Kevin Kaufmann – President of Property Adjustment Corporation

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Kevin went from being an employee to starting his own business. He has a great story and discusses how he works best with employees, and how he uses word of mouth and referrals to get business.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• Michael E. Gerber
• Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay
• How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

Check out Propadj.com.

Thanks so much for listening! If you like these interviews subscribe via iTunes.

Any questions or comments on the podcast let me know!

Transcript:

Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire Podcast. I’m Jaime Tardy and today we have Kevin Kaufmann on the show. Kevin is the president of Property Adjustment Corporation and I’m really excited to talk to him today. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Kevin.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Thank you, Jaime.

JAIME TARDY: So why don’t you first tell me a little bit about what Property Adjustment Corporation even does because I know not necessarily it’s something that a lot of people use.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: That’s right. When I started this industry, there wasn’t a whole lot of people, I didn’t start this industry. Started my business, I spent most of my time explaining what I do for a living. In fact, I had my own business for two years until my father actually understood what I did for a living.

JAIME TARDY: Good. So we need to know too, if your dad doesn’t know.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: We’re a public adjusting firm. What we do is we present property claims on behalf of the policyholder. So, if your house burned down or your business burned down, you would hire me to present your claim to your insurance company. I’m a former insurance company adjuster who now uses all that knowledge and experience on behalf of my clients, the policyholders, to put their claims together and present them to the insurance company.

JAIME TARDY: Okay, what benefit do you get to go with someone like you? Normally wouldn’t it be the same? I’ve done small claims, of course, with insurance companies and I never had to use an adjuster or not anyone else besides the insurance adjuster.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well, if you did, then maybe you wouldn’t have had a small claim. The insurance industry works on a principle of offering as little as you’re willing to accept without any true regard for what you’re entitled to with few exceptions. That is, if you’re willing to accept a little, they’ll close the claim at that point without offering what you’re entitled to. We work from the other dichotomy. We just get you paid.

We know and understand your policy of insurance and we get you paid for everything you’re entitled to. That’s substantially more, usually can say conservatively two or three times the amount that the insurance company normally offers. I have examples where we’ve gotten over ten times the amount of the initial offer from the insurance company.

JAIME TARDY: Wow. So how do you guys get paid?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well, in all the states that we’re licensed to do business in, they all require that we work on a contingency fee basis. A percentage of the money we generate. That’s kind of a consumer protection and an incentive for us to do our job well. We could work for six months and if there was a coverage issue where the insurance company doesn’t feel that this claim is covered, you don’t owe us anything for trying and for working hard on your behalf. The other side of the coin is, in a contingency fee basis, we don’t want to leave anything on the table. If you’re entitled to it, we want to get you paid for it.

JAIME TARDY: And that works for you because you get more in the end too.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well we’ve been very busy lately with the local weather and Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee and the flooding in the rivers and other areas. So we’re running pretty steady here. It’s a crazy, crazy time.

JAIME TARDY: That’s great. So how did you even get into it? I know you said you were a property adjuster for an insurance company but what made you sort of break out on your own?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: I started my career working for a major insurance company in Philadelphia. I was hired my senior year of college off of campus. I had six job offers and probably out of 30 interviews I took the one that offered me a company car.

JAIME TARDY: Well yeah!

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Having to drive jalopies all my life or all through college and everything so it was nice to take a salary job with a car. I was in that position for a few years and I realized that’s not something I wanted to do and I’ve always, always had the entrepreneurial bug and knew that eventually I would have my own business. What was fortunate with the beginning of my career is I worked in the commercial insurance division of a major insurance company handling property claims. So I dealt with business owners solely all the time.

Of course, I would settle their claim but I would be more inquisitive about how did you get here and what started you in business, blah, blah and I would always find it very interesting how people started their businesses and got to where they were today.

JAIME TARDY: How long ago was that that you made the switch to be your own business owner?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: I incorporated in 1989.

JAIME TARDY: Nice.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Never looked back.

