PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Beon: We totally get it, nobody wants to talk about 2021 anymore. But let’s have one last chat about it so we know where we’re headed for 2022. All that and more coming up in just a moment. This is Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

Ian: Have you ever had avocado ice cream, Beon?

Beon: Avocado ice cream? Disgusting. No.

Ian: No? I thought the same thing. Like, “Why would you…?” Like, you think it’d be like pistachio ice cream, but it’s not.

Beon: Yeah, green ice cream, pistachio and mint, that’s it. Avocado, no thanks.

Ian: But I guess that’s Tom Brady’s big secret. You’re from South Africa, you don’t like ‘American football’. But Tom Brady eats avocado ice cream. But the guy is like 40 something, and he looks like he’s 30. But when he was 25 just starting out, he looked like he was 30. So, it’s like avocado ice cream froze him in time.

Beon: That’s what I was just going to say, it froze him in time.

Ian: Maybe we should start eating avocado ice cream.

Beon: Oh, boy. And he moved to Florida. I don’t know why that always comes up, but you know?

Ian: I don’t know. But maybe that’s why real estate agents’ pictures will actually start lining up when the 60-year-old agent has a 30-year-old picture from the 90s, and they start eating avocado ice cream, they’ll line up.

Beon: Sponsored by avocado ice cream. No. Yeah. Never heard of such a crazy thing.

Ian: Yeah. Anyways, now that we’re through that awkward avocado discussion, it’s been a while since both of us have been here together on the show.

Beon: Yeah. Man, it’s been busy on the app front. So, you’ve been carrying some episodes solo. But yeah, it feels good to be back.

Ian: Yeah, the solo episodes are good, but I kind of like the dynamic of having a couple people here. Like, I loved your interview with Dave Klima. That was great.

Beon: Yeah. And Dave’s just such a nice guy. It really was an easy interview and just a super genuine guy. What you see is what you get. I liked it a lot.

Ian: Yeah, same with Scott Baker. I loved interviewing that guy. A lot of people messaged me and commented. By the way, the outpouring from everybody about our podcast has been awesome. Comments, emails, everything, it’s been great. I’m glad so many are listening and enjoying it.

Beon: Yeah. No, for sure. One doesn’t really know what to expect. But you’re enjoying the show and letting us know, and we really appreciate that.

Ian: Yeah. But, I mean, this episode, kind of a looking back and looking forward kind of episode. Right? We’re going to look back a little bit on what in the world happened with the home inspection industry in 2020 and 2021? We’re not going to dwell on that too much, but we’re going to look towards the state of home inspections and 2022. And again, we are not fortune-tellers. We don’t know. Most of this is just going to be our opinion. And, Beon, my opinion is always. So, just whatever it is, just go along with it.

Beon: It’s funny, I feel the same way about my opinions. So, there’s going to be an interesting show here.

Ian: I have the opposite opinion about your opinion.

Beon: Yeah, just to say kind of disclaimer, this is not financial advice, of course. I’m no pro, but probably picture it as 2 guys having coffee, shooting the breeze about what just happened and what we’re looking forward to. And hopefully, you can find some nuggets that you’ll find useful.

Ian: Yeah. And it’s important to look back on 2020 and 2021. Because if we just ride the wave without understanding it, that’s no way to run a business. Then when the wave crashes, we’re done. We’re fried. We need to understand what happened, what’s going to happen to the extent that we can, and that’s going to help us run a successful business. So, we’re going to take this in 2 parts, as we mentioned. First, let’s go to the past. And second, let’s try to predict the future. So, let’s dig right into that. What in the world happened with the real estate market and the home inspection market in 2020? It was pretty unexpected, wasn’t it?

Beon: Yeah. No, look, 2020, it was the rise. And 2021 saw the absolute craziness. And, I mean, to you who’s listening, it’s no news to you. You guys have been through it. But seller’s market all the way. I mean, we’re setting real estate records across the board. We’ve never seen anything like this the United States.

Ian: Yeah. I would say it’s one of if not the highest booms that the United States, anyways, had in all of history for real estate. It was insane. It actually kind of remind me of some times in the past, like just after 9/11, people started flocking out of the cities. They just wanted to get out and not be in the city because they didn’t want to be targeted. So, they all move to the country, so to speak, or smaller cities, areas that were less targeted. And that created a bit of a housing boom. Now, it’s kind of same thing. Pandemic started, everybody’s sitting at home, kind of at one point forced to be home. And now, they’re like, “You know what? This is a small space. I’d love to have a house in the country where I could have a yard and have a dog and have some hobbies.”

