Getting the work done is only half the battle—getting paid for it is another. In this episode of Restoration Today, Carlos Ramirez, Doug Weatherman, and Max Pena, from JSTFYD, dive into one of restoration’s biggest pain points: the gap between what contractors document and what carriers actually pay.
They discuss:
- How AI is being used on both sides of the claims process
- How restoration companies can fight back against denials and carrier tactics
- How automating collections can improve efficiency, profitability, and even EBITDA
- ..and MORE!
Transcription
Michelle Blevins: [00:00:00] So does the Restoration Today podcast is sponsored by our friends at Restoration Brokers of America, the advisory firm exclusively focused on representing restoration company owners in premium exit transactions. If a sale is in your future, preparation drives value. Download the Elite Exit Blueprint at rbasells.com.
Again, you can download the Elite Exit Blueprint at rbasells.com. All right. Hey, restorers. Welcome into this episode of the Restoration Today podcast. Today, I am really excited to have the JSTFYD team with me. I had the opportunity to meet Carlos at some show, it’s probably actually even last year in 2025, and [00:01:00] then we’ve crossed paths several times this year, and I’ve known Doug for a long time and gotten to know Max as well this year.
And they are really leaning into solving, um, some problems that contractors have in a really good way, and everybody who’s listening knows that if Doug Weatherman is involved, this is gonna be a great innovation and a great place to be paying attention to what’s going on in the industry, ’cause Doug is definitely one of the people at the forefront of AI technology, where the industry is going, all of that.
Doug Weatherman: So gentlemen, welcome in. Um, so Doug, I’m gonna toss it to you first to kind of introduce yourself, share a little bit about your background, and kind of tee up your involvement with the platform. Awesome. Um, Doug Weatherman. For those of you guys who don’t know me, I am entering my 16th year in restoration.
I’ve done everything. Um, I was started as a technician in this industry. Um, I’ve been through marketing, sales. I now am chief operating officer of Rare Restoration and Roofing. We’re based in Colorado. Um, I am part of JSTFYD. Carlos and I… [00:02:00] Carlos, um, saw some of the stuff that I was doing with the, with the custom GPTs and with Two-Minute Technician and things like that, and he reached out to me and told me, “Hey, man, you gotta come up to my shop here in Denver and check this thing out that I’m working on here.”
And the rest is history, man. Here we are, you know? Uh, this, this platform and this very first time that I saw it, and when I heard Carlos’s story, we have the same story, right? It’s similar because we’re both in the same business. We both come from the same industry, and we both have done it for a long enough time.
We both share the same… We both shared the same frustrations in the claims process. Carlos was just a little bit further ahead than I was on, on an idea, and man, JSTFYD is here and it rocks, guys So would you both say, before I toss it to Carlos to introduce himself, would you both say that getting paid is like a top pain point in both your companies, and that’s kind of how this came about?
Carlos Ramirez: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That’s a huge pain. So Carlos, go, Carlos, go ahead and introduce yourself and share more about your idea and kind of the inception of Justifeyed. Gotcha. Yeah. [00:03:00] My name is Carlos Ramirez. I’m a serial entrepreneur in the restoration space, everything from testing companies, abatement companies.
Currently own Pure Restore and Paragon Environmental, um, so a full service restoration company based out of Denver, Colorado. Um, how Justifeyed was created- Yeah … it was literally just some pain points within my company, right? And some bottlenecks. It started out with just sending emails to adjusters and then evolved into multiple other features.
But we’ll get into that a little bit later. Um, really all it is is these areas in my company were costing me time and costing me a lot of money. And in my entire career, um, I’ve really liked to solve problems, right? That’s been my entire career, whether it be operations, um, admin stuff, uh, anything that I can save even a few seconds on, um, I create processes and procedures.
If you’ve ever seen my operation at Pure Restore, you’ll [00:04:00] understand what I’m talking about. But, uh, that’s what I do. I save time, which equates to making more money. Yeah. Yep, absolutely. Okay, Max, your turn to introduce yourself. Yeah. So, um, I’ve been in marketing now for about 15 years, and I met Carlos when he was starting Pure Restore and, um, I was one of his first employees.
Max Pena: And, uh, as a marketer, recruiter, and I did a little admin work, I just wanted to help grow that business as much as possible, and I learned, um, a lot working with Carlos. And yeah, it was interesting working with an owner who kinda wanted to solve problems in a more long-term way. Mm-hmm. And, um, it’s just been a lot of fun to work on it.
So, so now I’m at JSTFYD full time, and we’re basically perfecting this thing and, and making the best product possible for restoration companies. I like that part about long term, a long-term solution, ’cause I think a lot of restorers are leaning into AI, but they’re [00:05:00] more solving, like, short-term issues and then if something breaks, they’re having to reinvent the wheel over and over and over again, um, versus truly solving something for the long term, for the long haul.
Michelle Blevins: So that’s, yeah, perfect. So Max, I’m actually gonna stick with you, ask you to put your marketing hat on to help me lay the groundwork here. So what… From a marketing standpoint, describe JSTFYD and what it does to the audience. Well, I think the reason why, like, it, it, it’s funny, like not even from the restoration perspective, but like from marketing and finance, um, I think there’s an eternal problem we have in restoration where there’s not a huge volume of leads in the market, and so we’re often trying to maximize what we have, you know?