JAIME TARDY: Well that’s it too. So what made you always sort of like entrepreneurship even when you were young? Was it just something you were born with or something you cultivated or someone you knew that was sort of a mentor to you?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Yes, there were several of them. I think the one and the greatest thing that I got out of college was the fact that like the old Robert Cromwell story, you can make it in your own backyard. Hence the diamonds. I truly left with that belief. I knew that I wouldn’t have to go to California to start it or across the country somewhere to make it. I could do it in my own backyard. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to do it and in what industry but I truly had that belief.

Once you start on a roll like that, you never look back. In my youth I had a lot of courage. I had a lot of drive. I like to believe I still have it today but in starting out, if you have that belief that it’s going to work and you just keep moving forward, it usually does.

JAIME TARDY: I agree with that completely. So what made you, like what were some of the challenges of just starting out? I mean I know this was way back in 1989 but what were some of the things that you had to learn as you were just getting started?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well you know what works for me is I focused on, I understood my industry and I understood that if I did a good job for my client, that client would tell two friends. So I put that in front of the dollar and that seemed to benefit me greatly because I’ve seen a lot of people in my own industry and other businesses that focused on the dollar so much that they lost focus of their purpose and their actual cause, what they were actually trying to do. I’m very, very fortunate in the fact that I have a business where I help people every day. There’s nothing better than that.

It’s a great, great feeling to know that you’re navigating somebody through a difficult time in a process that they have no experience in or that they’re not matched equally. The insurance company adjusters, they are highly trained. They’re professional. They know the insurance policy inside out. That homeowner that just lost everything in a fire or a flood, he has never even read the policy nor does he know how it works. So if they hire me, now we’re on level playing ground. In fact, I find myself educating the insurance company representatives on coverages of their own policies because they don’t know how the policy works.

JAIME TARDY: Expertise in its finest, right? That’s great.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

JAIME TARDY: Well and it’s funny. I read an article about you guys and it says that you guys don’t have customers but you serve clients who put trust in our abilities and it sounds like that’s sort of what you’re saying. It’s not about just having more customers that bring in more revenue. It’s really about helping the people and I think that’s key to making a good business. That’s great.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Yes, own your purpose. I talked to a client of mine who I used to work with back when I was in college and their business failed. I was explaining my philosophy, you know, I always look at doing a great job for my client and having them tell two friends and when everything was finished I said now would you refer me? Could you refer me? You always have to ask for the referral. I’m a strong believer and they said absolutely and I try to stay in touch with my past clients. I’ll send them a holiday card every year or a newsletter or try to capture the email addresses.

Do that because when stuff happens I have to be on top of their mind. If I’m buried somewhere in their history and not brought up when their neighbor has a problem or their aunt or their uncle, this morning I got off the phone with someone who said my cousin swears by you, he has used you several times over the years and I had problem. She told me before you do anything to talk to you. That’s my referral base you have to build. You have to build a strong referral clientele with your clients.

That’s the easiest marketing for your dollar is just do a good job for somebody and have them pass it on. Don’t hesitate to ask for the referral. We do it in every correspondence to our clients. We tell them we hope you’re happy with our service. Please refer us to a friend.

JAIME TARDY: Now that’s key because we don’t hear about that a lot. We hear people going oh yeah word of mouth is the best and we hope people will refer us and all that stuff. But what we don’t hear about is the people that do get a lot of referrals, they actually ask for them, surprisingly. So tell me about your system of asking and what really works for you and if you do have any key tips or advice for our people in their own companies.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well you want to align people, in any industry you’re with, you want to align people to have the ability to refer your work. What I mean by ability is people who have a need for your services or align themselves with people that have a need for their services. Like in the public adjustment industry, we align ourselves with contractors that are coming and asked to bid on these restoration jobs and normally a homeowner would know that they need someone to fix their home or their business but they kind of let the insurance company do what they want with the claim process and find out at the end there’s a big inequity there between what a contractor wants to rebuild your house and what the insurance company offers you to rebuild your house.

So that’s what we eliminate by adjusters. So, if we stay in contact with the contractors or align ourselves with the contractors that are called out to give these estimates, a lot of times they say there’s a discrepancy here, you need an adjuster and they bring us in. So it’s always good to align yourself with people in your profession that have the ability to refer you out work. I’m a big believer in giver’s gain. Likewise, if you have an opportunity to refer that contractor and give them a referral before expecting one from them, that always comes back tenfold I believe.