I do beekeeping. I have never had a harder time trying to find bees and bee equipment than I did in 2020, because everybody who’s never done beekeeping had it. That’s what everybody was doing. I also make wine in my basement. Everybody had that. So, I had a neighbor move in. My closest neighbors have horses. Our cows outnumber people in my town. But I had a guy from Jersey move in, somebody from New York City. Everybody was just fleeing the cities going to the country.

So, what that did was, it raised the value of all the houses around me 20, 30%, sometimes more, and lines out the door for showings, multiple offers. On average in my area, anecdotally, the agents have been telling me 5 to 7 during the peak. 5 to 7 offers within 48 hours. The only reason the house would sit on the market for 7 days is so they can let all the offers come in and pick the highest one.

Beon: Yeah. No, and historically now, because, I mean, since the 2008 financial crash, builders got burned, the real estate market got burned pretty badly. So, they pulled back quite a bit, wanted to play it safe. And what it actually resulted in, I guess, is that the US is actually underbuilt now by millions of homes. I mean, I think that the latest figures, just under 4 million homes, because you got Millennials now getting into the stage where they want to settle down, buy houses.

So, even before the whole COVID urban Exodus, or whatever you want to call it, there was already a supply issue, which has just intensified. So, yeah, I mean, it was really the perfect storm when you think about it.

Ian: Yeah. And it’s interesting you mentioned that. Millennials, on average, statistically start things later in life, starting families, buying homes. So, when they reached the age of 30s to 40 years old-ish, they started to buy homes. But that was the same time that boomers said, “I’m going to start downsizing.” So, it was an interesting article on realtor.com that I was reading about how Boomers and Millennials are competing for the same homes, and that that just drives up the price of starter homes, really. It didn’t affect a whole lot homes that were a million dollars and over. It did, but not as much as it did as a house that was 2 or $300,000.

Beon: Right. I mean, for the home inspection community, I mean, you will be able to tell this more than I can, but I know just from listening to a lot of guys, it’s been a tough year for many. Guys are skipping inspections. Businesses down. Inflation’s up. The cost of doing business is going up. It’s really been a tough year for a lot of the guys out there.

Ian: Well, 2021 has been a tough year for some in some areas. 2020 was a boom year for home inspectors. I think we had our best year ever in 2020. When the rest of the world was losing jobs and stuff, home inspectors across the country were having banner years. Then 2020 happened because all those buyers started to accumulate and started skipping inspections, more so than ever before.

And then there’s low inventory. So, if there’s 5 houses and 15 buyers, whereas the year before, there were 12 houses and 15 buyers, there’s just less houses being sold. And then a portion of those, they’re skipping the inspection. So, it’s not totally skipping the inspections, but a lot of times, we have that perception as home inspectors, “Oh, everybody’s skipping inspections.” It’s not necessarily that, it’s just there’s less houses being sold in a lot of ways. And sometimes it comes down to, “We don’t care who the home inspector is right now, we just need it done in 2 days.”

But if you have 7 bids on a house, the average person says, “Hey, an easy thing to get rid of is the home inspection,” and the quote/unquote, ‘father-in-law weekend contractor’ came and looked at it, we know that’s not going to lead to somewhere good for that particular buyer.

Beon: Yeah. That is true. So, looking at it, I know some of the guys in just talking back and forth and getting feedback from home inspectors, even just back and forth with the app a little bit, some of the guys have had a hard year. And there are still some guys that are generally just still doing well. But obviously, everybody’s looking back at 2021, they’re like, “Well, it was a massacre, mostly,” difficult time for many. But now, looking ahead at 2022, how are things shaping up? Are we out of the worst of it? Is it going to get worse? Is it going to stay the same? Was this whole boom a bubble? Are we heading on the other direction? All these questions, what do you think? Where are we at with this thing?

Ian: So, first of all, if you just scroll through the news, you’re going to find every article finding evidence to point to like the yield curve right now, “Oh, it’s pointing to an economic downturn.” I think, every year, I have read that in an article. Somebody is going to interpret it a different way. It’s not necessarily going to be an epic downturn or an epic upturn.