Max Pena: And so y- you could try to chase more work, which there’s a lot that comes with that, more labor hours, managing more employees, maybe adding team members or adding a department. But what I thought was cool about JSTFYD as we were making it was like, man, this is making it so that my leads are going a lot [00:06:00] further for the company financially, right?
And every dollar counts. So again, whether you’re a finance person or marketing person, I think this is also very interesting workflow to have in a business because you’re getting the most out of what’s already there, and that’s honestly the first bottleneck. Like, before you expand your business, add more departments, chase down more leads, you should really have a foundation that makes a lot of sense to maximize your collections and do it efficiently before you maybe start expanding into those other things.
So, um, yeah, as a marketer, I love it because it’s like I get more out of my leads, and I can’t really do that any other way. It, it’s difficult to do that, so. Yeah. Yeah. It is. The marketing and sales are interesting. Well, the industry, in general, is interesting at the moment, I guess we’ll just say that. Jobs are harder to come by, so when you get a job or you get a lead, you really need to make that job and that lead and that opportunity count, for sure.
Michelle Blevins: Um, oh, say, so Carlos, I’m gonna kick it over to you ’cause I’m curious, you know, you obviously were seeing the pain point of [00:07:00] getting paid, and that’s, I think, where JSTFYD came about. But the big difference, I think here, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is the difference between, okay, contractors were getting paid, but they’re not getting paid for what they actually wrote the estimate and did the work for.
They’re getting paid a lot of times what the carrier is saying, “I reviewed, and I’m cutting this and this and this and then this, and here’s what I’m willing to pay you even though you did this amount of work.” So, you know, what kind of disconnect were you seeing from the contractor estimate to actually getting paid that led into JSTFYD?
Carlos Ramirez: Yeah. And we all know that’s called delay, deny, defend. Insurance carriers are very, very good at that tactic. Um, in the beginning of my career, I had no idea what that was until I actually read the book and then I was like, “Oh, this is actually a psychological tactic,” right? We’ve all gotta make payroll. Um, we get very emotional as owners- Mm-hmm
communicating with adjusters because we do good work, right? We take care of the homeowner, and then when we invoice, it’s like we’ve gotta wait 90, 120 days, [00:08:00] you know. And while trying to make payroll, it’s very difficult. Um, so how JSTFYD was created was simply combating delay, deny, defend. So responding to unreasonable demands, um, emails from adjusters.
We would get some emails that were 60 questions sometimes. And, uh- … you know, Mallory, um, my… She was my second, um, office manager ’cause we needed a second one. We were running 60 jobs a month, which isn’t really that much. But, um, when it comes to delay, deny, defend, you need an entire team to do collections.
Yes. So I had three employees. I had my general manager, my o- office manager and director of business operations, and their entire job was to get cash flow in, right? And these people were six-figure salary jobs. That’s a lot of money, right? Yeah. Costing my company a ton of money and a ton of time. So I started dabbling into AI, trying to figure out how I can streamline things, automate [00:09:00] things.
Um, and what I found out with AI was- It really depend, it depends on how they prompt it, right? Um, Gabe’s answers were different than Mallory’s and different than, you know, my other office admins, and sometimes it would hallucinate. So I was like, “There’s gotta be a better way.” I started reaching out to some AI companies and some engineering companies, um, and I asked them if they can help me build something for my company specifically.
Well, they did. It took them about six months to put something together. It started working for my company. I then started talking to some network partners. I do a lot of networking across the entire country, right? Um, I’m the type of restorer that I don’t have secrets. Whatever I’m doing that I can help somebody else, even if you’re in my backyard, I don’t care.
Like, I’ll give it to you. I’ll show you how to do it, right? So I let those restorers use… It wasn’t even, didn’t even have a name at this point. It was just, you know, this software. Um, I sent it out to them. They started killing it too. They were collecting faster. [00:10:00] Mm-hmm. They were collecting more. Um, and my company, I got to the point, you know, um, to where I didn’t need three people collecting anymore.
So it took that three-person job Down to one person with no experience. I ended up having Mallory master, um, this software, JSTFYD. Um, and she collects better and faster than all three positions in 27 hours, and that’s the truth. Like, we did the math. She clocks in every day, like, yeah, in 27 hours. So, um, our profit went through the roof, right?
My CPA was like, “What are you doing different this year?” And in my head, I’m like- Getting paid. Yeah, I was like, I was like, “I don’t know.” She’s like, “Well, you need to buy some trucks. You need to do something, right?” Um. Yeah. Yes. So I started thinking like, you know, we’re not doing any- anything different, and we haven’t really generated much more revenue, maybe 10, 15% for 2024.
And then it dawned on me. I’m like, “We are doing something different. [00:11:00] We’re saving a ton of money on payroll.” We- You know, let’s say you do 300 jobs a year, and you can increase your revenue by $1,000. That’s $300,000 of net profit, and that’s $300,000 of your … That adds on to EBITDA. So if you’re planning on exiting or selling, that’s the best way to get more money when you sell, is to increase your EBITDA.