JAIME TARDY: See and that’s what I was going to ask you about because it does seem difficult with timing. You don’t know when someone, I guess with floods you know that there was a huge flooding or someone but with fires and stuff like that, nobody understands or knows when that’s going to ever happen so they won’t know hey I got to call the property adjuster and half of us, I’m sure, don’t even know that you guys exist. Therefore, how do we even know that we need to call you. So that was a good idea as far as if you line up with people that they are going to come in contact with anyway. Then they can definitely refer you and all you’re doing is there to help them out. That sounds like a great business model. Do you have a hard time closing the sale or do people usually just call you and just go with you because they like your tone of voice or something like that?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well I think surely, in the conversation, they realize your expertise in an industry or in a situation that they know nothing of. Insurance is like a different language to most people. They’re threatened or intimidated by dealing with the big bad insurance man. We take that away from them and say, “We’ll deal with them. In fact, we have 22 years of experience of dealing with the big bad insurance guy and we’re pretty good at it.” I think people are very, very happy with the results.

You lay that out there and it takes a big chunk of aggravation off their shoulders and for us it’s work. Most of these people we deal with we have known for 10 or 20 years and they know us as a professional organization and they know us as being top notch adjusters and when we say that this is what it’s going to cost, this is what needs to be done, it’s coming from a reputable source.

JAIME TARDY: Now how many employees do you guys have?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Our firm is 16 employees and most of them work out of our main office but I have a few people that work in other territories through email and faxing and that’s how they communicate with the office and they probably only come into the main office once or twice a month. It works out pretty well in that regard. Technology helped us along those areas.

Another thing that I think is imperative, if you’re going to, long time ago I read a book called The Four Commitments or something and the number one to be truly your word. In business, that is imperative. I don’t promise anything or say anything unless I know I can deliver on it. A lot of times in business we see services and products oversold and then if you’re overselling in the beginning, that’s just going to end up with disaster in the end. It’s going to end up with customer dissatisfaction because you can’t promise them the world and deliver.

If you do that and even deliver a very fair and reasonable result, they’re still going to be disappointed. So you can do your job well but if it was presented or sold incorrectly up front, then you’re not going to get that referral. You’re not going to get the continuous client base. I tell everybody up front we’re not going to, as a company, get rich off of this deal but when it’s over, I hope you’re going to be happy with the results and you tell two friends and I can continue business next year.

I said that’s been my motto, my creed, my mantra from day one when I opened up my doors. It’s still what I follow today. It seems to work. Instead of looking at the single job, grabbing as much as you can from a single transaction, I look to build a book of happy clients who will refer me year in and year out.

JAIME TARDY: It’s so funny because even just knowing you for a short time, you can sort of hear the integrity in your voice which is an amazing thing and it’s funny because we assume that in order to become a millionaire you might have to compromise your morals or your integrity and just, you know, sway a little bit to the wrong side so you can earn a little bit more money but it sounds like you’re saying no that’s one of the key things that you’ve done that’s really helped move you forward.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: No doubt and if you know anybody who has ever done it or seen anybody who has ever done that, that’s a house of cards. Eventually, at some time in their life, they’re going to be trying to grab to keep their head above water because it all tumbled down on them. You cannot sustain by doing that. You may have a short run of good profits but eventually it’s going to come down on you. We’ve seen that in industries like the mortgage industry, for instance, where they were, I watched that whole industry blow up and as it was going down, I said to myself this cannot sustain itself.

You cannot lend 105 percent of the value of a property hoping that the property is going to be valued higher next year. It’s a house of cards, it’s going to come down. When people get caught up in that, now a lot of people made a lot of money for a short period of time but now the vast majority of those people are searching for jobs. If you do what’s right by your client and you stay within the rules, you can still be very successful in business and be respected in business.

You know the old adage, people like to do business with people they like. That’s true. Most of these people who oversold their product or their service who have crossed over the line to get the results that they desired, they’re not 1) respected in business and 2) they’re rarely used a second time.