I have a definitive opinion about the market, which I’ll share a little bit. But let’s just talk about real estate for a little bit, because that affects our market as home inspectors. So, if you don’t want it to affect your market as much, go back and listen to our podcast on fractional marketing. I’ll tell you, I have gone through at least 2 or 3 relatively large economic downturns as a home inspection company owner and a business owner. And there are ways around it, to an extent. We don’t have to rely completely on real estate transactions. But the reality is, for most of us, that’s 90 plus percent of what drives our business.

So, we can look at things like realtor.com is always a great place to look. They’re going to maybe present the information in a way that favors them to a certain extent. But if you look at existing home and median sale prices, home sales and things like that, we’re going to see that existing home sale inventory back in 2021 was down 18%. That’s huge. They’re expecting it to be up in 2022, but not by huge leaps and bounds. a little less than a half percent, they’re expecting it to be up. But that’s way better than down 18%.

If we look at others, like MarketWatch, they actually released an article on this not too long ago. And they’re kind of predicting some of the similar things, that the market is not going to be a buyer’s market, but it’s not going to be as much of a seller’s market. So, maybe instead of 7 buyers per house, you might have 4. A little bit more reasonable, but not quite back to what we would consider a normal market. Would you say that’s kind of on point, Beon?

Beon: Yeah, it seems there’s a general consensus that’s been reached as far as looking at it sort of the first half of what they call the spring of the year. It seems like it’s not going to quite be on fire as much as it was in 2021. And it’s interesting, some of the reasons, I mean, you can theorize about a lot of things, but a lot of buyers got pushed out of the market when the prices got super crazy. I mean, and they’re sitting on the sidelines, they’re waiting. So, they predict if the prices do contract a little bit, those buyers will pitch in. So, it’ll keep things going.

I mean, also, the builders now, the last year, they’ve been trying to get their stuff together. So, inventory has improved a little. But the one big thing that everybody’s keeping an eye on, and we’ll probably get into this in a moment, is interest rates, because that’s going to make a big difference. And that’s a big question mark at the moment, because we’re not sure at what point a hike will come. Will it come? Won’t it come? If it does, that’ll obviously push a lot of guys out of the market as well.

Ian: Yeah. Interest rates have been insane for years now. I forget what inflation is right now in the US dollar. Is it 2.4%, Beon?

Beon: I’m not sure exactly. I know when you look at… I mean, there’s obviously different indicators you can look at. But yeah, I think, generally, it was sitting around 2.4, 2.5. But if you factored in energy with it, it was ridiculous, and you go up over 6%, I guess.

Ian: Yeah. But I mean, if you’re taking out a loan at 2.9%, and inflation rate is 2.5, let’s say, that’s basically free money. I mean, those are insane rates for you to be able to buy a house with. So, once interest rates go up, like remember, pre-recession times and pre-Great Recession times, I should say? People were thrilled bragging about 11%. “Oh, I got 11% on my mortgage,” and they were bragging about it. There’s people out there getting 2.9%, or less in some cases. That’s not sustainable.

So, when interest rates go up, I think it will take some buyers off the market, unfortunately for them. But at the same time, it’s I think it’ll level out the market. So, maybe instead of 4 buyers per house, maybe it’ll be 3. That’s much more reasonable and more likely to let inventory catch up with demand slightly anyways and normalize to a degree. I don’t think in 2022, we’re going to normalize completely. That’s just not going to happen. I think it’ll just be the operative word is ‘better’. Not normal, but better.

Beon: Yeah. That’s a good point to make. Because one may be inclined to look at what happened in 2021, and maybe you’re comparing in your mind to what was going on just before 2008 being like, “Wow, hot market. Everything’s going up, up, up, up.” And so, the same thing is going to happen, probably just going to drop off. But this is a very different situation that we’re in now to 2008. I mean, 2008, inventory, there was like way too much inventory, overextended credit. It led to the crunch of 2008, and everything fell to pieces. Now, it’s completely flipped. So, this is not the dynamic of a bubble that just went up and is going to go all the way down. It’s going to be sustained for a little time period now.

Ian: Yeah. And I think that’s important to remember that, just because there’s a buying frenzy doesn’t mean as the Great Recession again. There’s only a couple of federally backed banks that buy up the mortgages. And they still have very strict lending requirements. The interest rates are really low, but there are very strict lending requirements. They are easing up on certain requirements as of recently, but ultimately, there’s not a giant pile of garbage mortgages out there like there was back in 2006, 2007.