Michelle Blevins: I mean, that’s all f- essentially free money, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s tremendous. Yes, you are absolutely right, and margins are slimmer now than ever. They’re … Than they have been in many recent years, so every little even portion of a percentage really counts at this point. Um, absolutely. So all right. So Doug, you have been talking about AI and the claims process for a while.
You and I have had many conversations about this over the recent years. So what feels different now than it did even a year ago when it comes to claims and especially how the carriers, I think, are processing, looking at [00:12:00] things, fighting back against the restorers, those kind of things? I think a year ago we were still talking about w-what AI could do, you know?
Doug Weatherman: Yeah. Like the endless possibilities of these machine systems and claims, and for both good and evil, what they could do for our side, what they could do for the carrier side. Now it has ingrained itself. It’s part of the actual claims infrastructure now. Um, there are systems that the carriers use that write emails that, that, um, go through your, uh, estimates for auditing and trigger points and anything that they can flag for denial of line item, right?
Or denial of an, you know, of entire section of line items. Um, JSTFYD and tools like it help to stop that gap, you know? Um, we have standards-based justification that comes out for each line item. It does your mitigation estimates, your reconstruction estimates. Uh, it can write your emails for you. We’ve got a final review to make sure that you don’t miss any line items and that type of thing.
Um, but [00:13:00] the other side has all these tools, too. What JSTFYD- Yeah … is, is, is it’s a claims management system for the restoration side of the ball. They have had their systems, and we’ve all seen their emails that say, “We don’t pay for this, we don’t pay for that.” Or, you know, “Our estimating guidelines don’t cover” whatever the heck it is.
But none of that actually matters to the loss. There– I don’t– It doesn’t necessarily matter what’s, what they’re, what, you know, what a carrier’s rules is to- compared to what it has to take to put these people back to pre-loss conditions. And there’s a lot of gray area there that JSTFYD helps close the gap of.
Artificial intelligence a year ago was here. It was, it was in restoration. I mean, make no mistake, if you guys think it’s just now showing up, you’re, you’re behind. And we as an industry are probably behind in the carrier application of the same exact type of systems. So- What the restorer needs to understand is that we’re, we’re not negotiating with adjusters anymore across the desk.
Um, uh, increasingly technology is sitting behind [00:14:00] the adjuster and you don’t even talk to them, and you may not even know that you’re not talking to a human being. It may seem like you’re in fact interacting with an adjuster. Guys, these systems are that smart. So is JSTFYD. You will not know that our emails are not coming from a human who’s highly educated in every standards and, and, and, uh, highly experienced in restoration.
We, we’ve educated this system as restorers to make a system for the restoration industry. In, in my experience in technology in this industry, the most powerful tools that we’ve had are the ones that have been built by restorers, by people who actually knew what they were, what the problem was, and they saw the field of vision to solve it.
That wa- is what I think separates us from a lot of other things in, in our market, and I think it separates the industry or, or our tool from uh, the industry tools that the insurance people have. It’s, it’s a big gap and we’re, we’re trying to close that in profitability, saving time, making more money. [00:15:00] All these things are real, and I mean, Carlos has the same problem that I have, that…
I mean, we can, we can pull a panel of 7,000 restorers right now and they’ll all be like, “You know what? That collections.” You know? And I’m paying a whole bunch of people to spend a whole bunch of time. It’s a universal issue. So Carlos had the foresight to start solving that problem, and he… W- going down that road for your own company is, is, you know, that’s what most of us do.
We try to solve our own problems for our own organizations. But just like Carlos said, you guys all know me too, you stumble on something that works and you can’t really keep that under the, under the veil anymore. You, you, you wanna get a megaphone and start shouting it from the rooftops, and the case study that we have published for, for Pure Restore on, on our website shows exactly what Carlos is talking about.
It makes a large difference in the bottom line of your company, period. Yes, absolutely. We are in such an era where we… like restorers need to work together. We are… typically the industry is behind on the tech curve, that it’s always been that way. I remember when [00:16:00] I entered the industry, it was the paper monster era and we were trying to get rid of all the paper files and move everybody to doing stuff electronically, and so we’ve moved beyond that.
Michelle Blevins: But, um, you know, the carriers have a lot more resources than restorers do, so the more that we can work together to solve some of these problems, the better. Absolutely. So I would love for one of you, and I will let you decide who, um, wants to volunteer as tribute, who… explain how JSTFYD works. If I’m a contractor and I am starting to use the platform, how does it integrate with my company?
Carlos Ramirez: What does that look like? Especially if you can’t tell that it’s Michelle Blevins res- corresponding or it’s XYZ in the platform I can answer that. Okay. Fire away, Carlos. Get ’em. Okay. Get ’em. That’s all right. So, so JSTFYD has four different features, okay? So the first feature, I’m gonna tell you what the problem was, and then I’ll tell you how we solved it, right?