JAIME TARDY: Very good point. Well what’s funny is it sounds like everything sort of worked out beautifully for you, right? You have these wonderful people, you make them happy. What sort of challenges and obstacles that you’ve come across or even failures that have happened in your business that you’ve had to overcome because I’m sure there are some, right? There always is.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Oh yes. I had to say staffing of personnel and yeah we’ve had our challenges in that area. I’ve also created a lot of my competition by there are many firms that started, that existed here and they went out on their own. I would say about 50 percent of them folded but there’s still some of them out there. My opinion with regard to no compete contracts and those sort of things, they only work if you’re willing to spend the money to enforce them.

Some firms are and it’s a necessity in their particular industry. There’s also another school of thought. If you just build a corporate culture that’s very desirable to work in, the people enjoy doing and you handle a lot of the stuff that they don’t enjoy doing like the administrative functions and stuff like that often, then they’re going to like to work for you and they’re not going to want to leave. I find if you create an atmosphere that’s like enjoyable, people will enjoy coming to work in the morning. They’re going to have fun.

Now don’t get me wrong, we have our strenuous times and we’ve just got over one recently with some recent property damage from some storms that we’re working long hours, it’s very stressful, you know, but when the day is done we enjoyed that day. We felt good about it and we had no problem coming back to work tomorrow, you know.

JAIME TARDY: How do you create that culture though because I know when it is stressful, what do you do to try and help that or, in general, what do you do to try and help that?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well it’s good to have good SOP or standard operating procedures but you can’t micromanage. I’ve seen and I’ve worked in places before where you don’t, you know the adage, empower your employees and you’ll be amazed at what they can do. I found that to be true. For the most part, people respect the fact that you give them a little authority and they get the job done and they get it done. But keep in mind that training and education is their job as well.

As an employer, I’m finding that that is becoming more and more important. If they make a mistake because they weren’t trained properly, well then shame on you. Make a mistake because you told them the right way and you did it the wrong way, well shame on them. But as an employer, that’s not a bad investment but there’s a fine line also between what is adequate and when are they ready to move on and take that authority.

JAIME TARDY: Well that’s what I think is kind of amazing is when you become a business owner you forget that you have to be so HR and personnel. Even if you have other people that do some of those things, it’s still a lot your problem so really trying to learn and what it sounds like is that you’ve really learned sort of the finesse of how to really work with people and really being able to give your part too.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: If I had room for important it would probably be in the hiring end. I strongly recommend background checks on everybody because where I did fail in hiring the wrong the people it was because I didn’t look enough into their background, in every case, not one or two but in every case I should have poked a little bit deeper and there are plenty of good resources for that, in the hiring stage, during the interview stage. Don’t be afraid to ask when I call your former employer what are they going to tell me about you?

JAIME TARDY: Can you give us some examples of sort of what to look for?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Yeah, I had one woman in here, an administrative woman who was, she had all the characteristics that were very attractive to somebody in our position. She worked for law firms and she had a good personality and she had the skill set that fit the position like a glove. She left after a short period of time or things didn’t work out after a short period of time, it dawned on me she had two pages of references in there of past employment. That should have been the light bulb that went off to me. Why is she switching jobs so often and even if she is good for a period, if their history is any track record for her future, she’s not going to stay very long.

And that’s exactly what happened. It’s funny because a year and a half, two years after she left, I got a call from a perspective employer who was looking and she says, “Did this woman work for you?” I said, “She did but I don’t think I was put down as a reference.” She says, “No, you weren’t. I’m not calling you as a reference, I’m calling you because you were a past employer.” I said, “Yeah, I’m one of many.” “Yeah that’s why I’m calling. I sort of had the same idea.” So that was someone who was a little bit more intuitive than I. I don’t spend a lot of my time hiring and maybe leave that to someone who is probably better at it.

JAIME TARDY: So now do you have someone else that hires or do you actually still do some hiring?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: I had my admin who probably, she’ll take it down to, like get rid of 70 percent of the ones that don’t qualify, the unqualified ones. The final say is on me, of course, but you learn over time what’s a good match. Also we’ve had people in here who may have been good at a particular task that’s required in our industry but they just don’t fit in the corporate culture. They’re not the same grain and they don’t flow with the rest of the people.

