Becoming Legendary Don't drown in the Quo

Fire Damage Claim

There’s nothing quite like having to make fire damage claims after a fire has hit your residence or business. I remember when my family had a fire and had to find somewhere to stay for the several months that were required to rebuild and restore their entire home. It was so inconvenient. And besides the inconvenience there was the struggle of having lost items that could never be replaced. A fire can cause quite an emotional aftermath. And then you have to work with your insurance company to file a claim that will make sure that you get the sort of settlement that you need – the kind of money that will be needed to put everything back together and get back to living.

Most of the time, when you file fire damage claims, the insurance company sends out an “independent” assessor who actually represents the insurance company. They are not really working in your favor and this disadvantage can lead to lower settlements than you deserve. A smart thing I want to suggest here is the hiring of someone who can work on your behalf during this process. I had never heard of such an advocate before, but was made aware of these professionals recently. These pros who come alongside you to do their assessment and negotiate a much higher settlement with your insurance company are known as Public Adjusters. They work hard for you and don’t take any payment unless you get a settlement that is fair.

One such firm that employs Public Adjusters in Texas is called Abba Claims (www.abbaclaims.com). I only mention them because I know their owner and I know what quality work they do. There may be other companies around the state that do this sort of thing, but I can’t recommend them as highly as I do Abba.

Anyway, if you find yourself in a fire damage situation, you might look up Texas Public Adjusters and see if any of the companies seem like they can get you the better settlement.

Affordable But Not Cheap

I have bought things because they were cheaply priced and have run into the cliché, “You get what you pay for!” In my attempts to be frugal, I have been ripped off by items that break too easily, tear at the seams on a first wear, or fade after a couple of months. It’s very frustrating. But again, I guess it is ultimately on me to pay more for things that are important to me. Say if I want a new car, I should pay a bit more to get the higher rated car. It can still be affordable without it being cheap or expensive. That’s where I’m trying to live these days – in the sphere of affordability. But I also want quality. Is that too much to ask? I want affordability and quality to intersect perfectly. I haven’t found this intersection very many times, but recently I have found a company that offers both.

If you live in the Dallas area and are searching for McKinney plantation shutters or Allen plantation shutters that are high quality and affordable, there’s really only one place to call. This company, which has thirty years of history to it, is called Sewell Shutters (http://sewellshutters.com), and this business really made my buying dreams come true. I got beauty, hard work, affordability and quality. They don’t just promise these things – they deliver. And I considered this to be a big purchase for me. I had wanted plantation shutters for a long time but I had heard so many horror stories of companies that offered cheap materials and shoddy installation. I didn’t want to get stuck paying for poor work and poor materials. So I started doing my research and found that this recommended business had so many five star ratings that I had to get in touch. And I did and now I have what I wanted this whole time. You have to love it when everything works out this way!

 So readers, have you ever found the balance between quality and affordability? Have you bought anything recently that was so cheaply made that it failed to live up to its use? Comment below and tell me what you have experienced.

Plantation Shutters in Allen, Texas

Allen, Texas is but one more of the many suburbs located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. But I lived there for a while and feel like it has its own identity. I loved my year there and would live there again in a heartbeat. There are tons of good restaurants, fun nightlife, amazing shopping and a really cool movie theatre. It’s a perfect city for people aged 25-45.

Now if you ever do live there and you buy a house, there are plenty of options for decorating your house. There are plenty of stores that will help you beautify your home. One thing that I hear about interior design in the area is that people looking for Allen plantation shutters can find several companies to go with. I personally like plantation shutters so I decided to look at a few of these companies. And I found out, while looking online, that there was one company that stood out because of their promises of excellent materials and a God-based work ethic. I’m a Christian so I figured I would work with them and see if they backed up their claims. (By the way this company is called Sewell Shutters – http://sewellshutters.com.  By the way, they also do McKinney plantation shutters as well.)

All I can do is echo what the other testimonials say about them. They use shutters that don’t fade or crack. They come in with a very respectful attitude and finish their jobs within a short amount of time. And of course, they work hard. They have been around for thirty years and I now know why. Their reputation is stellar and they live up to it. If I ever get exterior plantation shutters, they will be the company I use.

How about you? Do you like plantation shutters? What do you look for in a company who is going to come in and do installation inside of your house? Share your experiences and we can compare notes.

It’s never fun to have to deal with a fire at your home or business.  In fact it’s downright terrible.  All of the fire damage and destruction left behind in the aftermath can be so depressing.  People wonder how they will ever get things back in shape and it does take a while.  But, the good news is that after a fire, you can often make things look better than they looked before.  I know a family that had a residential fire and although they had to stay in a cramped hotel for a while, they got such a good settlement from their insurance company that they were able to totally redecorate their house.  It looks fantastic now.  What was an older house filled with some old furniture and technology became a well-decorated home that anyone would be happy to show off.  And this wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t received the insurance settlement.

That’s what this blog is about:  Making sure you get a fair settlement from your insurance company when you make your claim.  Sometimes it just works out but very often it doesn’t work out in your favor.  That’s why when you are making fire damage claims, I recommend hiring a professional public adjuster.  Public adjusters specialize in working for you as you negotiate with your insurance company.  They understand the process so well that it’s second nature to them.  They understand how settlements are determined and they make sure that insurance companies hit that mark.  They are advocates for you in this often complicated process.  Living in the Dallas area, I suggest that you use Abba Claims for this.  They are a highly regarded company who have tons of experience getting their clients the right amount of money to help people end up with a better house than before.

