner or policy owner's happy and they could pay the contractor with just their deductible or their deductible, a little bit of contribution capital and get their job done. And that's how the contractor makes money. What we saw here in Florida was when they stripped away a lot of those rights, these contractors no longer had the ability to kind of sell based on restoration work.

except in the strongest best cases where they would hope that the insurance company would do the right thing, which is unfortunately a somewhat smaller proportion of the time, certainly less than they should. So it's had a very big chilling effect on the restoration industry, which of course negatively impacts roofing contractors, general contractors, restoration contractors, but also homeowners. At the end of the day, I'm serving...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (33:25.177) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (33:27.918) the people of Florida. The roofers are serving the people of Florida. People are vilifying contractors because it's an easy target. They're vilifying lawyers because I get it. I don't even want to hire a lawyer unless I have to and I am a lawyer. So another somewhat easy target as opposed to the good hands of the good neighbor or the multi -billion dollar marketing budgets from these insurance companies who also have the legislature, you know, I don't want to say in their pocket, but certainly very influential.

based on how fundraising goes in politics. So it's kind of been a perfect storm down here. What I'm kind of advising people as best I can is, you know, it's more important now than ever to make sure that you're doing things the right way. You're going to be watched, right? You've got to make sure you're, you know, crossing your T's, dotting your I's. You're doing things the right way. You're not saying things that are illegal to say now. You're not giving contracts out that are viable.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (33:58.233) Sure.

Dan Tighe (34:27.776) the law that carry with it penalties, you can't just do that anymore. Whereas for decades, people got away with just running kind of like a, you know, run and gun style of business. Now we need to tighten up a little bit. You know, so that's, that's been some of the bigger changes, which ties into some of the work that I'm most excited about is we actually acquired a law firm that is licensed in a number of other southeastern states, and we're going to expand our presence. We're going to expand our

We should have Colorado and Texas, then Minnesota and Arizona set up hopefully this year, but we want to do it right. And again, looking at relationships where we have good people that we like, trust and respect with a relationship of familiarity and trust where we can advise what to do, what not to do with people who actually listen. They don't just try to do what they think is going to make them the most money in the short term. That's unfortunately kind of a common scenario.

in roofing and restoration.

And then just building out these processes, which is what I enjoy best. And I think one of my biggest strengths is, you know, building them, building the processes, literally saying, Hey, here's your claim process after 14 days, send a letter like this after, you know, seven days after this, send a tickle letter, you know, pull the adjuster license information, all these different things. And I can set the processes up and almost hand it off to the guys that we like and trust who we want to work with. And then they can take off, pair up with someone like you to feed the leads in one end.

They've already got the process and system, run it with accountability, and boom, man, you're off to the races. So I'm really excited about doing more of that work. That's what I'm most passionate about. And that's, again, kind of based on some of my experiences here in Florida, some of the market changes, some of the business relationships I have changed. And that's really kind of pushed me to launch this new model, which we are just so excited about.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (36:29.179) Yeah, I can feel the excitement. I absolutely love that. So.

Dan Tighe (36:32.142) You're sorry, that was a lot.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (36:34.747) No, it's fine, but I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. I've seen the narrative that, you know, roofers have done this to themselves over the years, putting in fraudulent claims, manufacturing damage, all these different things have led us to the point where the insurance companies are tightening up for these reasons, right? How big of a role have these actors played, do you feel, in policy change versus the other side of it, which is, you know, potentially fraud, corruption, et cetera?

Dan Tighe (37:01.774) Yeah, I mean, I know specific to Florida best. Obviously, that's my market. And first of all, when you say devil's advocate, it's to the insurance company. It's not to me because I agree with you, brother. So, you know, so we're on we're on the same team, right? So, you know, a lot was made about fraudulent actors, bad actors. And the worst part is they do exist and they're very public. Some of the biggest companies.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (37:10.406) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (37:25.55) you know, we're taking money from lawyers per claim and they would, they would literally sign up anyone. They mislead little old ladies. Like it was happening, right? My argument is the insurance companies were in the best position to see who was doing it and to turn that over and to prosecute it, right? That's what we do. If someone commits a crime such as fraud.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (37:43.865) Hmm.