As a company, get along with everybody and especially at busy times and things are crazy, you want everybody to be able to interact well and if you have someone that’s just always against the grain or everything else, the integrity, the professionalism that is shown in your industry and you have someone that’s a little awful in some of those areas and you compromise, you’re not going to get a long-term employee out of that. You have to stick to your guns.

JAIME TARDY: Well it’s funny, one of the hardest things, especially probably in your industry with emergencies and people being upset and that sort of thing, millionaires before that I’ve interviewed said hire on personality and you can always train them. But when you’re in an industry where maybe you need them to get up to speed extremely quickly that it’s sometimes nice to hire for training and education, that they already know what they’re doing to throw them in the pit, right. But are you also saying that it’s probably personality over it because they won’t last as long?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Yeah, we’ve always heard the old adage hire attitude and you can always train them, give them skills but if they have a good attitude they’re probably going to be more beneficial to you. I believe that. I was looking for a management position recently and I had a candidate who was very much industry specific, seemed to have the skill set that was required to do the job and certainly had the history. He had industry knowledge and just before I was ready to close the door, we were discussing salary and compensation, I said, something gave me a bug that maybe I should just do a personality profile on him and I did.

I ran one of the profile testings. A good friend of mine has a company that does that and when it came back I got these results that were surprising. In management he scored terrifically. He was in the high 90s. But in our business, it’s not enough. We deal with people day in and day out. In his present job, he was managing six individuals and he had to deal with six individuals and two superiors period. So he didn’t have a lot of interaction with the public. When it came to his interaction with the public, this guy scored way, way, way low in the 14s out of a 100.

So even the guy who administers the test, he has to kind of stay neutral. He’s like I just want you to know you only bought the test from us but other people who buy additional services, we would not recommend this individual. So he tried to tell me to round that out. If you can’t see that this is screaming at you, this is not your guy.

JAIME TARDY: Hello? Yeah, so you just sort of had the bug. Imagine if you didn’t have that bug to do the personality profiling where you would be right now. How long have you been implementing that?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: In key employees, since probably the last four or five years. I would always run that through.

JAIME TARDY: How much do those cost if you mind me asking?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: About $400.

JAIME TARDY: Okay.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Which is a small price to pay for hiring the wrong person, right?

JAIME TARDY: Yeah, definitely.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: And that’s the bare bones basic test. I mean, of course, there are many of those beyond that. I could even find out as much as you want about them. I just wanted to know a little bit about their personality. It told me enough. That $400 was enough.

JAIME TARDY: Was it like a Myers Briggs or what? Is it a specific type of personality profile?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Yeah, this was like a Myers Briggs but it was a proprietary program for another one of those companies.

JAIME TARDY: Great, see that’s great to hear. Beautiful. So, we also beforehand, in the emailing back and forth, we talked a lot about hard work and what I really want to sort of know from you is we hear millionaires have to work tremendous number of hours. Now is it just the hours that you had to work or work smarter instead of working harder? Tell me what your thoughts on working hard are.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: I hear that a lot and people say, “Geez, Kev you’re lucky because of what you achieved” and I always answer them by saying, “Yeah I found out the harder I worked the luckier I get.” But that’s true with the entrepreneur. People may believe that because they have a better solution, better processes or they’re surrounding themselves with the right people that they wouldn’t have to work as hard or work less. Well there’s nothing further from the truth especially in the start up phase.

It’s just a tremendous amount of hours because you’re chief, cook and bottle washer. In the beginning you’re putting on all the hats and you’re going out there. But even today, I belong to some entrepreneurial groups and the guys are extremely successful and gals in this group but each and every one of them are probably the hardest working individuals I’ve ever surrounded myself with to this day. These are companies with hundreds of employees, companies like my size and one of the things you can never underestimate is the amount of work it takes to own your own business. With the work comes the stress.

