The Huddle - Episode 140 - Insurance Insights: Protecting your flooring business and crew

Running a flooring business comes with risks—job site accidents, liability claims, equipment damage, and more. But are you truly protected? This week on The Huddle, we’re joined by experts from Federated Insurance to break down the essentials of safeguarding your business and crew.

💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode: The most significant insurance mistakes flooring pros make (and how to avoid them), what coverage you actually need versus what's just extra fluff, how to protect your installers, employees, and assets from unexpected risks, and dive into real-world case studies of businesses that got it right—and those that didn’t.

Stay Connected & Join the Conversation!

The Huddle Podcast is where the flooring industry comes together to connect, learn, and thrive! Recognized as the #1 podcast in the flooring community, we provide an unmatched platform for professionals to discuss everything from installation techniques to industry trends.

At The Huddle, we’re all about driving Forward Progress—empowering seasoned installers, contractors, and flooring enthusiasts to grow, innovate, and lead in their craft. Whether you’re looking for real conversations, actionable insights, or inspiration to take your career to the next level, The Huddle is your home for real discussions that matter.

Want to be a guest on The Huddle? Email forwardprogress@thehuddle.team

We want to send a special shoutout to our sponsors!

FloorCloud
FloorCloud revolutionizes jobsite management with its cutting-edge platform, allowing contractors to remotely monitor ambient conditions like temperature and humidity in real-time. Paired with rugged sensors and instant mobile alerts, their technology ensures installations meet manufacturer specifications, reducing liability and enhancing quality control. Learn more at https://floorcloud.com

Go Carrera
Create your FREE Installer profile at https://gocarrera.com and become part of the future of the industry TODAY!
GET TRAINED! Find a list of training dates here: https://gocarrera.com/resources/training/

Preferred Flooring
Preferred Flooring proudly introduces Stubbi Flooring Tools—designed by installers for installers. Stubbi tools are crafted for precision, durability, and ease of use, helping flooring professionals tackle any project with confidence. Explore the full Stubbi line at https://preferredflooringmi.com/stubbi

Please visit our new website! https://thehuddle.team

what's up guys welcome back to the Huddle your weekly Playbook helping you game forward progress in your flooring

career we are here to help you guys win so welcome aboard to our new viewers

welcome to the team what's up fellas oh Sam and Jake just in time hey

we've been waiting video issues going and looks like they uh they got her got

her done what's up guys with the phone how's it going good to see you doing today right

great to see you guys too can you hear us all right we can phenomenal all right looks like we got figure it out my man were you guys uh

were you guys on a computer and then uh like um decided to hey the phone always

works yep that's exactly what happened until you get a phone call yeah

right it's a good idea right we're excited though for today yeah yeah so uh

we'll give a little bit of time looks like we got some viewers coming on right now um today's talk is about insurance

and the importance of it and uh you know we always like to bring guests on for you guys when uh possible when it's

appropriate and we got some experts from Federated a quick uh little intro before

I have Sam and Jake kind of give their um introduction is Federated

is maybe one of the best um construction specifically specialty construction uh

insurance providers uh we have it here at stent Associates in my company I think that preferred has it uh I know a

lot of companies in the FC that have it and uh we would love for our uh

subcontracting Community to reach out to these guys as well so um they they have

uh saved us a ton of money over um the last couple of years and and we've had a

great we've went through cyber security issue with them and so we've had some we

we've we've put them to the test so it's not just saying they gave us a good rate we actually put them to the test so if

you need insurance uh you know reach out to Federated so Jake Sam tell me and uh

the audience a little bit about yourself no yeah I appreciate it we are uh we're currently located in the Grand Rapids

area we focus on Commercial Insurance for contractors like you said flooring Roofing floring you know HVAC electrical

contractors that's where we like to play at um we kind of joke around we're made for contractors by contractors used to

be a contractor myself uh so we're you know in the trades as much as you know not as much as you guys have but we uh

understand and appreciate what you guys go through on a daily basis and Sam here is our risk

consultant all right we're gonna have you explain what that means no no happy to so um essentially I

work with Jake out of the Grand Rapids area I actually cover the majority of Michigan other than um kind of the thumb

Detroit Flynn area um I pretty much have everything else including Sagen Travers

City the up um and essentially I work with Jake and all the other contractors that he was kind of listing off there at

least from risk management practices um kind of industry specific safety trainings geared towards them and the

things they want um anything from housekeeping stuff from employee handbook help um different things

different that they might need um with regards to their own risk management practices in all reality I'm a little

bit of a you know hit me with a question and I'll let you know what I find gotcha I think all you guys are kind of like

that though aren't you oh yeah I would there's um I believe 60 plus other mes

across the United States that work with Federated so yeah we're we're uh there's

quite a few of us out there so guys uh as a to the audience here one of the

benefits of working um with somebody who specializes in

construction and um you know commercial insurance as opposed to going to your

cousin who works at State Farm and getting your coverage is most of these

guys will have an awesome tool that you can go online and get toolbox talks and

safety uh talks and all these types of things so when you're required to do a

daily uh report or safety meeting or something like that for your guys um or

on a project that you actually have a tool go give you a topic you can run through the topic and uh so one of