One of our [00:17:00] problems at Pure Restore was my operations manager and my general manager were being bombarded by questions by, from technicians all day long. Their phones were blowing up. Mm-hmm. My technicians are smart, they’re some of the best, okay? However, sometimes technicians just need to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
So- … it’s kinda like they need to hear it from you so if they do something, they don’t get in trouble if it was wrong, right? Yeah. Well, that was taking a lot of time, and I constantly found my managers on the phone with my technicians more so than with adjusters and homeowners and so on and so forth. So we started using AI, like ChatGPT and stuff like that, but again, it started hallucinating.
You would ask it a question, and then it would say, “Hey, do this, this, and this and this.” Well, my system does not do that. My system will not give you answers unless it has all the information needed. You could literally do a side-by-side comparison with ChatGPT and JSTFYD, and you can ask JSTFYD, “Hey, I have water coming in my basement.
What should I do?” My system is gonna say, [00:18:00] “Well, hang on a second. Where’s the source? Where’d the water come in at? How long has it been there? Is there a smell?” Right? It’s gonna be asking questions- Mm-hmm … much like I would or my operations manager to my technicians. ChatGPT is gonna say, “Here’s 40 things you should do.”
I don’t want my technicians doing that, right? No. So it is- No … it is a An AI to where technicians can use to ask questions about the industry, um, regulations, standards, codes in your area, and it’ll give you a proper answer based off of the information that you have, right? Um, that’s the first thing that it does.
So the second thing that it does is it has final review. Here’s where we’re a little bit different from what’s out there currently. Our final review, you can throw in … It doesn’t matter. You can throw in an e- Xactimate, you can throw in, you know, um, Symbility, you can throw in, um … We even have an estimating software I created back in, like, 2017, 2018.
It’s basically time, equipment, and material. Yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:19:00] Mm-hmm. Right? And it gathers all the information from what you put in the system. It can read anything from Alvey, um, Docusketches, I mean, you name it. You, you don’t have to be- That’s very cool … with one company, right? It’s a bolt on to anything. Um, and it’ll read all your moisture logs, everything, and it’ll suggest line items, um, or scope of work, um, that you may have missed.
So the bottleneck within my company was my estimators, highly paid, right? Their time is valuable. I had a rule in my company where you have to have a second pair of eyes on every estimate or invoice that you send out, period. Mm-hmm. Right? ‘Cause there’s a lot of money being left on the table. Yeah. And you get complacent sitting at the computer for 45 minutes to an hour.
I always tell my guys, “Go take a break. Take a walk around the building, come back. You’re gonna remember something, right?” Mm-hmm. “Going through all these photos.” And sure enough, they do. But, you know, in my company, you had to have a second pair of eyes on every estimate or invoice. What JustifAI does, it [00:20:00] does that for you, right?
So no longer do I have two high-salary payroll people, right, um, looking at things, because let’s say it takes an hour to do the invoice or the estimate, it’s gonna take somebody 30, 45 minutes to review that ’cause they have to go through all the same information that the first person did. So it’s taking a lot of time.
So final review, that’s how you make money. It’ll suggest line items that you may have missed. It’s a second pair of eyes that does not make mistakes. Um, and that’s how you increase your revenue. Fun fact about Pure Restore is our average, our average water damage job, this does not include contents, this doesn’t include, um, you know, recon.
This … Nothing. This is literally just water. My average is 17,000. It’s actually, like, 16,800 and, like, 70 bucks. Wow. I can’t remember the exact number. And it’s based off of hundreds and hundreds of jobs, big, small. But our average is almost 17,000, and the reason for that is because we don’t leave anything on the table.
If we did it, we’re gonna bill [00:21:00] for it. It’s JustifAI, right? So this- JSTFYD. Thanks. JSTFYD. I na- I named it JSTFYD because adjusters are always saying, “Can you justify this?” And it’s like, I did. I already did on the front end. Yes. I sent you 1,000 photos, right? Here’s my moisture logs. Oh, can you justify this?
Mm-hmm. Well, here it is again. So- More work. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the third thing that it does, um, and this is where everything kinda stems from, is, um, you can integrate it with your, your Outlook or your Gmail. Now, when an adjuster … You send out your claims packet through it, and that’s how the system flags the email, right?
Because we don’t want a lot of clutter in JSTFYD. We want it focused on, you know, just collecting. That’s it. Yeah. Um, so you’re not gonna get spam in JSTFYD. Um, so you send out your entire claims packet through our system. Um, it’ll also reflect in your Outlook, um, and your Gmail as well, on both side.
Yeah. [00:22:00] Now, when you send that out and the adjuster responds, the next morning or next two weeks, whenever they decide to respond, um, you’ll get a notification in JSTFYD. It’ll say, “Hey, this adjuster responded.” It’ll give you a AI summary, right? And then it’ll compose an email for you on all the questions or demands they have based off of all your field documentations, code, standards, and regulations.
That’s what it does. And now they’re- It’s all detailed … responding to us literally within 10 seconds. This literally would’ve took us, like, 30, 45 minutes to go through the pictures and, you know, just compose a response. Yeah. But what she does in the morning, she comes in, jumps in JSTFYD, ’cause we wanna focus on collecting, right?
