GI199: What is a Public Adjuster with Andy Gurczak

GI199: What is a Public Adjuster with Andy Gurczak

Andy immigrated to America from Poland with his family at the age of nine. After working in the fire restoration industry, where he discovered his true calling: public adjusting. Over the last decade, Andy has not only protected thousands of people from being defrauded, but also helped them receive more money than what their insurance initially offered.

Watch The Episode Here:

Listen To The Podcast Here:

Transcript:

Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host Charles Carillo combines decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now, here’s your host, Charles Carillo.

Charles:
Do you have money sitting in the stock market? And you’re worried about it or worse. You have money sitting at the bank, not keeping up with inflation. My name is Charles Carillo, founder and managing partner of Harborside Partners. And since 2006, I’ve been investing my money and my family’s money into income producing properties. These are real assets, real properties with real addresses that produce real cash flow. At Harborside Partners, we provide passive investors who love real estate with a turnkey investing solution. If you want to put your money to work in real estate, but can’t find deals, don’t have the time to get funding in. The last thing that productive people want to do is manage real estate. We find the deals. We fund the deals and we manage the tenants, the termites and the properties. Partner with us at investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com. Go to investwithharborside.com. If you love real estate, you like the idea of passive income and believe that income producing properties will appreciate over time. Go to investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com.

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have Andy Gurczak. Andy immigrated to America from Poland with his family at the age of nine. After working in the fire restoration industry, where he discovered his true calling: public adjusting. Over the last decade, Andy has not only protected thousands of people from being defrauded, but also helped them receive more money than what their insurance initially offered. So thank you so much for being on the show, Andy.

Andy:
Thanks, Charles, appreciate you having me.

Charles:
So you got a very interesting backstory. Please tell us about your background, both personally and professionally and prior to getting involved in public adjusting.

Andy:
Yeah, so personally you know, I was con you know, we immigrated here in 99. You know, kind of worked my way around you know, did odd jobs, you know, started working when I was like 15 at 16, we started grocery store. Then even in my high school, I started working selling cars at the dealership. After dead ended, I went into construction had my own construction company for a little bit, and then I met a, a public adjuster who was in this industry for 40 years, who kind of finally took me under the wing and taught me everything. And kind of really was glued on. I knew the construction side already. But learning the policies and negotiations mm-hmm. <Affirmative> everything on that, that was where that drifted and that’s how it got me to this day.

Charles:
Is that how most public adjusters ha start is that they have some construction background or it’s not a prerequisite or something you don’t

Andy:
See? It’s, it’s not a prerequisite when it comes to the insurance side. I don’t think any of the new adjusters have any construction insight Now they’re 22, 23 out of college, so, yeah. Yeah, that’s what, that’s what makes it scary for the clients that don’t know what’s gonna happen.

Charles:
Yeah, I I just it’s getting difficult if you’re having someone come out to your property and they’ve never been, been involved with something like that prior, on the other side of the table before. So,

Andy:
So, so now what they’ll do is they’ll send an engineer out, right? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, they’ll send a third party to kind of cover their butts. That’s basically what they’re doing.

Charles:
Yeah. Interesting. So, Andy, what is a public adjuster?

Andy:
Yeah, public adjuster in layman terms, is a private adjuster, an adjuster that you hire. He works only for you, the insured. Just like if you were in a car accident and even with your own insurance, you hire an attorney to help you. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> it’s the same thing here except it’s fraction of the cost and a PA walks documents, the loss negotiates. He can argue the policy, the policy terms and everything else. So it’s basically an adjuster that works for you against your insurance company to get you the most interesting on the bottom line.

Charles:
So when, when would someone, because obviously I imagine most people listening have had some run in with filing a claim. Obviously people, everybody pays insurance of one sort of another. But when would I engage, or when would an investor, real estate investor engage the services of a public adjuster?