that's a really easy thing that they do but it's really valuable and if you're a sub out on a job having to do these

things uh it's super nice to have that right at your fingertips am I echoing to you guys at

all you are I think it's just the sound great he sounds good on your your side

yeah sounds great to us prob could be okay well we'll live with it it's not

horrific it might be because the speaker is on the bottom too if you turn it sideways it might go away spin it

over oh then it then you are sideways now we're just sideway well

adjust adjust yeah you might want to might want to just turn it back and just get closer together I mean you guys are

brothers right you guys right guys are a team cheek to cheek be fine there we go

how's that all right we're all fixed now I guess I guess that means that Jake

probably should have just had you take control of the technology from the start yeah messed up there that one okay so

guys let us know in the chat uh what you guys are uh struggling with if you are

struggling with anything uh when it comes to insurance but uh I want to let

Jake and Sam give a little bit of an overview of what I mean I chimed in

there but give us an overview of like why should uh specialty contractors or

you know a lot of our um our audience we have everything from Big flooring

contractors that jump on here and watch uh to uh two guys that have a you know a

business and they go out and they they install floors for business businesses and and such so give the give everybody

a a a taste of why it's important to have the proper insurance and the proper partner in that insurance definitely uh

I think you said it great there um we see ourselves more as a partnership with you guys uh especially you know Daniel

knows that Jose knows that um partnership instead of uh like a vendor you know we want you to be able to call

us text us on our personal phones um you know just like you guys would do with your normal you know with your own normal business but we're a little bit

different cuz right now with the economy being you know harder out there we've been seeing a lot more policies have

shrink flation so you're paying the same price but you're getting a lot less um just like when you guys go buy a bag of

chips or you go buy that Gatorade and now it's half the size but you're still paying the five bucks um it's happening

to your insurance too surprised or not um you know that stuff's happening out there we're calling it shrinkflation or

that's what they're kind of deeming it as but we're seeing that a lot so it's just important to have a specialist like

us we do about eight months of training where your normal agent does about two weeks so we know it really really in

depth and we can you know put you head tohe head against really any agent out there when it comes to coverage wise so

that's something that you know you'll have an expert that knows your industry looking at it and making sure that you know you're getting a fair premium for

that coverage um instead of a lot of agents are just not coming in anymore they're just sending it in the mail and

then the policies are going you know down in coverage and people are having no idea they're like oh the premium stay

the same it's great um which uh it just puts them in a bad spot so that's something that

be a reason why to come look for one of us and we're a direct writer so we work directly for the carrier think of us

kind of like a general contractor where your normal agent is a subcontractor so they go and try to find you a carrier

they try to get you know put you through somewhere else and they kind of play the middleman role where you're getting it right from the horse's mouth you know

that's why you're able to get your certificates much faster um bonded projects much faster because you're going right to it and usually um there's

a good little savings on that too because you're cutting out the middle person yeah I I always come with come

back to him like Hey man I need the certificate like right now I just bought this truck or whatever

happen we take truck place everything please get getting uh quick Sears for

our projects for us is important um and Federated has done a great job and I I

don't want this to just turn into a Federated thing but it just so happens that it's Federated guys talking about

insurance and the all of the hosts on here use that insurance so it's a um

kind of natural uh so you you talked about the coverages and stuff I think

one one piece of this that's important to point out is you guys understand construction and construction coverag is

also so one of the things that is important when you're going to get insurance and say you do go to a your

cousin that works at State Farm as my example or earlier if they don't know construction

they don't understand the limits uh these guys will ask you hey do you have

any limits that's required by the companies that you're working for or any of that for example we got a $5 million

umbrella policy that's not needed by everybody you know and so these types of

things um they'll help you stay in compliance because one of the things that we've noticed with Subs is our GCS

are requiring our subs to have the same level of insurance as we have that didn't used to be the case um but

they're they're it's more and more happening so those are questions that you know subcontractors or labor

providers out in the in the um ether you know performing work for other flooring

companies may not you know know what those coverages should be or where they're at what the general requirements

are so can you talk a little bit about that and and how you guys approach

that is when it comes to coming up with like the limits and everything yeah yeah

how do you help your your uh the insured uh get the right coverage that you were

talking about yeah so what we do is we do what's called a right report meeting which is about 45 minutes and we go

through all the way from the top to the bottom of you know their business starting off with hey how'd you get

started Paul you know give me the give me the started in the garage story you know we want to that that's probably

origin story yeah so that's probably one of my favorite parts of the job is getting to see that American dream kind of keep living on and you know getting

to see that and walk through the huge buildings they built nowadays um so we start with that part and then we really

just go through their dayto days and like you said we understand um you know the materials the labor part the the

customers pay in 60 to 90 days out so you might be on the hook for a little bit and all the kind of intricate stuff

that goes into it we were at an account today and it was electrical contractor we were looking at you know how much

coverage should he have for labor materials if he's on a job site and another trade burns down the building

but he hasn't got paid yet right so kind of coming up with those limits and he's like well how do I know that and I can

tell you his policy that he had was way off about 400,000 off which yeah is enough to put most businesses out of