That’s one of the most important things in a business is collecting revenue. Right. So she goes through the, the JSTFYD system. She’ll click on it. Okay, um, compose a response. It’ll compose a response, send, right? Now we put the ball back in their court, wait for them, and then our system will tell [00:23:00] us we’re waiting on these ones.
It’s been two days. We’ve sent this one, right? I’m waiting three days or whatever it should be. So they save us a lot of time. And one thing that we did with our system a little bit different, ’cause- This was in beta for a very long time. This, this thing was in beta for literally, I’m gonna, probably nine months, 10 months, right?
And restorers from across the country were using this, and I was paying for everything. I was not charging them any money, right? Wow. Yeah. So I was taking up the bill for everything that we were using, but, uh, we learned a lot. Yeah. And what we found was when you respond in an AI type of way, right, real analytical, whatever else, some adjusters take offense to that.
Mm-hmm. And sometimes adjusters are nice, and we wanna keep them nice. Uh-huh. So what we found that when the nice adjuster would respond in a nice way and then JSTFYD was responding like a robot, like, “No, no, no, um, this, this, this,” and straight to the [00:24:00] point, real analytical, it would rub them the wrong way.
And now that nice adjuster, which we don’t come across them very often, um, would come back and they would be ticked off ’cause they know we’re using AI So what do we do? Um, we use auto tone. Mm. Right? So our system has six different tones. It’ll match the energy of the email coming in. If the adjuster’s nice-
it responds in a very nice way. It automatically will detect this. If the adjuster’s very stern and ana- analytical, it’ll respond the exact same way. One other thing that our system does is it always will request the undisputed amount, ’cause what I found is they’ll give you about 60% of your bill, right?
Well, that’ll make my payroll, and I need that money coming in. So our system will automatically say… If they say, “Okay, 25,000, we’ll give you 15,” our system says, “We don’t agree to that and here’s why. Here’s this photo, here’s this moisture log,” so on and so forth, “But please release the undisputed amount and we’ll figure out [00:25:00] the rest.”
This keeps money coming in the door so we can make payroll. That’s a lot. That really helps us a, a ton. Um, you know, the fourth thing that it does is comparatives, right? Mm-hmm. I’ve never really done recon in my career, ’cause I’ve always hated recon. It’s, like, 90% of my headache and, like, 10% of my revenue.
Yeah. So all of my companies throughout my entire career, I’ve, I’ve been very spoiled, right? In not doing any, any kind of recon. Um, but now that we have Justifyd, I’m, I’m actually dabbling into that, and we’re doing really well because we have the comparative feature. These adjusters will send a comparative, and we can throw that, um, into the system and it’ll flag all the dis- discrepancies.
And not only will it flag it, but it’ll actually justify why we’re correct and they’re incorrect based off of code, standards, and regulations. Interesting. And it really helps at the time. So that’s the fourth thing that it does. It does, it does comparatives. I love the auto toning, ’cause people are like, “You can’t tell the tone through via [00:26:00] email or text.”
Michelle Blevins: I’m like, “100 you can.” Yeah. Yes. Yes, you can. Right. Don’t tell me you didn’t mean it that way. Yes, you did. Yeah. My favorite part of email. Or that last email. Yeah. Yeah. It’s almost worse ’cause you don’t know the person, so you have no idea, like, what their natural intonation is. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But think of the power of those features though too, like, especially even for the independent restorer.
Doug Weatherman: Like Carlos was talking about, it’s a system that automatically demands the undisputed amount. Mm-hmm. So you get that money coming in, right? So- And making payroll is a huge deal, right? Yeah. I mean, being able to have the cash flow, cash flow is always a restoration problem. Like, we’ve always been talking about it for years and years and years.
So look at the levels of things that this can solve, right? And Carlos was just telling you about how, how it works for, for Pure Restore, but like he was saying too, it’s a true bolt-on system, okay? It goes through… He, he uses Matterport and Albi. We use… Or he uses Docusketch and Albi. We use Matterport and Clean Claims.
There’s no difference in the output [00:27:00] of the data from the input of the report. If, if it’s all there, it’s all there, and it can take in, ingest, and then export whatever you need it to export in order to justify your position. And code standards and regulations in Rebuild Comparative, guys, run our comparative against anybody’s.
I, I, I’ll put… Please- … run our comparative- Please … against anyone’s, okay? And you tell me if our code standards and regulations deployment isn’t top-notch. Guys, it’s, it’s state-of-the-art. The industry is moving towards that area. When we’re complaining about dealing with uneducated adjusters, instead of writing the same email, like I handle the reconstruction division for Rare Restoration.
Instead of writing the same email over and over and over and over and over again explaining why we have to do prime and paint or prime and two coats or whatever, instead of sending that same justification and typing it out, I actually physically had a copy and paste rebuttal sheet that was, if they say this, I say this, if they say [00:28:00] that, I say that, and it used to just be that.
Now, everything goes through JSTFYD. My replies are doctorate level, and I, we… I’ve been finding that I… we’ve been even educating adjusters who didn’t know that there were certain things that were building code, ’cause building codes in Colorado change by zip code. Where these guys are, there’s different roofing codes than there are where I am.