Andy:
Yeah, the best would be day one. As soon as you have a claim is when you want to call a public adjuster. So, you know, most investors or you know, I don’t know how many investors have a public adjuster on your team, if you don’t recommend getting one on your team, because the best time is to call is even before you. Like, as soon as something happens, you wanna call that PA and say, Hey, should we file this claim? Should we not file? Is this a good claim to, you know, a, a good PA that handles claims? We’ll tell you and we’ll walk you through it. Just like our clients do, they’ll call us for anything and then we’ll say, okay, well this claim we probably wouldn’t follow. Right? We wouldn’t we wouldn’t file this payment because, you know, it’s small damage, it might not go past the deductible. So you wanna get, get ’em as quickly as possible in the claims process.

Charles:
Yeah. It’s like having a, like a litigator on your team. You’re probably not gonna be using using ’em. Hopefully you’re not using them. But when you do, you don’t wanna be finding and building a relationship with one. You want to have one that you, Hey, you know, we’ve spoken a year ago and now I have this issue.

Andy:
So yeah, if you’re build, if you’re building a real estate team, I would say, you know, besides your contractor, a good agent, you know, all those people that come, you know, an attorney to have a PA on your side that that is gonna be, you know, beneficial when something does happen.

Charles:
So the types of claims that a public adjuster helps with, can you kind of go through obviously if something happened to one of my properties, like my garage, you know, burned down or something like this, yeah. I would be engaging your, are there any other claims that you might not think of that you’d be engaging services of a public adjuster on?

Andy:
Yeah. Broken pipes. A lot of claims we get our broken pipes. Roofing claims, we don’t do much residential roofing. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. We do, our company specialize in large loss where whether it comes to residential and, and commercial. So commercial roofing claims, whether it’s hail, wind, when it comes to home suppliers, water you know, sewer backups. Those we get a lot too cuz people get denied for those or don’t have coverage, but sometimes they don’t know that it’s actually, there’s another word you can use that something else ha that your claim can be covered. So those are very common as well.

Charles:
Interesting. so, you know, well let’s just kinda start from the beginning cause I think a lot of people with insurance, it’s really they talk to their friend and they get an, a name from insurance or a, it’s like a real estate agent, right? They get someone’s real estate Yep. Relative theirs and they find their agent. But there’s thousands of insurance agents out there. I mean, like what should a real estate investor be looking for in an agent when they begin the process of ensuring, let’s say their first rental property?

Andy:
Yeah. It’s hard to say, you know, when it comes to agents, you know, agents there to sell a policy mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and it’s hard to see which one, which agents could, I would recommend independent agents that sell different carriers. But if you obviously wanna save on your premiums, which a lot of people do, they’ll go to, you know, some of the bigger names, some of the bigger companies. But if you can find, and you’re gonna be an investor and investing in a lot of properties, yeah. You wanna find a local agent or an agent that sells different policies, that sells commercial, that knows in invest. What you wanna ask him is, do you ensure or do you deal with, you know, invest other investors that buy properties? Yes, I do. Because then now he’s gonna have knowledge into different coverages because you’re not talking just about a home where they’re, it’s just structure, you know detached garage and personal contents, right?

Andy:
You’re talking about liability. There’s different there’s different avenues, different endorsements you’re gonna need when you get into big multi-unit buildings, right? So the best would be obviously ask a referral, ask someone, do you have a good agent? But do your due diligence. Ask questions, right? Ask, am I insured for this? What happens if this happens? That’s your best bet. It, it’s, there’s no really area where you can go, whether even with the PA where you can find, you know, the right PA or the right agent. There’s no source i that I, we found at least that, that you can use.

Charles:
Yeah. And I, it’s, it’s with the carriers, it’s so interesting because you’ll living in Florida now and old property, something that’s built like the seventies and coming from older parts of New England and old properties built in 1900, right? Correct. so it’s like there’s all different types of carriers that are going to have the appetite for risk. So I find that as if you you know, if you’re finding that another, a real, real estate agent in that market that you can kind of, that it has a similar property similar size, similar vintage you get their referral, that’s a great way of doing it to their independent agent. And then that person definitely has the carriers of what I have found previously