Dan Tighe (37:48.59) It's a crime. We already have laws that prosecute bad actors committing fraud. Well, why didn't they do that? Right. Well, the reason they didn't do it is, number one, they're disjointed and everyone thinks these insurance companies are a lot more organized than they are. Maybe some of the big state farms and some of them are very more sophisticated. In Florida, there's a lot of what are called takeout companies and beyond the depth of the time we have here for this podcast. But these were groups of businessmen who get books of business from citizens.

or just do some networking and marketing. These were not sophisticated insurance entities. They were buying policies, buying reinsurance on them. And they got caught with their, you know, the little joke is when the tide goes out, you can see who's swimming naked. Like I mentioned earlier, these.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (38:34.553) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (38:36.43) In Florida, we didn't have a hurricane, a major hurricane for about a decade, right? So these insurance companies were just getting fat and happy. They were racing to the bottom in terms of what they're charging for premiums because they wanted more of this risk. Right. So then when the storms inevitably started, this is Florida, man, we're going to have hurricanes. When it inevitably started turning, right, the luck ran out. These people were not positioned, these companies were not positioned properly. They had not properly underwritten their risk, which is the

is the fundamental of what insurance is, risk pooling. So, you know, what they did was they looked for easy scapegoats. So getting to the question you asked directly, right? Is it better if I'm Joe Megabucks on my second yacht in the Florida Keys to say, you know what, I fucked up.

Is it better for that guy to do that or say, we're losing money because of fraud. And it's all these low life roofing guys. Look at them. They're jerks. They're this, they're that. You know, like it's just such an easier thing for them to do. There was no accountability. Heritage, a big insurance company here in Florida, just got fined $1 million. You know how much $1 million means to them? The CEO made 20 last year.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:36.378) Convenient scapegoat. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:49.018) Probably not much of them.

Dan Tighe (39:52.462) Right? You know, like it's unbelievable how little oversight there is. So I think it was a convenient scapegoat. And the worst thing is this was the Florida play. This was the Florida program. If you are a restoration contractor listening to this podcast, it's coming.

They figured out the playbook on how to further leverage their money, right? They risk pool, they invest it, right? And if you haven't watched it and you're in this industry, Warren Buffett talks about why he bought Geico and puts it succinctly and perfectly, just like he has a knack for doing, of how much money they make investing other people's money.

You know, the float, it doesn't, it's not even their money. Most of us, a lot of it should have been paid out, but they're still investing it. So, you know, if you, if you're in a different state, you're going to start seeing the Florida model roll out to your state. And of course I'm pretty active as you are in social media and some of these groups, I see the common complaints against, you know, like, it's in, you know, everyone in, you know, Minnesota, no one can get an, XYZ insurance company claim paid. They've turned off the spigot. And then the next month it's some other.

other company and you know and what I try to keep in mind and what I wish you know we as a community could keep more you know further in mind would be that ultimately it's the policyholders that are getting screwed it's not us you know it hurts our business model it's not good for us either but ultimately this is someone who's paid insurance so that they didn't have to save money to repair their property in the case of a catastrophic event or maybe you know whatever everyday loss you know and they're the

the ones who now have to figure out how to finance it. And, you know, we're still, roofers still going to build roofs, man. Lawyers still, you know, there's still going to be denied claims, coverage disputes. People are still going to need lawyers. We just have to charge more, right? You know, when we lose some leverage with attorney's fee shifting and, you know, we have to spend more money underwriting cases. So it changes the model, but ultimately it doesn't affect my life and lifestyle that badly. The people that really hurts are the people who are counting on those proceeds to be able to put their life back together.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (42:00.25) Yeah, it's got to be a really tough position to be in as a homeowner, I'd imagine.

Dan Tighe (42:06.222) Yeah, we're getting calls, you know, we get calls weekly, you know, people and they say, well, if we're using this money to pay you, how do we get a roof put together? And, you know, they're right. It's not fair. The law in Florida used to be that you'd get attorney's fees in addition to your underlying claim to offset the cost of having to hire a professional. They took that right away. And in states where that still exists, they're coming for it. In states where AOBs exist, they're coming for it. In states where bad faith exists, they're trying to make it, you know, more stringent.

to prove bad faith. We just saw too, there's now a model public adjusting bill that they're trying to introduce the insurance company lobby as the anti policyholder, anti.

public adjuster and anti restoration lobbies, right? Funded by the insurance company is trying to push nationwide adopted adoption of a new bill that, you know, hard caps fees for public adjusters that has all these other stringent requirements. So, you know, it's not all doom and gloom, right? If you're a restoration contractor, it's still one of the greatest recession proof, great business, you know, good margins when done well, you're helping people still a great business, just, you know,

It's just getting eroded as probably a lot of businesses are these days.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (43:26.428) Yeah, I hear that. What's one piece of advice you'd give to a roofing contractor that operates on this model?