Have you ever heard of public adjusters?  Have you ever had to use them before?  If so, comment below and let me know what your experience was.

30 years in Business

The business world can be a difficult one to navigate. So many businesses start off well but they cannot sustain themselves for very long. And there are a lot of reasons for this “start strong” but “end fast” situations. From poor Human Resources to bad management, the reasons for the shutdowns run the gamut. So, when I hear of businesses that make it past that threshold I am always surprised and impressed. I want to write about those kinds of businesses because they must be doing something right in all facets of their companies’ health. In this article, I want to focus on one Dallas business that has held it together for thirty years and counting.

Sewell Shutters (http://sewellshutters.com), which produces high quality McKinney plantation shutters and also plantation shutters for South Lake as well as most of the rest of the Dallas/Forth Worth area, have been run with spiritual values at their core. They say they want to represent godly values in every install they make. They put the customers first and don’t use cheap materials. It’s only the best for their clients. And this quality shows up in the reviews of their business. It seems that everyone who uses them just glows about how well they were treated as well as how amazing the products were that were hung on their windows.

I think a lot of this goodwill comes down to their leadership and to their training of workers. There is a lot of family who take up the managerial positions and so the accountability is built in. I know that it can sometimes hard to work with family, but this crew seems to have figured it out. I know I would have had a hard time working so closely with my family and so I wonder what their secret is. Anyway, I’m planning on getting to know this company more as time goes on. Until then, check out their website and comment on what you think. Thanks for your comments.

SEO and Effective Business Practices – Week Sixty-Three

Back to the four of us at morning prayer – Liz reported that her Lubbock catering event she had to oversee went incredibly well. We thanked God for that covering. Josh said that his lawn care business is rolling along nicely and is headed to a growth point he has never approached before. As for my business, I just said I was blessed and thankful. My wife and I hadn’t gotten into any scrapes for a whole week and that makes such a huge difference for me when I work. I tend to let home things mess me up at work too. Ches reported on his fire damage claims and said that they were going well. Anyway, after prayer we decided to finally have a triple date with our spouses in tow – grab some dinner – play some games. We had grown into such a friend group that we thought we should let each other into our personal lives. I really cannot believe we hadn’t thought to do it before but Josh brought it up as something that might be cool and so we went with it. That will be fun.

As for the larger business gathering, we had a marketer/executive coach (Jennifer) with a lot of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experience come in and talk to us. She summarized some of the other marketing speakers from week’s past and then she got into some rather detailed SEO talk. She started by telling us how she had learned to use SEO for business growth – pretty much her history of how she learned the art of the web. She then asked each of us to visit the website www.opensiteexplorer.com and to put our website URLs into the box and hit enter. What came up was a basic description of how our websites were being scored by the big search engines. On a scale of 1-100, my website was an eight and my separate page authority was a ten – both which are quite low. She also told us to look below the relevancy scores to see what kind of websites were linking to us. I only had one link and that came from a link directory site that I had bought into a while back. This whole thing was like being exposed – I was staring at my online weaknesses and I wondered how the heck I was going to get things moving in the right directions. Jennifer recommended that we write those scores down somewhere and put today’s date above it. Then she said that we should make a realistic goal as to how we wanted those numbers to be after we had done some things to improve them. I put my scores down in my journal and then set my goals to double my scores in six months so that my web presence would be respectable. Jennifer asked people to share their scores and their goals and also to write down whatever questions they wanted to know the answers to. Then Jennifer said that next week she would come in again and teach us some basic ways to raise our scores – and also to answer our questions from this week. This was a great and humbling meeting. I didn’t know there were such tools readily available on the web to find out the health of our sites. I am happy to know…

So readers, have you ever taken a look at your relevancy scores on this website? What have you done to raise your scores since you discovered them? What sort of questions would you ask about SEO and your business? Let me know. Maybe I will be able to answer them for you after next week…

Fire Damage Claims in Dallas

I know what it is like to have a fire at my family’s house and I can assure you that it is really rough to come back from. Nobody in the family got hurt, but the house was in bad shape from the fire damage and most of the furniture had such bad smoke damage that hardly any of it could not be kept. The family had to move into a hotel for quite a while and it was tight living. It’s so much harder to live in a hotel for an extended stay than you would think. The laundry requires quarters and the single sink can get everyone a bit annoyed – not to mention the single bathroom and shower made everyone rush around like crazy. It really took a toll on everyone’s emotions. On top of that the family had to work through the process of getting the insurance company to come through with a fair settlement so that we could recover everything we had lost. The house was going to need major work done on it and if the insurance company didn’t think so, we would have been in big trouble. Ultimately everything ended up working out and we were able to renovate, repair and buy new furniture.

Now to any of you out there having to file fire damage claims in Dallas, I want to recommend something to you that the family didn’t know about. My suggestion is that you should start the insurance process by hiring a Texas Public Adjuster company. Public adjusters are those people who advocate for you and come alongside you as you deal with the insurance companies. They fight for you to make sure to make sure you get what you need to get your life back in order. In other words, they can get you more money from the insurance claims than you could get on your own. Sounds good, right? Who doesn’t want more money? And they also make the process so much easier. I wish my family had used a business called Abba Claims – a well-known public adjusting firm in the Dallas area. It would have been nice to see what return we would have gotten.

Anyway, if we ever have another fire, which I really hope we don’t, we will call those guys up. And if you are going through this situation, call them up today. They can be found on the web at www.abbaclaims.com.