JAIME TARDY: Well exactly. That’s sort of what I want to ask about. I mean, I’m assuming everybody sort of deals with maybe burnout, especially entrepreneurs. I mean the ones I talk to too working their butts off, pushing and pushing and pushing and dealing with the stress that sometimes it gets to be too much. Did you ever have that happen or do you have any advice to try and get over that?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: We’ve all had that happen. I remember early in the game where I was waiting for the postman to deliver an envelope because if that envelope didn’t arrive then the mortgage wasn’t getting paid and the lights may not have been paid. But at that point, you’re putting everything on the line like that. I think that’s a true entrepreneur. That is someone who is taking the risk and taking a chance. As we learned in our economic class – the greater the risk, the greater the return.

So if you’re willing to put that all on the line to make something happen, then you’re a true entrepreneur. But life’s balance, I know some very, very successful people and it took them awhile to figure out how to balance life and family. I’ve seen a lot of other entrepreneurs pay the ultimate price with the family not being able to take the strain of being an entrepreneur to the point where it broke up families, relationships and marriages. I remember early on in my business when I took my first vacation I thought I was going to come back and it was all going to be gone. You know, the business is going to crumble around me.

But you have to know when to turn it off. You have to know when to put it down. Unfortunately, we’re in the 24-hour emergency business. We can get a call at 2:00 a.m. and have to jump in the car and run. But as often as that happens, your life shouldn’t be dictated by it and that’s also something that you can delegate. I found, I should say talking from experience, that if you don’t plan it, it’s not going to happen.

I just came off I would say around a 62-day straight through period that we worked 7 days a week and long hours but I just came off a 5 day holiday that I took and I said I’m not bringing the laptop. I’ll keep my smart phone and a couple clients did get through in those 4 or 5 days I had off but I answered their calls and maybe returned only 4 emails which, to me, is phenomenal. That’s a vacation and it was thoroughly enjoyed and the batteries got recharged and that’s what you need to do.

You have to turn it off at some time because I mean most businesses you can work 24 hours, 7 days a week if you allow yourself to do that. You heard the adage of working smarter. I find the more I delegate the more we get done as a company but you have to know when to bring in the help. I’ve heard other business owners talk about reaching sales goals that they couldn’t achieve until they brought in another sales manager to get to that level. In the beginning, I know it’s difficult when you’re starting out a new business to know when to bring people in because that goes against the bottom line, that salary. But you also have see the benefit of it too and that’s normalizing your life.

I once read a book about entrepreneurship and the one thing the author suggested was don’t be in a hurry. Don’t do it so quick. Enjoy the ride. If it means bringing someone in to help relieve some of the stress and that your financial goals will be stretched out a little bit longer, that may not be a bad thing because it may keep you healthy for a lot longer.

JAIME TARDY: Yeah, we have to worry about that. If we don’t exist then neither does the company.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Exactly. I’ve seen stress bring a lot of people down. If you allow that to happen, your health could definitely suffer.

JAIME TARDY: So when you started, it was just you because you could just do this on your own. Who was the first employee that you brought on?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: My mother.

JAIME TARDY: Perfect! I hope that worked out well.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: She helped me for awhile and then my wife, at the time, was a CPA and the business got to the point where it started to cost the business if she went to work as a CPA. So she ended up leaving her day job and then working for me full time. So she was my second full time employee. She kind of, at that time, my mother stepped out and added her and then we started bringing people in. It was a lot of fun.

JAIME TARDY: Do you have any advice for working with your, I don’t know is that your former wife? With your wife from before?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: It’s not my present wife.

JAIME TARDY: So maybe you have some good advice for us. What’s some good advice for working with your significant other?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: I’ve never really seen that to be a problem. Again, don’t take it home. I mean if you’re going to work with your spouse then dinner talk shouldn’t be about work. Then when the kids come, they should be the number one focus, no doubt.

JAIME TARDY: So I’m going to ask, I’m going to probe this just a little bit more because I ask how. I have a specific client who is married, they both own the company together and it’s very difficult because entrepreneurs, in general, think about business a lot. If they’re off work it’s sort of things come up and maybe they’re excited about something else or maybe they just didn’t have a chance to talk about it at the office. But you would recommend just trying your best not to why you’re home.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying if you’re sitting on a beach and sipping a coconut drink and the idea comes to take you to the next level that you shouldn’t jump up and shout about it. I mean inspiration comes at odd times. That’s fine but, if you find that you and your spouse only have work to talk about, then you’re going to suffer on the other end. Your relationship is going to suffer a little bit. Your spouse also wants to see everything work and succeed and business grow but relationships and marriages take work as well.