Dan Tighe (43:34.446) Yeah, I mean, I think the best advice I would give is is kind of just general business advice, right? It's not even necessarily claims. It's just realize that things are fluid, right? Just because you're running this business and you're hitting these revenues, you know, this year doesn't mean the business model isn't changing, right? All of a sudden, supply houses are charging more. All of a sudden, the laws change and this, that. Also, you get a storm in your market. That's a good thing. So don't be static in your thinking. You know, build a team of people. Again, I'm big on relationships.

Relationship, you know, I'm I talk to guys all the time that I don't even work with, you know Maybe they only do smaller shingle stuff and I I just I'm not a good fit for them But I still talk to all the time. I'm happy to do that I know you're very generous with your time and kind of build a community of okay, you know Even if they're not using a sin, but they're doing something I'm sure you'd take a call if they said hey, you know, hey man, like our cost per click went through the roof You know, do you mind just chat with me a little bit about why that happens? You know that sort of stuff kind of

build a little community, realize that things are going to change. You know, nothing static, everything's fluid all the time every day. You know, so kind of look out to the future and then build that team that you can, you know, you know, get those shovel ready guys like, you know, shit, this market just collapsed for us. Boom, let's go man. Next market. Let's roll. You know, build that team of people that you're in the fight with.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (44:57.82) I love that. A fluidity mindset. It's a beautiful thing and very well put. What questions you got for me, bro?

Dan Tighe (45:06.062) Yeah, I would say, you know, kind of the same question to you is like, where, you know, we've had some nice conversations as lawyers, we have some restrictions on what we're able to say and how we're able to communicate things. We have to run advertisements through the bar. It's very difficult to do any sort of direct marketing. But if I was, you know, a roofer or a public adjuster,

My biggest question is, because guys ask me this stuff, what's like the first thing, obviously there's no silver bullet, you know, very obviously, what's the first thing that they should do?

Like where's the initial?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (45:44.092) We open up a new roofing company tomorrow.

Dan Tighe (45:47.918) Maybe, if I get good advice.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (45:50.365) So if that were, assuming that would be the case and we're opening up a brand new roofing company, the first thing that I would do would be to figure out like who I'm servicing. I would get my Google business profile set up.

claimed out to make sure that people can start to know about us, that we can post content on that Google business profile, we can get reviews for happy customers. And prior to that, I would assume that we've developed some sort of understanding, not only who our customers are, but how we're going to acquire customers in the beginning. So some companies will open up a roofing company and they have money from an old venture, they come in with some sort of budget as far as marketing and advertising. Other guys are like, hey, I'm a subcontractor all day, and at night I'm going to start running

my own leads that I'm going to generate or on weekends and things like that. So I guess depending on like what the context was as far as that's concerned. But I would certainly get a Google Business Profile up, fill out all that information, services, products offered, things like that. Google Local Services, that's the best thing to ever happen to contractors in my opinion. You get a fixed cost per lead. It's usually like 60 to 80 bucks for roof replacement leads.

And it's great because you set it up, you be thorough about it. They have like a little mini CRM where you can document if you booked a lead or if it's a disputed lead or what have you. They're pretty good with disputing. One piece of advice I'd give with local service ads is if you're going to be a Karen and dispute every lead that's not a roof replacement, they're probably less likely to position you towards the top. If every time they're giving you an opportunity, like I want my money back. There's a lot of people that will pay for that without that friction to Google. And Google makes a lot of money off of ads.

ads and it's a very under priced cost per lead. If you compare it to like the home advisor, Angie model or like even Google ads. If you can satiate your appetite for leads for your sales reps just with local services, just do that. Don't pay a marketing agency. Right. And then I would figure out a website and you know whether if we had no budget, I would do it on like a Duda or Wix. And what I would do is I would look at site structures from like marketing agencies that

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (47:58.609) get really well endorsed based on the work and the sites that they build. And I would kind of mimic their site structure and create content in a way similar to what they do so that I have an idea that I'm in the right place and on the right track versus creating a four page website, you know, with, you know, just a bunch of scattered content everywhere that nobody could ever find. Cause ultimately Google's going to read your website. They're going to crawl your website and they're going to, they want it to be intuitive. They want the user experience to be good because the better that is, the more people are going to come back and the more

more people come back, the more they can charge, you know, roofing contractors for their ad campaigns, right? Higher cost per click because we have more eyeballs. So think of it when you're building out a website, your site map or the collection of URLs is similar to like the index of the owner's manual in your truck, right? You have all these different categories or subcategories. It's very intuitive. It's alphabetically ordered. And then there's, there's, there's sub subheadings where it's like oil, oil pressure, right? Okay. Oil change. I need to know what kind of oil I need for my oil change. So you go to oil.