Andy:
And you, you, you wanna do a due diligence cuz agents are just humans and just cuz they’re an agent and they say they’ve been doing it for 30 years, like I always say, doesn’t mean they’ve been doing it. Right. I literally just had an agent say hey, why you’re helping our client, I want, yes I am. Well you know, they’re only gonna get paid, you know, their limit is 10,000, they’re gonna get 9,000 after deductible. I said, well no, because it’s gonna be deductible’s gonna be waived cause we’re way over limits. Well no, that’s not true and you know, big argument with me, I’m okay, that’s fine. I’m not gonna argue. I I know the policy claim gets paid 10,000 so she, you know, argued with me for as long as she, you know, that it’s nine grand, the deductible’s gonna be taken this and that. Agents are just, they, they don’t even know the policies they’re selling. So you really have to do your due diligence and really have to look into the agent you’re gonna work with.

Charles:
Yeah. The other thing too is when you’re getting into obviously we’re not really talking too much about liability with policies here, but that’s something very important I found with business owner policies and people agents I’ve worked with before that are very knowledgeable of those policies. They’ll walk you through the whole thing and give you examples from previous clients. Whereas someone that has no idea that’s just selling home insurance liability is not the biggest thing, but you start getting into, you know, rental properties of any size, liability is a big thing that you need to have on that policy. It’s not like a Yeah. A main thing you’re looking at.

Andy:
And some agents and some agents will tell you, if you call ’em and ask ’em that they’ll say, well we do primary residents and then we do some commercial or what do you mean some commercial? Right? How much commercial and what kind of size of buildings? I want the agent that does only commercial, right? That’s only doing investment building. That’s the agent. Cause the agent knows what he is ensuring and he is been doing it for a long time.

Charles:
Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great point. So let’s talk about the policies. When, when you’re reviewing different policies and different options with the agent. Okay. You know, what is most important in that policy that, let’s say you want to see if you had a rental property before you make the decision of one carrier or one policy for another.

Andy:
I wanna read the policy. And what’s, what’s scary now is when I always ask when we insure our properties with with different carriers, I always ask, let me see a policy. And most of the time like, well the agents will say, well, well we don’t have the policy, we don’t provide the, what do you mean you’re gonna insure me, not provide me the policy. Yeah. That’s really the, that’s what’s happening now. People are buying, people are paying premiums and buying insurance before they see the policy. So I always ask to see the policy, you know, read the policy and, and just have a copy, make sure there’s nothing in there, the exclusions or there’s nothing in there that, that, you know, and it’s easy for us, you know, I guess for me to say, cuz all we do is we policies and interpret policies, right.

Andy:
But for someone buying an investment property, getting a copy of the policy, they have no idea what they’re looking at. It’s supposed to be written in, in, you know, plain English, but it’s written. Yeah. It, it’s definitely written to, you know, where you’re, you’re reading it and you’re like, you have no idea what you’re reading. So when I w when you look at it, when you, what would I would be looking at, I would make sure what’s the limits, right? Yeah. What’s the limits? Do they have the right limits for the property? Is there any exclusions? I’m always looking, is there anything excluded because, you know, that’s where the insurance company’s gonna keep an eye on, okay, this is excluded, we don’t pay for this, we don’t pay for this. So I’m looking at the exclusions, the endorsements, the policy limits. Right? Those are the three biggest factors I kind of wanna look into.

Charles:
Interesting. Okay. That, that’s some great information. So let’s just say it’s gotten to the point where a real estate investor is preparing for an insurance claim. Like what is, what is one of the things that they should do when starting that process? Other, other than letting their insurance company know? Yeah. What would you say?

Andy:
Yeah, so if you’re not gonna hire a public adjuster, cuz definitely recommend hiring a pa. Before you file the claim, let them handle the claim. Oh, okay. File it and do everything a hundred percent. But if some people are, well I, they’re my insurance, the agent said they’re gonna take care of me and everyone’s gonna be my friend. Great. File it on your own. Make sure you set the reserves high note. So when you call that claimant is you explain to ’em that you know what size the loss is. Don’t underestimate the loss, don’t say hey, mm-hmm <affirmative>, we just had a little bit of smoke in the kitchen. No. Say, hey there’s smoke. You know, look and tell ’em exactly the damage and say this is gonna be a lot of damage. You know, and, and you don’t have to give an amount.