business um yeah and to get that change was about 500 bucks a year and that just takes somebody that knows the industry

to come in there so that's real life examples of kind of what we would do but we would yeah go from top to bottom of

customizing your package to exactly what you need um not no one packages are the same um and just making sure that what

you have is uh really adequate and then we take both of them at the end we take your current policy and then we take our

new one side by side so it's clearly showing you you know what you have versus what you could have um so there's

no uh really guessing game to it which is really nice kind of black and white for you know you guys that are super say

that um the side by-side comparison that he's talking about is what took us away

from the gentleman that we were with and we and just so you know I don't know if I ever told you this but the the

gentleman that we used for our insurance uh previously I've been with him since the first vehicle I ever bought so you

know what I mean so I've had Insurance to them since I was let's just say 18 years old and I still currently have um

insurance through them because they know my story from day one and it's it's a comfort thing and they treat me very

well um so that's who you guys took us away from and that's very hard to do for for for clients but the side-by-side

comparison it was a no-brainer it it was like dang we're really missing out on a

lot yeah and one of those things that I think are valuable uh through that process is like materials in

transit yeah the sub comes picks up materials from your office who's

responsible if that vehicle gets in an accident and

um generally the the auto insurance is not going to cover that material in the back uh if you're driving a truck or a a

van full of lvt so what happens if something happens um I've had the

pleasure of having two cars catch on fire you know in my lifetime and um in

both cases if I would have had materials in the back they would have been completely lost right um so the in

transit the things that you don't think about around the edges is what a

somebody who writes these policies can do for you that a again like somebody

that's used to writing home policies or uh vehicle policies may not know the

right questions to ask uh that in transit part you guys mentioned material stored on site where Builders Risk

insurance should cover that there's often not Builder Risk insurance on every job and and so you get for 500

bucks a year that's why it's called insurance it's a good insurance policy

exactly yeah I agree yeah so have it you have to

have it oh oh for sure yeah you got to have it so you might as well make sure you have it right and the the I think

some of the misconceptions um is that you guys are going to be more expensive than others I

can tell you from a commercial good siiz commercial policy with our company you

guys saved as a lot of money um I would assume that you'd be competitive in the

guys who go pick up materials from a retailer take them to a job site and install them that you'd still be

competitive in that realm as well definitely yeah know we're competitive contractors overall and that's uh we

focus a lot on you know deductibles risk management and we see that we you know put clance on and then in two or three

years their premium is really closer we have a lot of especially for the bigger accounts we have big deductibles we can put in play and you know if you're

willing to do the stuff safe we can really save you a ton I'm talking 2550 for some of the big boys which is yeah

we did a uh 15 I think it's a 15,000 self-funded uh

piece and it saved us a ton of money so if you're a big contractor out there

watching those types of deals and I didn't get offered that by my other insurer by the way so just FYI on that

not everybody maybe maybe everybody has the product but they don't like know

again like Sam just said you know you guys went through eight months of training is that correct did I get that

right yeah that's that's to get to know their product line uh in and out and

whereas some other people may not know the product line as a broker they're

going out to Nationwide and to uh chub and to all these other you know Allied

and all these carriers and all the carriers have different products that they carry so it's really hard for a

single person to know all of the different products um but that that um

that one thing save does a bunch of money so if you're a big contractor out there um you know those are the types of

things you can get with someone who really knows what they're doing um yeah and if you're a smaller guy these guys

are going to be competitive for you so you know don't be scared to reach out to a Federated or a even a larger Insurance

firm I wanted this to be really about insurance overall so I'm gonna get into a little bit of that yeah and talk a

little bit about um what what are the let's talk about some horror stories

that oh here we go you guys may have had uh where you know either improper

coverage lack of coverage or no coverage or any of those stories um I don't want to scare the audience but I want them to

understand that why you guys are here and like Jose said earlier like you got

to have it yeah no so I mean at least on the coverage side of things that's all

Jake's realm I'm more on the risk management trying to stop these things before they happen M mitigate your

guys's claims um but at least from a Horror Story standpoint this isn't necessarily a specific story but this is

something I love to talk about with all of our clients is um essentially there's this statistic out there because you get

some people out there that are like I've got insurance so if I have a fire I'm good I've got insurance right but at the

end of the day 40% of businesses that suffer a fire uh never reopen and of the

60% that do reopen 25% fail within the first year so there's a better than

average chance that if you as a business owner suffer a fire that you may not

ever open your doors again right so um it's just important in being mindful of actually getting out ahead of these

things before before they happen um and not just kind of giving it the old brush off the shoulder of oh well I got insurance because you're not also

thinking about your clients you know your guys' customers they're still they still need their products just because you had a

fire and can't provide them anymore they still need what they're and they're going to go get it somewhere else and the reality of the business world is is

oh so- and so just had a fire well I'm offering a 5% discount for all new clients that are in the same industry

you know what I mean so they kind of time it out and it's stuff I've already seen in the field myself so well and in

the commercial World we're under contract to still provide them with those materials regardless yeah you know