I know you'll change it's this page, this paragraph that's similar to how like your site map should be when you're building a website. It should be like residential roofing services. roof storm damage. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Roof repair, roof replacement, roof inspection. Right. So we make it very intuitive. And that's what I would do if I didn't have the budget to hire somebody else is I would find a company that has a good website and to kind of start to mimic the things they do and do it on a very, a lower level design capacity because it's going to be a drag and drop builder. So we're not going to have the flexibility from the design side.

but structurally, it's gonna be set up very well. Long -winded, but that's what I would do.

Dan Tighe (49:32.238) Yeah, that's, no, listen, that, and again, my wheels are turning a little bit. I'm joking, I'm not saying I'm a roofing company, but the Google My Business, I'd imagine that lends some credibility and then having the website. So that's not only just kind of marketing, but it's also, you know, if those homeowners, you knock the doors or you get introduced by a property manager, they come and they look for you online. It looks professional. I'm sure there's value there too, right?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (49:57.054) Yeah, well because, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna take a controversial take here, but homeowners don't trust you, roofers. They don't. And that's okay, because you, roofers, don't trust marketing agencies. I always say I'm uniquely qualified to empathize with you, because I know how it feels. So like your website is, what's that?

Dan Tighe (50:06.542) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (50:14.254) Well, fortunately everyone trusts lawyers, so I don't know what you're talking about.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (50:19.282) So like, but your website is like your first, usually going to be your first, your first interaction, your first opportunity for an impression. And it's like, what is the...

What do they feel? What resonates with them when you land and you're going through the site? Can they find what they need? How is it presented? I can say the same thing a thousand different ways, and you can interpret it a bunch of different ways based on my tone, my inflection, my non -verbals and all that. We have less within communication when we're just doing a website, but like custom design components, where things are worded, heading structures, things like that can influence how somebody's going to engage with your website, and it's ultimately pretty important.

Dan Tighe (50:58.318) Yeah, and you're kind to give such a valuable starting point. But I'm sure the idea of simply going to someone who you do their digital, they do a great job, mocking their web page versus all the back end stuff work that your team's doing, I'm sure there's just a mile of difference.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (51:19.933) There's a gap, right? But if we're trying to start off and we're being pragmatic and we're saying, okay, this is our budget, this is what we do, okay, we can't afford to hire a web design company. So if our starting point is a four out of 10 as opposed to one out of 10, that's a huge win. And maybe we can get it to a five by ourselves. The further down the road that we can get on our own, the better position we're going to be long term. So when we align with a strategic partner, we're not starting from absolute zero, right? Or the closest thing to it, which is,

what happens a lot of the time. And as I sit here and I think about the question that you asked me, another thing that I would do very early on, a lot of the smaller companies, you know, they don't have conversations about cooperative advertising with their manufacturers because they think they're too small and they're not ready. It's like, no, have that shit day one and try to hold your your preferred manufacturer accountable to like some sort of paygate as far as like volume of shingles you're purchasing and what you can expect. There's a reciprocal relationship there. Right. The more shingles you're purchasing, the more you're

the better off you're doing, the better off your homeowners are doing if you're installing a quality product. Ultimately, the better off you should do and there's mutual benefit for you selling more. I don't think manufacturers are eager to offer to go out of their way to say, hey, we'll do more for you because just like any other business, I'm sure they have a regional budget or territory budget and it's usually going to be squeaky wheel gets the grease. But try to get some sort of expectation of like growth. Hey, like, hey, we want to go from a million to two million to three million over the next 24 months, assuming we hit the

this benchmark each of these next two years, we're going to be purchasing this many squares. Like, what could you do to assist in this? We're going to invest more into marketing and advertising. What can you do to help us? Right. And a lot of the times early on, they might say, hey, but to start you off, we'll do your truck wraps for you or we'll pay 50 percent of your truck wraps. Right. And if I'm a day one business or I'm early on in my business, that's a huge help. It's a few thousand bucks. Right. So leaning into that more of that relationship stuff that you were talking about, developing that relationship, having expectations.