JAIME TARDY: Definitely. Well and you’ve mentioned a couple books. What resources have you turned to? What have you done or read that has really helped you in your journey?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well, I’m looking at where in my office, I’m looking at Michael Gerber’s E-Myth. I like to go back to that like every five, seven years and just reread that and simple as the principles seem in that, it’s always, if I’m on an airplane or something, I’ll grab that off my shelf and just reread it just to make sure I’m still on track and things. Sure enough you pick out something that you didn’t pick the first half dozen times you read it.

Other influence or books, Harvey Mackay’s books I like. I was referred to his networking book that he wrote years ago called Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty. I think that was very inspiring to me about networking. I’m dating the book but Harvey Mackay talked about having the biggest rolodex of referrals. Today that, of course, would be our Outlook and our email. We keep a database of people that we do business with. It’s good to also note their interest and what they do.

I was out with a fellow yesterday I hadn’t seen in probably in about two and a half years. I know that he was into surfing and I said I thought about you the other day as we were driving up the coast and I saw a bunch of surfers on the beach and I was wondering if you were still. “Oh I was out on the board last week.” They appreciate the fact that you know them beyond the immediate business purpose that they exist for and that’s part of what Harvey Mackay points out in this book.

To know them a little bit more personally and if you come across an interesting article you may want to email it to them or something. Say, “Hey I was thinking, I know you like tennis, here’s a good article on the new racket that came out” or something like that. Again, it keeps you forefront in their mind and it shows you’re a little bit better than the other guy, the other vendor I’m doing business with or the other consultant that we’ve been talking to because you must listen well if you know that about me.

JAIME TARDY: Great advice. Yeah, you actually care about the person, not about the, not necessarily just for the work.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: The dollar.

JAIME TARDY: Great.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Dollars will follow if you do it right.

JAIME TARDY: Perfect. So what’s one action, as the question, that everyone can take this week to move them forward towards their goal of a million?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: I’d have to say the belief in that it’s possible. Never look back, keep moving forward and know that the person that made it before you, they put their pants on one leg at a time just like you. They’re no better, no different than you. Many people have done it before you. Many people are going to do it after you. You can do it.

JAIME TARDY: That’s great. That’s one of the reasons why I have this podcast in general, to talk to, my intro says “Real talk with real millionaires” and I think that’s a key point. Millionaires are just people too that put on their pants the same way we do. It’s not that big of a deal and knowing that is helping with the belief that you have. So do you have any advice though on how to sort of cultivate that belief besides is it just like telling yourself every day that you know you can do it?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well just do it and don’t look behind you. I mean worry, that Dale Carnegie, another good book, Stop Worrying and Start Living, 98 percent of what we worry about never comes to fruition. So why? Why worry? Just remove that from your life. Focus on your goals and achieve them. I found in my lifetime I achieved the most and have gone the furthest when I had the goals in front of me. And to further emphasize the point, I’d have to say there were times in my life when things were floundering was because of lack of goals.

I reached my goals but I didn’t have the next goal lined up yet. So keep that out there. Keep your focus, keep your goals, go for it. You can do it. People have done it before you. People do it after you and they’re no different than you and I, so you have the power.

JAIME TARDY: Brilliant. So where can we find more information about you and your company online?

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Well, you can go to the Property Adjustment website at www.propadj.com and there’s a little area if you want to contact us or ask further information, it allows you to do so and it gives you everything you want to know about the public adjusting industry.

JAIME TARDY: Perfect. Well thank you so much. We’ll definitely link to that in the show notes so people in that area can definitely take a look. I would highly recommend you too even though you haven’t even done work for me, you’ve been a great interview. I really appreciate it. So have a wonderful day, Kevin.

KEVIN KAUFMANN: Good luck, Jaime, you too. Enjoy.

Just to note, you can download the Top 10 tips from these millionaire interviews on the blog.

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