I mean even even if I'm sitting in my living room because my office building is a p of rubble I still have to get

some orders moving and things moving and someone has to pay for that and I need my insurance come to the table and one

of the coverages that um is important if you do have a warehouse is the

difference between material stored in your inventory so if you have your materials covered only to the amount of

your inventory but you don't have any of your your customers products covered you're you're in you're at risk and so

you got to make sure that you have that distinction even if you're like I I know some installers who have warehouses and

they carry all the pad uh for the jobs they do and they'll stock pad uh for

their major clients but they also have Project Specific pad so that specific

materials or adhesives or products you may have whether it's in your garage and

you're working out of your home or it's in your warehouse at a business those materials need to be covered in a

different way under a different product than your inventory is that correct did I say that right it would be under y

property of others so yeah it would be under a different spot and it's super super cheap to ensure it just like you said Paul someone's got to ask the

question do they know to ask well Sam I have a I have a question and maybe Jay can answer this too is uh for some of

the viewers out there um is there like you had mentioned the fire policy right

um could you give some examples of what they should look for on their current insurance provider if they're not using

Federated um to see what is actually covered or what isn't covered right so

so they understand where they're lacking right because you know details matter when it comes to Insurance you know the

same thing with like homeowners and flood insurance there there are certain instances where you think you're protect

but maybe not everything is protected um and is there any literature that they

need to look for to to give them kind of a you know the aha moment where you know what maybe I should try to do a side

by-side comparison uh to to make sure that I am covered no definitely they should get a policy every year either by

email or by mail um I know you guys are both with Federated so we drop off the oldfashioned actual notebook or you know

we see you in person keep B yeah so we're still doing the big binder which I

haven't seen another one out there yet um I'm seeing mostly emailed copies or 10 page ones sent in the mail which uh

like you said Jose the devils in the details so uh it's probably not going to say that you know the bad things in

those 10 pages they're probably going to have that on one of the other large Pages um so just getting a full copy

from your agent saying Hey I want a full copy and then looking through the exclusions looking through hey how much

inventory do I have all my autos on there um because we just seen a lot of Agents not keeping stuff up to date if

you aren't um which at the end of the day you pay them to keep it up to date so um it's really just something that

going through the Declaration Pages looking at exclusions making sure um they have everything that they're

supposed to have on there um things they don't want like Co Insurance stuff like that f a pretty

good job he's Jake's usually calling me and is like hey I need to come visit

you he just that we have fos here one time he comes over I know I know was one

time yeah the uh the fire thing is um I

want to go back to that just because the the stats are so crazy so you said 40%

of the companies go out of business after a fire yeah 40% never re of the

60% remaining only 20 or 25% of them also shut their doors down within the

next couple years correct yeah in fact um there's a couple numbers online I

believe it's FEMA don't ask me the uh translation I don't know it right off the top of my head um but they say about

60% of businesses will never reopen um so yeah you got a 100 you got 40 out and

of the 60 left you're G to have 15 of them go out it sounds like and so that

puts you at 55% um so that's that's a staggering

stat what is the maybe Jose was kind of driving at

this what is the number one reason for companies not opening back up like what

is the part the reason behind some of that do you know I would say they don't have the

funding um they weren't able to pay the employees because if they don't have the right business income coverage so you go

out of business business tomorrow Paul these it's going to take you 12 months to rebuild a building get back going up to speed what are your workers going to

do the next 12 months and that's really where it hurts them is they're they want to stay with you they want to work with

you but they have a family and bills to pay also so they you know they got to go find a job and that's where I think it comes down to a lot of now they they

can't rehire real fast and just kind of um get it going all in one day again you know they took them years to get those

good employees so I think that's a big part of it and then just the funding where if they just had to rebuild a building because they were down on their

policy I mean I've seen 200 300 grand out of pocket people had to pay to rebuild their buildings and for I know

we're talking about fires a lot and I'm sure you guys have seen it the lithium ion batteries are on a huge recall for

DeWalt Milwaukee um for the overcharging people are leaving them charging overnight so that they're ready to go

for the morning makes sense as a contractor but they're not stopping and they're just burning down we had a

horror story a couple weeks ago somebody par parked their truck and trailer in the shop for the night went over to the

house and woke up and morning and it was all burnt to the ground um because the lithium I just kept going so that's just

someone that you know was trying to be prepared for the morning get everything going but um we're not seeing cut off switches on them and I've kind of had a

creative but funny joke would be to have like a Christmas timer you know have an hour and then it times out but you know that's kind of what's that would be the

obvious thing for them to do something like that but right now they're just not stopping yeah that's what was one of the

main things that Sam came and talked to us about was the batteries and and how

cuz it's real easy buy these knockoff batteries that you don't know what

they're going to do right because you buy a one for half the price of a a

regular like we use Milwaukee so you you buy one for half the price and then it doesn't have those regulations in it or

you buy a charger that's off brand and the same thing it doesn't have that regulation in it so it's just gonna do

whatever it wants well that's a that's I'm glad to hear that that's uh that's something I'm

going to do something about I don't know that I've heard that so I'm glad to to have uh sat on this podcast and I hope

our audience anybody that's watching uh pays attention to that you know um

that's a fascinating you know with the right insurance coverage like here if if that