Andy:
But that way they set the reserves really high. And now sometimes it’s not the person taking the call. It might be the adjuster that calls you the same day or the next day That kind of gets an idea from you what size of the loss is so he can set the reserve. But whoever you’re discussing those, those first couple days, the loss with, you wanna explain the size of it because what happens is a lot of people set the reserves too low that, you know, and the reserves are set low. So then when we come in and we’re like, yeah, this is a huge, this is a large claim, they’re like, well our reserves were only a hundred thousand and we’re looking at it, well this is a $300,000 claim. So now you’re going through like three, four different managers different steps to get, you know, to, to override that cause you’re going over the reserves and it makes the claim very difficult.

Charles:
So what, what type of size claim do you usually see people pulling you in on as bringing a public adjuster in

Andy:
From couple thousand to, you know, to 200,000 to the, to the large claims? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and we get a lot of calls for even car acc you know, for cars. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> there were in accidents or cars getting claims paid for cars undervalued. Which we don’t personally do. There’s other firms that do. But people will call for anything cuz again, they’re seeing this happen more frequent now. And they’re seeing it more frequent and there’s more education online about getting help with your claim. Whereas before there really wasn’t. You were just, Hey, my claim I don’t think it’s fair and what do I do now? And that was it. So

Charles:
Yeah, I think a lot of people underestimate what it costs for doing anything too. Repairing anything, whether it’s a car, whether it their house, whether it’s Correct. A rehab project. I mean I’ve, people have hit me before in a car and they’re, oh that’s just a small thing. And then, and like you think of myself, no it’s not. And you know, it comes out that it’s like a $2,000 accident with hitting a bumper cuz a bumper is a bumper and it’s just like, you wouldn’t think that, but it’s, it’s just what it is today.

Andy:
But you gotta think about it. It’s not just a bumper now, right? Yeah. Now it’s a bumper, now it’s sensors. Now there’s decals, there’s so much details and that’s the stuff we find when we go into property. Well I, I looks like they, I just feel like they didn’t pay me fairly or some people, you know, oh, I got a good claim, they paid me a fair amount and I go through it. I’m like, okay, well they paid for your house, but are you, you just had a fire. Are you not replacing the duct work or cleaning it? Are you not gonna replace the furnace or check it out? Right. I mean, just little stuff, right. Those little stuff and then adds up 10, 30, 40, 50,000 just keeps adding up because those are the little stuff that if you don’t have the expertise in this, you don’t know what you’re looking at.

Andy:
The, the, the estimate they give you. It’s u used with two different programs and it’s so, so if you’ve never read it or you’ve never seen one like it, you have no idea what you’re looking at. You know, it’s got remove and replace drywall and it’s got, but unless you actually know what’s included in those line items, you don’t know what you’re fighting. You don’t know. You’re just looking at the final amount, the, you know, 50,000 but you don’t know, you know, you’re looking, it looks good 50,000, but you actually don’t know. They might might have missed another 50 if you actually went through it.

Charles:
Interesting. so we spoke about before about engaging the public adjuster. Now how when like, cause obviously you’ll have some people that will engage their attorney. When, when, when do you do either of these? Correct. I mean imagine you’ve worked with attorneys before with this.

Andy:
Yeah. And there, and there’s no reason to hire an attorney in the beginning of the process of your claim. Right. Okay. A, a public adjuster should take you from A to Z mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Now we have claims all the time where Yeah. Claim is denied for no good reason and just whatever we’ve done, we just can’t get it overturned. And in that point you have to go to an attorney mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or you see bad faith playing out, then you might wanna tell the cl no, we would tell the client, Hey look into, you know, an attorney or discuss an attorney cuz this is what’s happening with the claim. Right. They’re not doing this, they’re not doing this. And we see that a lot. You know, getting an attorney, you’re getting into, you know, taking a big percentage of your claim and it’s, you never wanna go that route and it’s not a route we wanna go. We definitely want to take and settle the claim, but in some instances you have to. There is no mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So un when your claim is flat denied that’s, I guess that’s, or you’re seeing bad faith, that’s when you wanna probably discuss it with an attorney. Yes. Other than that a PA is, is can do everything else.