It’s totally different. We, we… The adoption of code is like that nationwide. So being able to have a tool that you can go from one side of your city to the other and have the exact same qualification and information right behind you puts us in the driver’s seat where we have not necessarily been for some time.
The, the bolt-on system, it, it… We, we don’t change the way that you do anything. This system works with however you do restoration, whatever part of restoration you do, whatever, you know, however conglomeration of services that you have, JSTFYD works in the center of it all. I love it. Okay, those were perfect.
Michelle Blevins: Thank you. You both explained that so clearly. So my [00:29:00] next question I’m gonna put to Max. So in my latest, um, publisher’s note, I was kind of venting about the amount of AI platforms, AI tools in the industry. My inbox gets full. I’m sure all four, all four of our inboxes every day are like, “Look at this tool.
Look at that tool. Try this, try that.” And this admittedly is more robust. Like, I’m just gonna say that before I even ask the question. But Max, I’m sure that you get contractors that you’re trying to pitch to, sell to, market to, whatever that may be, get them to try out JSTFYD, and they’re like, “What makes this different than the 20 other things that have hit my inbox this week?”
Max Pena: So how do you respond to that? Or how… What’s kind of your justification, actually, no pun intended, for getting people to try it out? Um, one part of it is A-a-and I know we touched on it a little bit, but I’m gonna kinda expand on why I think it’s important, but this was built by restorers, it’s kind of the first layer.
But it’s also built by restorers who their goal, like, was always [00:30:00] really optimizing their business from the beginning. And, like, Doug and Carlos I’ve always noticed are similar where they’ve always been kind of on the front, uh, like the edge of, of technology and stuff like that, right? And so that’s helped them stay really lean, um, make really healthy revenue while keeping their sanity and not working in the office until 9 or 10 o’clock at night, right?
And so when we made JSTFYD, one, it, r-restorers made it. Two, you have different people from different companies that have reached success in different ways who you have different perspectives that have created it. It wasn’t like one tunnel vision, like person, one, one perspective of how to collect or how to approach these problems.
Um, the other layer of it is that, um, like Pure Store has grown really, really fast in the last few years, and, um, I, I’m not saying that, like, we did anything different basically besides just using JSTFYD, especially the last year, and that’s [00:31:00] where, like Carlos said, our numbers really exploded even though we didn’t hunt down a ton of more work, stress, and projects.
We just were like focused on, “Hey, how do we make the most of what we have?” So I think o-o-one of the differences what we’ve created over time with JSTFYD is more of a workflow, um, something that you can take claims from start to finish, and it’s not like these separate parts which is what we’re noticing a lot of these things do which is, hey, this software does just comparatives, or this one is more focused on reconstruction.
Um, we’ve just, uh, seen these different things and we’re like, “I, I need something that is all in one toolkit because I don’t wanna invest in three or four pieces of AI or software that handles collections,” right? And that seems to be kind of the next phase we’re hitting is, hey, we’ve kind of mastered the field tech software.
So the n- the next frontier is collections, and I think one of the biggest challenges is gonna be, yeah, how do people stand out when AI has a very similar core to it, [00:32:00] right? You have these, you know, Claude, GPT. A lot of these language models are kind of the Where you start when you’re creating software that- Mm-hmm
that utilizes AI and stuff like that. But, um, but they’re not designed for restorers. So when we create JSTFYD, it’s like, okay, one, we need a whole workflow that’s addressing multiple parts of the issue, otherwise we’re just kinda like flipping between different apps and windows and stuff. Yeah. Like, how do we contain everything to one space and have it make complete logical sense from like, hey, I’m gonna create a project, upload all my documents, and now every time I do something in JSTFYD, all those documents are already in there processed, ready to go.
Um, so it just cuts out a lot of steps when we’re, like, arguing and, and stuff like that. So again, I think we try to look at this problem a little more holistically as opposed to, oh, here’s one problem, we’re gonna solve it. Here’s a different problem, we’re gonna solve it. It’s more of like, here’s- Here’s the entire collections process.
Michelle Blevins: We need to solve this problem from, from start to, to finish. Yes. Ab- yep, that make, that makes good sense. I’m a little curious, you know, [00:33:00] because, Carlos, you talked about how your team has changed through this. There’s a little bit of this human in the loop conversation still here a little bit. Like, for example, using the auto-tone to write an email, do you automatically recommend, “Yep, it wrote the email.
Let it send it for you,” or is there a little bit of… Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Where should the humans in the loop still be? Even though this solves a lot of problems, it’s really gonna speed up your processes, where are, where should the human touch points be? We’re still legally responsible for any email or anything that we send out, so you have to double-check everything.
Carlos Ramirez: Yeah. But it does save a lot of time in composing it. Yes. Absolutely. You know, is our, is our system accurate, and would I trust it just to click it and send? I would, but I’m the creator, right? Yeah. And I know that if I send an email and it’s saying, “Hey, we, we were out there for 10 days,” and actually it was four days, I know that technically I’m committing insurance fraud, right?
I’m telling the carrier [00:34:00] something that’s not true, and I don’t wanna be in that boat. I don’t think anybody does. Yeah. So just like you would double-check your employees, right, you know, while training them, you should double-check the system always, no matter what. No matter how good it is, always double-check.