was to happen uh we have policies that put us up get us computers put us in a

temporary workplace we get back to work uh try to keep you know start ordering

materials for materials that were lost and and uh all of our servers are off

site so we're right back up in business and and uh and and doing the thing as

bet I mean you're obviously far behind the eightball if this happens at all to

anybody so it's a it's a bad scenario but um you can without the

proper coverage I could see someone like just not wanting to go through that

you know what I mean why why spend uh especially if you're a little older in age like I'm not going to spend my life

savings on rebuilding this place I'm just gonna close it up you know yeah

which is build a TP man yeah no it's the unfortunate reality of the stuff that we

see out there and um yeah and it's not just you know smaller companies that are risk of this I've seen it happen to

bigger companies too that are like there's no way but one of your main manufacturing facilities goes down and

now it's like okay uh all my customers are leaving my employees are getting other jobs similar to what Jake said

because they've got families they need to feed and yeah you know they want to be loyal to you but at the end of the

day it's business right so yeah you gotta do and is there a policy that

covers for the manufacturing plants a good example of something that would be

a little tougher to get just back up to business tomorrow I mean if your equipment all burned down I mean waiting

for that equipment to come in and filling orders and uh the people who run the equipment what

are they going to do is their policies to cover them for uh the a certain amount of time to pay employees that for

nonproductive work almost yeah so there is there's a business income and you actually have it too Paul based on what

you describing so yeah you'd have 12 months of income so you're they're getting paid while they're rebuilding

and you know they're part of the team and you would also get your salary too which I mean change that that

changes a life you know that we're trying to give you it like you said it's G to be very hard to go through this but we're trying to give you a chance a fighting chance to

survive it's not going to be easy it's not going to be a small hill to climb but without this you're you're done

you're toast U no pun intended but

you're you're kind of toast after that if you don't have some way to uh you

know put your best foot forward I like I said you're behind the eightball anyway I mean it's a bad situation um I mean

can you imagine all the material You' have to reorder for all your projects and where you're at and what you've

bought and what you've installed versus all that kind of stuff that's just a nightmare to even think about but I'm

gonna go check my lithium batteries after this I'll tell you that there you go I got a I got a question for for you

guys um you know Paul mentioned it coverage you know and we're talking about vehicles and warehouses um

compared to The Standard Insurance company that's out there might blanket a lot of different things

that are common in construction not specific to a trade um how customizable

do you guys think or you guys feel um you guys policies are for individual companies and you know since we're in

the flooring business we just GNA say flooring like compared

to other companies out there other insurance companies yeah so for example how we do it with your flooring one um

is we have a flooring package so it's think of it like you guys have seen those books back in the day where

it was like you know how to drive for dummies you know the yellow ones and the black ones kind of how these are it's a

flooring package so they're all flooring based questions and they tell us what flooring based questions to ask and we

learn that you know type of business what could be their exposures um so I would say very customizable compared to

your normal insurance policy they're going to take you as just a normal let's say grocery store and they're going to

make you fit a flooring contractor they're going to add contractor coverage to this basic policy and they're going

to add a vehicle policy and they're going to try to add a lot of stuff which what happens is they miss a lot of stuff

so they don't cover subcontractor work um they don't cover your transportation like you were talking about or the materials because that's all stuff that

they have to know to add in individually where our package is already built in um I'd have to skip that blank to be able

to get to the next one where they have to add that one in and know to add that one in if that makes sense yeah it does

and I kind of already knew the answer to that I just wanted to ask everybody else is listening and because they afraid to

ask question about insurance right now you guys live don't be afraid to ask questions this is a good time to do it

um said too as I notice like going from our previous policy holder to you guys

it's instead of having blocks of uh coverage already pregroup together

predetermined for us um switched over there was a lot of questions on what do

you guys need what would you guys what you guys need what do you think you need

and here's the real information on what isn't covered under those blocks you currently have um and I think that's

really what helped us to and just for everybody

out we might have made a latter movement as far as the dollar amount that that we were paying out for coverage but the

coverage cap was extended a lot like we were more this

line right here we had way more coverage when we swapped over and that was very very

comforting definely yeah no that's great to hear I always there's a you know the

saying out there if sometimes you get what you pay for and I mean that's true for just about everything including insurance too so you know not to say

that uh I know Insurance isn't the sexiest thing on the planet and our our

audience is more quiet this is the most quiet I've ever I've ever seen them not

uh asking questions and and getting advice I wonder what's going on with it I asked