Charles:
Yeah. So bring on the public adjuster before you even tell your insurance company. And then at that point if, yeah, like you said, if it becomes a issue with the insurance company or it’s been closed Yeah. That’s when you’re engaging the services of a attorney.

Andy:
Yeah. We just, we just had a, a situation where a young lady had a fire in Ohio, smoke damage and agent, you know, we’re dealing with adjuster and agent calls and says you know, did she have someone come mitigate Cause I have some guys that could come and start cleaning up. So whatcha are you guys gonna clean up? I have to establish the loss amount. The, the damage has already occurred. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, she’s already mitigated the damage because she’s already she’s already boarded up the property, no one can get in. The power’s shut off, everything’s done. She’s already mitigated. The damage is damaged. You just wanna send someone in there to scrub the walls, clean ’em and be done. That’s not, and the agent was pushing on this. I’m like, that’s not how you settle claims. You know, she’s mitigated. Now we have to determine what is the, what is the scope, what is the amount and everything that’s damaged. And then that’s what’s owed to her. And then she can hire a contractor to do all the work. What they wanna do is just shoot people in there and start cleaning up and covering all the evidence.

Charles:
Mm-Hmm. Okay. Yeah. So

Andy:
That’s where aj and the reason I’m getting to is where agents, agents are agents, they should, you know, they’re, they’re in their lane. Public justice is in his lane and an attorney’s in his lane. But what happens is people like to get their agent involved and the agents sometimes screw up the claim and make it even worse than it’s supposed to

Charles:
Be. So what, I mean, I’ve, I’ve had claims before on properties and I’ve had agents handle ’em in different, different ways, let’s say. Yeah. What should be the role of an insurance agent after that claim has been filed? Whether you file it or you’re having your per public adjuster doing it.

Andy:
Nothing. An agent’s job is, is, is nothing do they’ve never handled claims. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, when, when I discuss this with a, when I talk to agents and meet new agents, they have no clue about the claims process. Oh, I sell this insurance and everything’s great. I’m like, Hey, do you wanna see these five claims that we, they’re we’re dealing with with the same carrier that they didn’t pay? They’re underpaid, they’re doing this. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, they don’t know that process. So they shouldn’t even get involved in the claims process. Just like we don’t get involved in selling policies or discussing, you know, what policies you should purchase. Right. I can recommend some on because we interpret ’em and we see ’em, but I don’t, I, you know, we stay in our lane. And so, you know, now a lot of our a lot of our referral work that’s coming in is actually from independent agents that sell policies and, and then call us and recommend us to their clients.

Charles:
Interesting. Interesting. So what probably what everybody’s asking now is what does a public adjuster charge?

Andy:
Yeah, so public adjusters start usually around 10% on really large claims. For example it starts with 10. It’s usually a flat P four public adjusters and some states capa, pa at 10% mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for example, Texas does you can definitely charge on, on some large claims for like when we have our investors, they have large buildings and then the, the, the losses get into the millions. Then our fee, we have a re like a fee that starts dropping down once the claim gets to a certain amount. And then same thing goes with, if a claim is claim is smaller, more complicated, you know, PAs will charge 15, 20, 25. If it’s something more complicated, maybe if you were denied or something like that. So it just depends on the claim.

Charles:
Andy, can you give us a little background or a little overview of say, so loss happens, I contact a public adjuster, they start dealing with the insurance company. Can you give us a little overview of how the process would work? Yeah. Between you and the insurance company. So we have an idea of what you actually are doing.

Andy:
Super easy. So we, we, we get the, we first send the contract, sign it with the client then we send our letter of rep to the insurance company, let ’em know that we’re gonna be handling the claim. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So then the adjuster will call us and usually what the insurance company will do is try to be sneaky, try to call the insured and say, oh, oh, we see that you hired a PA and yeah, you know, we were really close to this, you know, I know we’ve been on this for three months and we haven’t paid you, but we, we were gonna pay yesterday. If, you know, they, they will try anything. That’s, that’s usually the case. But then we take over the communication. We send our out team to do our inspection, to do our videos, our photos.