I, I come from the oil field, right? I was in the oil field from high school for 10 years. Out there, people die when you make mistakes, okay? Mm-hmm. There was a saying out there, “Double-check the double-checker,” right? If you ever heard somebody say, “Hey, I double-checked it,” well, we would double-check them too because 10, you know, 10 psi and 1,000 psi, they both can kill you, right?
So it’s really important that you’re, you’re double-checking things, whether it be technology, you know, gauges, whatever. So- Yeah … always double-check. Yeah. That’s a very good point. Um, okay, maybe last question, maybe. We’ll see. I don’t know. Um, but I want this to go to all three of you. So, Doug, I’ll start with you on this one.
Michelle Blevins: Where should contractors be careful with AI? Like, where should they never blindly trust? I [00:35:00] actually just wrapped up a Mulder Mediation webinar before this, and this is one of the questions we talked about there as well. People just, we get in this rivi- rhythm of going to jobs every day, and we get kinda just, like, in autopilot, auto mode.
Doug Weatherman: Like, we know what to do, and we just roll through it. So where do contractors need to be careful when it comes to AI and not just blindly trust, trust it? I’ve been saying this one a bunch lately I feel like too, but stop putting all your clients’ PII into ChatGPT and Claude. I think that’s probably one of the biggest things.
Um, there are a ton of uses for commercial large language models and, um, app development and things like that, but have you asked your clients how they felt about having their data sent out to an internationally, you know, system and whatnot? Mm-hmm. It– Your– Y- Uh, how, how do you– how would they feel about their data being sold by you ef-effectively for $0, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, [00:36:00] more to the point, have, have you asked JSTFYD, right? Okay, um, we have top-level security. Um, neither our users or, um, their, their clients’ data are being sold anywhere, where, where it doesn’t ever leave the system. It doesn’t ever leave your system. It doesn’t come to our system. It doesn’t ever leave your individual license to JSTFYD.
Um, I also never– I would never blindly trust AI, um, no matter what, right? Mm-hmm. You have to have a human in the middle to, to make sure that what you’re deploying, like Carla said, we are legally responsible to that level of everything that our companies output. Unless you guys wanna end up in a courtroom explaining why the computer got you there, it’s just avoid it altogether, right?
I, I also wouldn’t hand AI o- any final authority over like causation, coverage, code interpretation, um, anything like that where there was a procedure necessary, right? [00:37:00] AI can make the wrong answer sound incredibly intelligent, and that’s, I think, the biggest danger. Yes, yes, yes, it can. We still sometimes need to do the thought work behind things.
Max Pena: Yep. Um, okay, Max, any thoughts on that one? Anything, don’t blindly trust? Well, I, I have a, maybe a different piece of advice that’s kind of in that vein, but, like, if you’re a contractor and you’re interested in what’s going on, like, I really encourage you to be a part of the conversation because people’s voices are being heard right now as, um, this new technology is being developed and stuff.
And I think the biggest mistake would be kind of like waiting to see what other people do without ever, like, being a part of Facebook groups and stuff like that, where you’re figuring out how other contractors are maybe evolving to, to solve these issues in collections. Um, I, I think be part of the AI conversation if you want it to end up the way you want it.
And if you think you’re a good judge of what it should do or not do, a- again, when people are having conversations [00:38:00] online or in meetings or whatever, um, just remember that your voice is gonna probably be part of a much bigger solution in the next couple years as, um, things keep evolving. I mean, we’ve seen how much things have changed with AI in just the last two or three years.
Michelle Blevins: Um, so if you want it to benefit you, make sure you’re, you’re a part of the conversation. Yep. Yep. Uh, that’s a great point. There’s a lot of conversations going on, and I feel like contractors are on either side. And Doug, maybe you find, and Carlos find this too, like, contractors are either willing to have this conversation or they are not willing at all, and there’s kind of, at this point, not a ton in the middle.
They’re a little burned out on it, and so yeah, that’s a great point. We’ve, we’ve got two very different polls. Yes. Some people are, are embracing technology. The other people are embracing the highlighter. Yep. Embracing the highlighter. I’ve got, I’ve got family in the industry, and, uh, yeah, some of them are like, “Nope, not using AI, never will.”
Doug Weatherman: It’s like … I don’t know how [00:39:00] that’s gonna work out for you. I- I’m excited to see how the state of the industry data comes out, ’cause it keeps edging with AI, and I think this next year is gonna be the turning point where we’re gonna see really where that span really widens of who’s using it and who’s not, and the difference there.
Carlos Ramirez: So okay, Carlos, what should restorers not be blindly trusting out there? You know, there’s, there’s a lot of people out there creating these apps with, you know… It, it’s so easy to create an app. I can create a website in three seconds, right? Yes. Like, it’s crazy. And then you have that kind of power and you’re like, “I can do it myself.
I’m gonna do this. I’m just gonna ask it questions and I’m, it’s gonna prompt me to add stuff and features,” right? Don’t get stuck in that. N- when I say that we created this, we did not. I’m not a tech guy, right? Um, I have actual engineers that created this over a long stretch of [00:40:00] time. Um, these guys used to work for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.