Daniel and he said uh they may be uh scared that they don't know something

about insurance or maybe we're doing such a good job of explaining that there's no questions left I don't

know I hope that's the case yeah um so I know I know guys out there audience that

the insurance part is sometimes scary it's sometimes like one of them deals like uh I don't want to get it or I

don't think I need it or it's one of them deals where you're um you know our company requires it so

anybody who works for us has to have the full insurance but uh as a subcontractor

but uh I know that there's a lot of companies out there uh they're they're using guys that maybe not have the uh

their insurance up to par um so don't be scared to ask the questions though guys

regardless of where you stand with insurance we'd love to have your comments and questions um Jake and Sam both came on

here to to answer some of your questions uh so jump they might be they get scared

with insurance right because like Jake was saying earlier sometimes you get a policy and then you have to do something

in order to cover yourself and it's only a difference of like $500 and I think sometimes some of these guys that just

work by themselves are like $500 man I only pay like $700 a year but that's when it's time to look at your insurance

and see if you're covered for everything that you have because I mean he does a good job on coming here and it's like do

you still have this do you still have that is there anything that we need to add um it's something that you got to do

on I mean what are you here like at least twice a year just talking about

that uh yeah I would say at least I mean he's he's here you got you got equipment

you guys out there that that are installing I mean you have equipment the back you got to have equipment coverage

what if you get uh your your tools stolen out of a trailer out of your

trailer yeah those types of things there's coverage for all of that and a lot of times it's not that expensive so

I I don't want to intim anybody be intimidated but it's it's it's not hard

to reach out and like I have said plenty of times here we have Federated so does

the preferred guys um reach out to them and just uh you know get a quote we're

working on some technology to help make that easier um for our go career

members um gu must have something like that but at the end of the day um like

Jose said early on we got to have this stuff um and if you don't have it you're at risk so that's that's the thing that

you were saying earlier too right is that a lot of these contractors are having your subcontractors your trade

Partners get the same kind kind of coverage that you have and a lot of these guys don't realize that the

coverage that you need in order to do some of these projects I mean I just you what was emailing Jake um was that last

week or the week before I have a project where they they want us to have that $5 million cap like you have and it's like

that's that's Project Specific over here everyone else is just at $2 million but this one is like five million which is

crazy because it's a super tiny project yeah yeah ours is an airport

project and it's not a big project I mean it's $100,000 so it's not a huge

job or anything uh it's a good siiz project but they wanted a five M they

required a $5 million uh umbrella uh policy now I'm not you're you know most

of our audience um except for the flooring companies uh shout out to um

I've got to remember the name of the the company but I got I was at the fuse conference last week and a couple of guys came up to me and said hey

man love seeing you guys on the Huddle and fuse members is 180 of the largest

uh flooring contractors in the United States so to have some of those guys watching us on here uh is pretty cool so

we have some bigger flooring companies watching as well um and in those cases

these these uh umbrella policies coming to to uh to take now not to scare the

subs you will never likely have to have an umbrella policy at all uh those

things are typically going to be covered by us and you would not have the requirement as a labor provider as a

subcontractor to have that so didn't want any misconceptions on that

um but uh we are about 15 minutes from a

full uh hour on here and I have asked all the questions and

um that I can think of that that applied to my company do you guys Jose or Daniel

what else you guys got anything else to uh throw out there and then I want to leave Jake and Sam here to kind of give

uh their their final pitch so to speak I mean it's inviting the risk consultant

over to your spot I mean he told me he was coming so I didn't invite him but I mean it's it's nice knowing that you

know we are doing things right because before he even contacted us I just replaced fire extinguishers and and

stuff like that because he saved us from potential fire too yeah no I mean the electrical box

yeah yeah no exactly um that's one of the other things uh I believe not to sit

here and you know talk up Federated the whole time by any means one of the things of just trying

to bring the value before things happen obviously we want to take care of you guys and that's the whole goal of insurance and God forbid your worst day

but um you know on our end we're we're taking action on this stuff before it happens scanning your guys' electrical

panels with infrared cameras to see if we find anything running hot if something's running hot we'll let you

know and let you know inform you hey you might want to have an electrician look at this because this might be a

disconnect within your service panel right here again stopping the fires before they happen a lot of different

stuff like that and you know checking fire extinguishers making sure that if a fire does happen you guys are well

prepared to put it out because I mean one of the first things I saw when I went for my eight months of training um

was essentially auto service car up on one of the lifts starts to catch on fire

a little bit the workers are scrambling because they don't know where the fire extinguishers are they finally find the fire extinguishers they go to use it

nothing comes out because they have been serviced now the whole building burns down where this could have been contained you know um it seems like it's

a little thing and it seems like it's just another thing but at the same time this could be the difference of putting

you into that 40 to 25% statistic about fires I rolled out

earlier or a minor claim that you know an insurance company can cut checks for

all day right yeah do you guys um do you guys offer educational classes or

educational uh booklets online or you know physical booklets for um for

business owners no matter how big how small just just something for them to educate themselves and make sure that

they they are meeting a specific standard or their current safety conditions are up to par I wouldn't say

we have like a certain to-do list or check list for him um but we do hold

What's called the RMA so risk managements uh back at our home office in Minnesota and then also online and in