Andy:
That takes a whole day. Whether it’s there’s personal property involved, whether we’re dealing with structure damage and we have to estimate that business interruption, all of that we start putting together, once we have all our documents in a row we get the proof of loss filled out for our clients, make sure they sign it, notarize it cause it’s their duty after a loss. So we make sure that all the duties after loss they have completed. So the policy then is in, is enforced that we’ll pay once we have all our documents, then we send in our file to the adjuster and then we’ll start the negotiations whether we have to meet the adjuster onsite or we do it you know, over the phone. Most of the time it’s onsite and then we’re doing everything on the, in the back with the desk adjusters and stuff like that cuz every claim is a little bit different. But most now have a field adjuster like an independent that will meet with us onsite, go over everything and then it gets handed into the staff adjuster, the desk adjuster they call, and then that desk adjuster then might hand it into another adjuster. So by the end of the claim we might be handling the claim with six different adjusters.

Charles:
Wow, okay. Yeah. It’s funny you say that about the insurance company because many years back I, my first property manager, I had an older guy very well experienced and we had someone slip in one of the properties and they sued and they weren’t even a tenant. And my property manager would not speak to the insurance company and he was telling me, he is like, no, no, you keep on talking to them. He’s like, you don’t talk to ’em. I send it all. They send me their questions by email, they hate doing it. And then I send everything back written to them. And it was just something that was like, oh wow. Like you have, you know, you don’t even wanna talk to them on the phone. It’s really cuz everything is can be taken outta context. So it’s gotta be very careful when you’re talking to your insurance company of what I’ve learned for many years.

Andy:
Charles, you just, that just hit the nail on it. Like that’s perfect. That’s exactly what I tell my client in not our clients. I just had a discussion with a gentleman that just had a fire on Friday and had a fire on another property a month before and he’s getting investigated on one of the properties. I said, well if, if the same carrier you’re gonna be investigated, this is gonna get outta hand. So I’m like, let GLaDOS handled the communication because what we’ve seen our denials in our clients is, is when we get those clients that have been denied or are getting invested, it’s because they said too much. They, they, they want to be honest and honesty is getting people denied. And now I’m not saying to lie cuz lying is legal. That’s not, but I’m saying some people just talk too much and they give ’em too much information. They’re like, whoa, well let us look into this. Why is he saying no, keep it in the emails. But a a good PA is gonna handle all that and it’s gonna take that and make sure that, that everything is said right and it gets said in the, in the, in the right time and and processed that way. There’s no delays, no investigations. The claim’s not underpaid. But that’s, that’s perfect. That’s exactly how you wanna handle a claim.

Charles:
Yeah. They even say in the back of a lot of insurance cards for your car and it says, don’t accept responsibility, get your car to a safe place and then go from there and like call us. They don’t want you saying anything cuz they are worried now that they’re gonna have to, Hey, you said it was your fault, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now they have to pay more to the person you hit or whatever. So very interesting. These little small things you pick up after years of being around it. Yeah. Not as much as you, but just as a, as more of a insurer insured. So being around the insurance and construction industry for 10 plus years, what are common mistakes you see real estate investors make? Andy?

Andy:
Yeah, I even, so in, you know, we invest in our, in our prop and we, we invest in properties. But what I see, so I I I don’t do as much as volume probably as you or other investors. But what I do see is not doing your due diligence. Now. People buying properties, for example, if I look at properties that we purchase, that same properties are selling for double the amount with the interest rate at the way it is now with the, with the rents being the same, you know, a little bit more maybe than what we when we bought ’em. So I’m thinking, I’m looking, I’m like, did they do do do diligent because I’m looking, the roof is old, the ac everything was old. The mechanical stuff’s gonna start breaking and we have, you know, they’re gonna be losing they’re gonna be, they’re gonna be netting, they’re gonna, it’s gonna be negative cash flowing because if I look at the numbers, the numbers don’t make sense.