Dan Tighe (53:10.094) Huge way. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (53:19.405) of one another. I think foundationally is really important to the success of any relationship really, but especially with like your manufacturer, supplier, and other strategic partners in the space.

Dan Tighe (53:29.742) Bro, that is...

Day one, so valuable. I'm going to start taking that and telling my guys, people who call me, you know, the nice thing about roofing too is you often get guys who are in a sales capacity or production capacity, then they roll off and start their own entrepreneurial venture, which I think is totally cool. I know one guy out of Orlando has been doing this. He's like the OG in Orlando of it. And he's spawned from guys who left his company, probably like 30 local companies, right? And, and he treats them well. He doesn't, you know, he's great. Go get it, do your thing. And I just.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (53:54.842) Mm.

Dan Tighe (54:00.576) I think that's such great advice though. Some of these guys, they're like, Hey, I know I can do it, but where do I get started? And I've got probably two or three guys in mind that I've known for years who did spin off separately. And I'm going to call them this afternoon and be like, bro, go get your trucks or after, you know, call your rep, you know, and get your trucks or after get them to spend a little bit for you. Cause I never even considered that. Like you said, if you're a small guy, just starting, you know, they, they should be inclined to, you know, help build that relationship and inspire some loyalty.

from you, assuming the products are good, you know, inspire some loads. Hey man, we were there from the beginning. You know, we're going to sit down. We're going to try to make this successful because a win for you is a win for all of us.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (54:40.698) Yeah. I've been party to these conversations and have helped move the needle significantly in some of these conversations where like a manufacturer is like, we don't have a structured deal. That's not how we do things. And it's like, okay. So what I did is like, we went over CRM data and what our marketing and advertising strategy was. They love to know that, you know, your numbers, right? Weird. Like we know what it costs to acquire a customer lead, a job. We know our gross, our net profit. So like we've, we've got a system here and this is how we're scaling our business. This is what we're trying to scale too.

This is what you guys are currently doing a lot of the times They're just gonna say upload it to the portal and we'll do what we can right and kick you a few hundred bucks for yard signs or this or that You have to force the issue and especially if you're a younger company talk about the lifetime value of you as a customer, right? You know, if you're if you're 33 years old, you've been in business for two years But you're showing year over year growth leverage that any positive indicator that you're heading down the right path It increases the level of confidence that it's going to be a sound investment. I don't care who you are when you're investing

You want to make sure you're putting your money and you're betting on the right pony, right? Show them that you're the right pony. Scrape up any bit of data that you can to frame it in a way that makes you undeniable, and you'd be surprised how much more willing they are to acquiesce to say, okay, maybe we can make an exception for you, and we'll lay out a structure to where if you do X amount by this date, we'll do this. If you do this much, we'll do this, right? And then that way, you have something to lean into as far as goal setting, accomplishing, and growing. So.

Dan Tighe (56:09.678) Dude, that's dynamite. Yeah, I like, I mean, I like mine. I'm sitting here like mind exploded. You know, like.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (56:11.322) Thanks man, I appreciate you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (56:16.57) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (56:19.15) I'm just literally, I'm like excited to, you know, not to wrap up with you, but to get a chance to call these guys and like, bro, have you negotiated with your supplier to help you out with some ad spend? So I think that's also indicative of the type of guy you are and the type of organization you run where you're not gatekeeping all this stuff. You're making time. You're networking with people in the industry. You're running this podcast, which, you know, it's not, not a lot of work for me. I showed up, I'm in my home office here, turn my laptop on, spin my office chair around. Not a lot of half for me, but.

You know, you invest heavily in it and you know, this is value you're bringing, taking time from your life, taking time away from the important work that you do, other important work that you do. And you know, it's indicative of the type of guy you are. I appreciate you doing all this and I can't wait to pay it forward with some of this fire advice, man.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (57:06.297) Yeah, man. I appreciate your time as well. Thank you to all of you who that have tuned in. Make sure you, you know, mash that share button and just share with somebody who some of this stuff would help. Shout out to Rufor. Appreciate you guys helping make this happen. And that'll we're out for the day. So see you. Yeah, dude.