Michigan where we actually come out for a couple days and talk about main risk in your industry there industry specific

ones so contractors once auto dealer once and then there's just kind of a general one but they talk a lot about

kind of everything that we've been talking about today and another big piece they make on um and kind of touch

closest to us is the like succession plans uh you know making sure that the business Legacy is going to carry On to

the Next Generation Um I know you even you smaller guys you know someday a lot of my guys now four or five years ago

they were out of their garage and now they have their own building so it's uh one of those things you just got to keep pushing for and looking forward to and

we kind of help out when that time is ready to uh kind of get you that retirement plan ready because our goal is for you to pass the business down get

some money coming in and then go live your life that you've earned you

know pretty cool yeah no I don't know if it's if it's weird hearing that somebody

cares about my my my family more than I do holy smokes say we do we've seen it the other way

where we're delivering death checks to families you know and it's they don't have certain stuff in place or maybe they do and it's uh usually different

situations um so we try to always get you in that best situation

awesome I guess for the smaller guy what do they need in order to set them up for

success for like within their business or with like handbooks wise so you you

you said that you know um someone starting from the garage and then you know going up what is that that starting

point what is what is going to be like hey there it's going to be you need

these things in order to proceed well probably you'll probably need like generaliz ability to start off

right if you're going to get on projects with like a certificate and then once you hire that first person on your

company you need to have your work comp insurance so that's workman's comp pretty simple um not not too expensive I

think right now it's like 600 bucks a year for the minimum amount which is about 60 Grand in payroll which would

get you a guy for the year to start off um so I mean at least having know some kind of work comp some kind of uh some

kind of workc comp some kind of general liability you can have autos on there not you know not required or anything like that but at least having some

general liability because that's going to cover third party so you mess up somebody's house you're working on or um

you're an auto accident you hit somebody I mean that's the basic stuff you probably already have Auto anyways because everyone has auto insurance but

yeah general liability work comp once you get one person yeah and then from a risk management standpoint housekeeping

I would say getting something in place for an employee handbook I don't care if it's you and two other guys that are

your buddies you know at the end of the day this is more about protecting you yourself your business um I would say

the big thing and if going back on Jake's auto point if you do have Autos some kind of driving policy in place

because we always like to use a saying of if it's not in black and white in a court of law it didn't happen right

there's no oh yeah we agreed to this well next thing you know that guy didn't agree to it when there's money sitting

on the table right so um if you lay it out there in a contract let them know what the expectations are laid out

pretty clear and I mean even for some of the smaller guys you can find um

employee handbook templates um that are customizable online right I mean we talk about AI all the time too right this is

you can talk to chat GPT and just say hey I need an employee handbook this is

what should these are my ideas easier than it's ever something you know but I

mean you can even buy like a if you wanted a lawyer scrub version of it not that I'm not saying I mean you can go to

the AI route if you'd like to but if you wanted a lawyer scrubbed employee handbook you could probably find one

online I don't think they cost very much at all you know what I mean well and you can have one built we had a HR company

build ours and it was not outrageous uh I I mean a sub may not need to do that

you may if you're if you're getting started I'm glad you brought that up because I wish it was something we did

years and years earlier than what we ended up doing it um but employee

handbook with the rules and and policies and procedures of your company if you

start that early on you have started a good culture for your company to document things I know the preferred

guys are went through the same pain I did which is just you went and started work and you got you got you really what

we did is create a bunch of technical debt onto ourselves debt uh in the not

in the money way but in the way of all these things we needed to do to actually have a business

uh from the employee handbooks policies and procedures a training platform all this stuff that we now have but if you

start early on with those core principles I'm glad you brought that up because that's a great piece of advice

for a new business owner or someone who's small are wanting to grow yeah no and I mean it's not even

something not that I think you guys feel any embarrassment about and I hope none of the viewers out there do either but

that's the reality of a lot of businesses out there is too is they get caught up start doing the stuff and next

thing you know it's like one thing leads to another and you're like holy cow we're growing like crazy but I don't

have any of these policies or procedures in place that you've either wanted to or it's just kind of taken a back burner um

you know like I said it's a house you didn't know it's one of them constant

things that you're always going to be doing uh like a training platform we're always adding to ours your policies and

procedures are a living document they're going to always change and and stuff but if you can start when you're just you

and your cousin or you and a guy in and you're working out of your your garage

um professionalism those those business principles are probably if I if I I have

no data to back this up but I would say that is a high percentage of the

failures in uh small small companies uh where they go out of business and start

another business with their other friend and they go to do another I mean that is that happens all the time in the

subcontracting world but it's because they did not put any of the core

principles of of owning a business they just think they're an installer in their head but they're a business owner and um

your service or your providing uh your product is your labor but that doesn't

that's no different than a convenient store sale in a Snicker bar it's just a different product and so you starting

off with some professionalism is a great piece of advice yeah no like I said it's

uh I mean it's one of the most common things I see and again all the stuff that we're kind of talking about here too with the housekeeping stuff is stuff

that Federated I mean I think um you guys can kind of chat on it a little bit more but all stuff that we help provide

as well and help you know help you guys fill in some of maybe the holes or parts

that you guys are missing out on right um so again again the whole goal is always to just better protect you guys

because the better we protect you hopefully the you know longer you stay with us too and that's the thing right

we're letting you guys know that the growing pains that we've gone through because we went from having nothing to

then you start growing and then someone comes and it's like hey we need your employee handbook and then it goes from

you just need an employee handbook to we need an employee handbook with this specific stuff in there and then it's

like all right now you got to change it and then you go from that to we also need a site specific safety plan we need

your entire safety handbook and then without these things you're scrambling

so it's easier to put those in right now when you don't well

it's easier to do it one at a time and then you end up needing you know what happened to to me anyway was like all

that happened at one time I got a job that needed you know a safety manual I had to build a safety manual for the

company and then it was a sight specific safety plan then a hazardous materials uh handling plan and a you know all this

stuff you're going to have you're going to get there as you grow but it I also had to do the employee handbook you know