They’re some of the best. They’re based out of London. Um, they’re great, right? So these guys know what to look out for. Sometimes they talk and I’m like, “I don’t even know what the heck you’re saying.” “But I know what I want it to do,” right? Yeah. As long as it does what I want it to do and it’s safe, yeah, let’s go.
Yeah. But I would say, you know- Instead of, put it to the test, right? If, if you hear somebody say, “Hey, I created this in two, three months,” you probably shouldn’t te- you know, try it out. Don’t put your information out there. Don’t trust everything blindly. Um, ask how it was created. Ask those questions. How safe is it?
Michelle Blevins: Is it SOC 2 compliant? I don’t know, right? Um, those are the questions that I would be asking. Mm-hmm. Um, Doug or Carlos, do either of you have, like, AI related policies within your companies of how your employees can or cannot use AI? [00:41:00] What platforms they maybe should be using? Not putting customer information in there or anything?
Doug Weatherman: Doug, go ahead. You’re nodding. Yeah. So what you got? Most definitely. I, um, I was one of the people preaching about this even a couple of years ago, that we needed to start- Mm-hmm … having policies in place for, for our own employees. Um, we have all kinds of them. We only use certain prompts when we’re looking for, uh, something generated.
We only prompt certain ways. Uh, we only use certain language models for certain things. We, um, have actually stopped subscribing to several language models since we’ve gotten JSTFYD off the ground, launched live and able to take in all the, all the job and volume that it’s able to now. We don’t use any language models anymore.
Um, the language model that’s inside of JSTFYD is, um, everything that, that I had in, in the two-minute technician GPT that I had, it’s everything in there on steroids. It will teach you at, at a master restorer level how to do your job. So that eliminates the need for, you know, calling the managers 15 times a day to make sure that you’re doing the right thing, like Carlos was [00:42:00] talking about before.
Sometimes technicians just need to hear it from the horse’s mouth. So I invented a new horse, right? So our company is one of the more technology forward companies that I think… I mean, I talk to a lot of restorers all over the country. I don’t think there’s a, there’s many organizations that are utilizing technology in the same fashion that Rare Restoration is.
Um, but we do, because of that, have to create very tight policies around it to make sure that anything doesn’t get us in legal hot water, right? Because I don’t wanna add micromanagement to my list of duties either. You know what I mean? I, I… So policies are in place to make sure that the right thing is done, and that our company export looks the same today that it did five years ago.
We’re still com- customer first. We’re still customer experience oriented, and we’ll still go, we’ll still go to the batter’s box against any adjuster in the region. Yeah. Fastest way to get an entrepreneur to wanna throw in the towel is if they have to micromanage anything or anyone. No, thank you. Don’t let us get in the weeds.
Michelle Blevins: You don’t want us in the weeds ever. Yeah. Okay, anything [00:43:00] else that any of you wanna add before we wrap it up? For people who are listening, you can find out more, it’s justfyd.com, but it’s J-S-T-F-Y-D.com, J-S-T-F-Y-D.com is where you can find out more, and these gentlemen are also on LinkedIn. You can find this everywhere.
Doug Weatherman: They’re pretty easy to find at this point. You can findable. Yeah. One big- They are findable. One big thing that I wanna stress is that we are absolutely secure in our data, number one. Number two, we are practically giving this whole thing away right now. There’s a $99 trial system on our website right now.
You can click it. You can run two or three jobs through it. When those two or three jobs come through, you will have made enough money to hit, to, to fill out your first month subscription. That’s a bet that we’re all running nationwide. If you guys lose that bet, you call any of us. We’ll figure out what happened immediately.
All right? The 99 bucks could change the way that you do collections in your restoration company, period. The one big thing I wanna make sure that w- that I, that we address before we leave is that we are [00:44:00] giving this system away right now. You give us 100 bucks, we’ll give you a whole new way to collect.
That’s almost like a no-brainer. I, I just wanna add one, one last thing, too. If you sign up for a demo on our website, we’ll, we’ll give you the rundown, but also if you come prepared with some project files, we’ll run your project through it so that way you don’t really have to guess how it works. Like, we’ll show you live what it would look like if we did, let’s say, a comparative with your invoice and the carriers.
Max Pena: Um, we wanna put our money where our mouth is, so, um, sign up for a demo, um, try the $100 trial. Like, we’re here to help, just let us know what we can do. Perfect. Love it. Carlos, any final words of wisdom here? Yeah, I, I’m more of a walker than a talker. You know? Like, put it to the test. Yeah. Give it a shot. If you hate it, you know, let us know.
Michelle Blevins: If you love it, then you got a new process. You can collect a lot of money. That’s the name of the game. Anything you can do to increase your margins, increase your anything at the moment. It’s hard out there. So all right, [00:45:00] gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. I super appreciate it. I look forward to crossing paths with you hopefully at some shows soon, and I hope you have an awesome rest of your day.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle. For more Restoration Today and the latest news, visit our website, cnrmagazine.com, and find the latest episodes of the Restoration Today podcast on your favorite podcasting platform.
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