Andy:
So they’re purchasing these properties with, you know, negative cash flow or breaking even, but they don’t take into account all the work. You know, being in construction, I can look at a property and say, okay, I know the roof’s gonna have to be replaced within a year. The acs gonna go out on us anytime all this work and I can budget for it. But people are just buying these properties that are run down there are probably negative cash flow. Cause I do the numbers, there’s no way they could be positive cash flowing and then, you know, those, there’s no way they can hold onto those properties. Cause eventually if, if you can’t find a tenant or you’re having a hard time, how are you gonna, you know, you’re gonna be really in a bad position. So that’s what I’m seeing now more and more. That’s kind of my, my 2 cents on it.

Charles:
What do you think are the main factors that have contributed to your success over the years? Andy?

Andy:
Grit. Just, just working hard. I work in everyone else. I was never the smartest or the tallest or the fastest. I just work hard. That continuing that continuing strive for like, you know, being good and greatness and education and just knowing more. I think that’s what set me apart from, from everyone else. I think I was always kind of behind, but when you get to a certain age, some people just stop. And then there’s the other ones that just keep working. The great ones that just keep creating and just keep going day in and day out. So

Charles:
Yeah, working and learning. That’s awesome. So Annie, how can our listeners learn more about you and your business?

Andy:
Yep. They can go on our website also the adjusting.com. They can check out our Facebook page. There’s other podcasts we’re actually putting up putting up another tab on the website that people can go and listen to other podcasts, more educational videos as well as, you know, for your listeners I’ll provide ’em my cell phone. If any of your listeners actually want to call and have questions text, feel free to do so. They can reach me at seven oh eight six five five four one eight six seven oh eight six five five four one eight six. And that’s direct cell phone. I just asked that they don’t call after, you know, six or seven. Everything else is fine.

Charles:
All right, Andy. Well thank you so much. We really appreciate being on today and with letting us getting involved with learning what a public adjuster is and how it can help us.

Andy:
I appreciate it. Thank you for having me, Charles. I

Charles:
Appreciate it. No problem. Have a great rest of your day.

Andy:
You too. Bye-Bye.

Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.

Announcer:
Thank you for listening to the Global Investors Podcast. If you’d like to show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes or Google play to get new weekly episodes. For more resources and to receive our newsletter, please visit global investor podcast.com and don’t forget to join us next week for another episode.

Announcer:
Nothing in this episode should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Any investment opportunities mentioned on this podcast are limited to accredited investors. Any investments will only be made with proper disclosure, subscription documentation, and are subject to all applicable laws. Please consult an appropriate tax legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Syndication Superstar, LLC, exclusively.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Andy Gurczak

Founder of AllCity Adjusting, a licensed public adjusting firm, Andy Gurczak immigrated to America from Poland with his family at the age of nine. After working in the construction industry–more specifically fire restoration, Andy discovered his true calling: public adjusting. This discovery was largely thanks to Herb Johnson, the first African American public adjuster in Illinois, who took Andy under his wing. Andy grew up with the family motto, “if you’re going to do something, do it right, or don’t do it all,” and carries that sentiment into his business. AllCity Adjusting’s unique team structure allows them to maximize their individual expertise and experience. This grants them the ability to move a claim quickly, efficiently, and always with the same outcome: max settlement for the insured.

Over the last decade, Andy has not only protected thousands of people from being defrauded, but also helped them receive more money than what their insurance initially offered. In one instance, a client had his business burn to the ground and was originally quoted $3,000 dollars from his insurance company. With Andy’s help, he received over $600,000 and was able to properly rebuild and restart his business.

Passionate that no one should be discriminated against because of their gender, race, or any other reason, Andy works hard to make sure his clients get what they truly deserve from their claims.

Are You a Fan? Subscribe, Rate, Review & Share – Click Here To Learn How

What question do you always wish I would ask but I never do?

Connect with the Global Investors Show, Charles Carillo and Harborside Partners:

Scroll to top