Insights with Florida's Premier Hurricane Claims Lawyer: Daniel Tighe

In today's episode, Mike is joined by guest Daniel Tighe. With hundreds of millions recovered and over a decade of Florida Property Damage Claim experience, Daniel's firm (Tighe PA) is Florida's leader in claims management in response to Hurricanes. They talk about how Daniel got started in the industry and go on to give insights into the ways insurance companies have changed in recent years, exposing fraud and much more.

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Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:00.666) Welcome back another episode of the Mission Control Podcast. I'm your host Mike Stearns. This episode is proudly sponsored by you guessed it, Ascend, Digital Agency, and the team at Roofer. If you need instant roof quotes, clean and pristine proposals, which will give your prospects no choice but to buy from you. Make sure you hit up the team at Roofer. There's going to be a description with a link and click it. Let them know I sent you and you'll be happy you did. We have a very special guest today. Hello, Daniel Ty. How are you?

Dan Tighe (00:30.51) Hey, I'm great, Michael, how are you?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:32.794) I'm doing very well. Thank you for coming on the show. We're very grateful for your presence.

Dan Tighe (00:39.47) Yeah, absolutely, it's a pleasure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:41.305) Yeah, so you're down in Florida, yeah?

Dan Tighe (00:45.646) Yep, and it's starting to get hot. We got the summer weather kicking in. Also means hurricane season getting in the swing here.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:52.923) Yeah, what is it like 100 degrees there right now?

Dan Tighe (00:57.038) It feels like probably 105 to 110 and it's not going to let up for a couple months.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:02.555) That sounds fucking terrible. Once it gets past 85, I become like a toddler that needs a nap. Very frustrated, irritated, and it's not for me. So I love it for you, and hopefully everyone else that's enduring that heat is embracing it with open arms. It's just not for me. But then again, you guys don't have the three degree weather with a foot of snow, so I'm sure that's not for you. It all works out.

Dan Tighe (01:28.91) Yeah, that's the old joke is you're not stuck scooping, shoveling sunshine down here, you know?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:35.292) Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm. So hurricane season's upon us. So you work with a lot of contractors. I work with a lot of contractors. And we love contractors. Thank you all for tuning in. How did that start?

Dan Tighe (01:50.286) Yeah, great question. So probably unlike, you know, other lawyers who got in this field, I kind of discovered it in an interesting way. So I went to undergraduate my master's in business at a small school called Rollins College. And my, you know, from there I went on to UF Law, I went to New York. It was practicing law up there between Florida and New York doing some different stuff. And I connected with my undergraduate roommate who's still a big figure in the industry, Mike Weckerly. Shout out with C.

CSS, Contractor Supplement Solutions, good guy. But you know, I was just catching up with him. Hey Mike, how's it going? You know, great, I'm in roofing. okay, roofing, good, how's it going? Great, sold six roofs this week. Bro, no one's selling six roofs in a week. You must be doing restoration. And sure enough, he's like, yeah, we're doing restoration. We had a hail storm and I'm like, whoa, hail in Florida. He's like, yup, hail and wind and damaging these shingle roofs. And...

I just said, hey man, how can I help? I'm a lawyer and he says, well, I don't really know. I said, well, what do you do with your denied claims? And he goes, damn, they're denied. What can I do? They're not gonna pay them. And I'm like, bro, I sue insurance companies for a living. Let me try one. And that was probably a...

little over a decade or maybe more ago. And sure enough, you know, I laugh about it and obviously using a little artistic liberty. I had Mike in one ear, the adjuster in the other. I didn't know anything about roofing, anything about contracting. You know, I knew contracts well enough. So he's telling me, you got to argue this, you got to argue that. So I'm working this claim. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, had the claim paid in full, had my attorney's fees paid separately in addition to the underlying claim value. And he did the roof. So it was like everyone was happy. And I was

I was like, Mike, this is awesome. Like love helping people love being able to work with people that I like and respect and my friends. How many guys you work with? I work with 40 guys. Great. I'm throwing a happy hour. Let's go, you know, let's see what we can do. Let's see how we can, you know, help more people. So that was the, the humble beginnings and, you know, started out doing a lot of small shingle roofs in central Florida. And through the years was able to build the practice up and, you know, kind of level up in sophistication and my understanding and the value I could.

Dan Tighe (04:03.488) bring to my valued contractor network and partners and then also to handling larger losses, more complicated stuff. It's been a lot of fun along the way.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:17.636) Love that. So somewhat serendipitous in the beginning, and it turned out to be one of those rare deals where everybody wins and everyone's happy. And look at us now, thriving. You touched on something there that I think is really important. And there's some parallels between what you did and I think what a lot of contractors should do. And some do, some don't, but you tried something different.

Dan Tighe (04:28.622) That's it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:40.701) just by virtue of having conversations with somebody you knew, right? Drove in, tested the waters, worked really well. And then the next step that you took was like, all right, I'm having a happy hour, right? So we're doing like a networking event to see how many more people we could help. And I think the parallel is like when...

Roofing contractors have the they have the ability to align with adjacent verticals within their market, right? So whether it's a drywall guy, a landscape guy, HVAC guy, like you guys are all selling the same customer and you can form alliances, refer people back and forth to one another if you guys have people you trust within your network. So kudos to you to setting up that networking event, because as you know, it can be very powerful, but often underestimated from what I see.

Dan Tighe (05:25.71) Yeah, I appreciate that. And what I look at is part of your marketing mix, right? And that's something I'm sure you guys at Ascend are, you know, very adept at helping people build out. You know, you don't want one channel. You don't want a feast or famine based on, you know, maybe a storm work or whatever, whatever it may be. You know, that's so, you know, certainly love that. But also too is finding like -minded people. And then the way you phrased it was people we can help.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (05:40.443) Mm -hmm.

Dan Tighe (05:51.054) And I love that, right? Because that's the mission. You know, at some point you've done, you know, your successor contract, you've done hundreds of thousands of shingle roofs. What's driving you on the next shingle roof, right? It's not, you know, maybe it's a partially love of the craft or, you know, but at that point, the money's marginal. You know, really you have to care deeply about what you're doing. You have to keep in mind that we're literally protecting people's homes. We're literally, the work I do, and I talk to my, you know, my lawyers, my staff, you know, we're putting people's, you know, roofs,

over their head, man. This is important, significant work with real true meaning. And that means that even those smaller claims or smaller clients or the annoying client who calls every day. Well, listen, what's the mission? The mission is to provide awesome service, to provide top in class legal work, but also awesome service, right? And help put them back in their home. So this is, you know, we take the work series and I think keeping the focus on the mission.

is that North Star to make sure you're making the right decisions trickling down all the way through your organization.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (06:56.988) Preach brother preach. I love that.

Dan Tighe (06:59.822) Thank you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:00.252) I listen, I am I tell my team, I tell my prospects, I tell my current customers all the time. Like we strive for a couple of things. And at the forefront of what we aspire to do is not only provide the best results, but provide the best experience. If I go to a steakhouse, you can give me the best steak that I've ever had. But if I'm waiting 15 minutes for another refill on my water and everything is just lagging behind and the waitress feel makes me feel as for the waitstaff rather 2024 waitstaff, I'm sorry, makes me feel as if I'm doing them a favor by paying

patronizing their business, right? The experience is shit. I'm not going to go back there regardless of how good the steak was. So I tried to look