This is part 1 of a of a special series of 5 podcasts called, “The Top 5 Ways to Get More Catastrophe Work as an Independent Adjuster” and is sponsored by ACD,

If you aren't aware of it yet, your career choice of being an independent adjuster can be a tough and lonely road at times. Waiting for calls, waiting for orientations, waiting for deployments.... then when mother nature isn't dishing out its normal dose of chaos it becomes even tougher to financially survive by having only limited possibilities of work.

Over the next 5 days I'm going to give you my "Top 5 Ways to Get More Catastrophe Work."

The problem we are faced with is REAL, but the question is simple, "How do you find more work as an independent adjuster?"

To determine how we find more work, we need to determine why someone would want to give us work. Then we can come up with a few ways that will give us the edge and give the companies and recruiters reason to pause and choose us.

 

The Reasons Why

The reason why IA Firms are wanting to deploy you is to make money. They have requests from an insurance company for assistance with a project. It could be a request for 10 or 100 people, but either way the IA Firm makes money when you make money. Insurance companies pay the IA Firm for the services you perform and on average/typically the IA Firm keeps 40% of the money and gives you 60%.

With that 40% the IA Firm still has to pay for expenses (just like you). It costs the IA Firm money to find you, support you, train you etc.

We get the point, they are spending money to make money. So can we then assume that if you cost less money to deploy/support and earn them more money then you'll have an advantage on being chosen for a deployment?

I say "YES!"

So how do we show that advantage on paper, that is in a stack of other papers or on a digital computer screen?

How do we prove that we are a better money making machine for the IA Firm than the the next guy?

It feels like this is a never ending pursuit of questions.... right? It does feel this way, but it is these questions that will take you from being another number on a roster to being a superhero A-list adjuster who is called over and over again.

Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the "How do we prove that we are better money makers" question, but right now I want to give you something applicable and 1 of the top 5 ways to getting more catastrophe work.

 

I mentioned earlier in the email that it gets tough when there are limited possibilities of work. Any IA with a license can get deployed when a major storm like Harvey, Katrina, or Sandi hits, it's the rest of the time that I'm talking about. When it isn't an adjuster gold rush how do we position ourselves for success?

As an IA you are a business, and as a business you are playing a numbers game. If Catastrophe Company A has 50 spots for adjusters in the upcoming month, how do you become one of those 50? In essence that is what people are saying when they email asking,

"Pilot has me on their roster, but how do I get deployed NOW!?"

Truth is I don't know if you can become one of the top 50 for Pilot... right now any ways. What we need to do it work with better #'s so we can make more $$$. Instead of being consumed with being the top person at Pilot (which is a great goal) let's look at increasing the odds of success.

If every major CAT company has 50 spots to fill in a month and there are 5 major companies, lets get on all their rosters. That'll give us 250 spots that we could be a candidate for instead of 50. A 5x greater chance of being deployed. Now we are talking!

What if you didn't stop at the top 5? What is you got on the top 20 Cat comp