I mean it's like I just had when you if you do it in steps

you're you're not inundated with that that barrage of having to have all that at one time that's how it happened to me

anyway and it was a it was kind of a stressful time trying to make sure I was doing all that stuff right and it's been

over decades ago at this point but it's still um getting go getting going like that

and doing those little things now so well we managed to fill a full episode

up about insurance and that is an accomplishment on all of our parts and

partially we didn't even touch on auto exposure or anything like that we highlighted it I mean we could do a whole other episode on stuff like that

believe me I've got plethora topics you guys would want to talk about yeah well we'll definitely keep uh doing this

because I think it's valuable um even though the interaction's down a little the fact is

is that th this gets consumed uh at a high level uh with a lot of viewership

on the podcast platforms and um those those this information is critical for

for people to understand so we'll definitely have you guys back on and partially was you guys uh doing so well

in the podcast we really appreciate you joining us today and uh engaging and and

um giving us some good valuable information I know a couple of steps I gotta go take care of uh soon as I get

off the podcast check those batteries check those batteries tell my warehouse guys hey man let's not leave those

things plugged in at all if I think it's something that a lot of people don't think about but if you just look at in

terms of just the iPhone Apple doesn't let you use a cord at all that's not

certified by by them yeah so that that's reason behind it is because if you use a

cord that's not certified that's when phones start blowing up yeah it's in

everything SE in vape pens Teslas that's all the same lithiumion batteries you

know I had one of my warehouse guys have a vape pen blow up in his pocket about six months ago so yeah that stuff

happens well it's all calibrated right like everything's calibrated and tested under certain circumstances and and you

you got to stay within those parameters and just knowing some of that information is available uh for for

safety reasons through through people like you guys is awesome that you're willing to willing to absorb all of that

information and then share it as it comes to you so we we appreciate everything you guys do to help make it

safer for us and and our employees y appreciate you guys giving us a voice

and you know be able to come and talk on this tonight I know we were excited about it we got some lunch today and we were talking hey what are we going to

you know discuss and we're just excited for it we never know weing it

brother but I think that that's what draws people right because nothing is scripted it's let's just get on here and

start talking see where the conversation leads and I think it works out pretty good I mean do you guys have anything

else that you think anyone needs to hear before we take off uh I would say just I

mean you guys are all working hard for the money you are earning so make sure you're not just uh paying it to an insurance guy you never see right make

sure that they are even if they are your St Farm buddy that's your cousin you know make sure they're working and they know what should be in your policy um

you know they can do it too um they just got to do a little bit of effort on it um not nothing against them you know they're looking at 10 different policies

we're only looking at one so it's a lot easier for us to look at that one and know it inside and out um so I would say

yeah just make sure you're looking at it and uh like Daniel said before you guys ramp up and get you know too big uh you

know just try to get some of that professional stuff in place first yeah no we didn't even get to tou like I said

we didn't even get to touch on the number one uh Hazard I would at least talk about in terms of Auto at least you

know what I mean and it's the number one issue people little taste people a little taste of what that is give us

your number one what what is the number one just so people know out there oh yeah if you have an auto even one you

have a fleet of 20 out on the road you're at risk for anything to happen

because I mean the 1 1800 call Sams all that fun stuff they're waiting for you guys to get into an accident and hurt

somebody and not have your policies and procedures in place because that makes you vulnerable so the crazy thing is is

that that's what I'll leave the audience with I guess if I've got anything Jo next time for a deep dive into Auto and

it's not even just Auto right that little tidbit right there leads you into how do you have your business set up

like period yeah oh that rabbit hole goes quite a ways you can you can get lost in

there yeah well I think what it really points out for this episode is how important insurance is within the entire

confines of your business not just for coverage but it goes deeper than that it's trying to ensure or uh make sure

that you have all of the uh uh important pieces of your business put together in

a in a proper way and then then um properly covered so you know whether it

is a uh a driving policy or a employee handbook

or a forklift you know training uh for your forklift or or whatever it is uh

all this stuff matters uh every time I talk about I can understand why people get antsy because every time I talk

about it I start thinking about oh I need to make sure that I have you know

that do I have proper direction on uh

like taking pallet off of you know these black and white things you have to have and you can go you can do this forever

and get super deep uh but for example taking a pallet off of a truck with a

Tommy lift and making sure that you're applying proper safety uh protocols

there and the weights and all this stuff so keep real guys out there appreciate

you joining us again thank you Sam and Jake for joining us Jose and Daniel as

always uh you guys rock and uh to all our audience out there we've seen you

joining even though you did not want to engage on the insurance we're going to do this again and uh we'll give you a

second chance to redeem yourselves so until next time we will catch you guys

next week uh Tuesdays 3 pm Central if you like any of this and or you didn't

like it give us a thumbs up thumbs down comment subscribe uh let us know you're

out there listening so uh as always gentlemen we'll see you guys next we