 

Beon: Right. And some guys may also now point to the high inflation rates, like you were pointing out and say, “Hey, look, we’re heading to this major crash issue,” whatever. But what you must remember is inflation rates are measured, I guess, like year and year comparatively. And if you think of 2020, I mean, obviously, everything was going up in 2020. When the pandemic hit, and supply chains were being restricted, and all the rest, it led to a lot of dips in the industry. Everything went down. So, now when you’re on the other end of the hump, and we’re going the other direction, your difference is going to be comparatively larger. So, some of those numbers for a while will look pretty big. But if you look at it in the larger context, it’s a bit more of a gradual curve than what you may see just at face value.

Ian: Yeah. There’s definitely some changes going on that kind of cancel out any predictions that we could possibly make. I mean, 6 months ago, I paid $10 for a 2×4. I mean, that’s insane. Now, I can go to the hardware store and kind of buy 1 for like $3.50, $4.

Beon: Yeah.

Ian: That’s not as bad. So, you just kind of put that in the bigger picture as builders are putting up more housing that people can buy. And you know what? As home inspectors, this might be a good time to offer 11^th month inspections as builders are putting these houses together. Next summer, next fall, we can do 11^th month builder warranty inspections. We can do new construction inspections, phase inspections. These are perfect times to start marketing that.

Just as a side point for that, if that’s where the mark is going to be headed in 2022, which I think it is, when it comes to 11^th month inspections, it’s very hard to market that online and to real estate agents, because they have nothing to do with it. For those of you who don’t know what it is, the builder who builds your house typically will give you a 12-month warranty on it. At the 11^th month, you hire a home inspector. We come in, we do our job, give a full report, and he hands that report over to the builder and says, “Here’s some stuff for you to fix.”

Homebuyers love it. I love doing them. You can schedule them at ease. There’s not always a rush to get them done. And you’re dealing directly with the homeowner with nothing really involved in it with other parties like mortgage lenders and attorneys and agents and things like that. So, they’re really great. So, you kind of have to go old school with them.

What I used to do is I’d make up door hangers, and I’d keep track of when this development was built. And right around 9 or 10 months, I started leaving door hangers on. And that way, when they came home, “Oh, hey, look at this. Oh, you know what? This might be good,” and you might land a few of them. Then when you go to do one of them, leave it in the yard, “An 11^th month builder warranty inspection is being performed here. Would you like one? Call this number.” And just go through that neighborhood, especially if you find a certain defect.

So, in one neighborhood, I found a defect with a chimney flue. A great builder, I mean, the buildings were immaculate, except for this one thing because he subbed it out. Man, everybody wants inspection. “Is this in my house? Can you come check? Can you come check for that one thing?”

“Sure. 150 bucks. 15 minutes. Yep, it’s there. I documented it here. Send it to your builder. He knows exactly what I’m talking about.” Do things like that.

Get into phase inspections if you’re not doing those. I’ve never been a big fan of phase inspections, but new construction right after the home is built, advertise that. If you get into that, I think you’ll be a lot busier, not as reliant on the real estate market next year as a home inspector.

Beon: Yeah. That certainly makes sense. As somebody myself who’s also a home inspector… (a home inspector) a homeowner (excuse me), the one thing that surrounds the purchase of your home is more spam in… well, spam, I’m calling it spam, but junk mail in your mailbox than you’ve ever seen in your life before. And you just take a look at it, weed through the stuff you recognize, and throw the rest away. So, I like your idea there of door hangers. I would take note of that. Somebody’s actually been to my place and noticed a need that I have. So, yeah, good idea.

Ian: Yeah. You’re not going to win every one that you put a door hanger on, but you’re going to get a couple of them. And if you make them nice and professional, go back to my podcast last week on branding, make it really stand out, give people that warm, fuzzy feeling that you’re a real great service provider, they’re going to hire you, and it’s going to end up being a good thing for you.

Beon: I got a question for you, Ian, and this is more from an ignorant point of view. To me, okay, this is the scenario I imagine. You’ve got sellers now who are looking to sell their house, let’s say in 2022. They’ve seen the markets hot, maybe they missed the peak, but they want to sell. But one of the problems they’re dealing with potentially is that they want to make sure, obviously, the sale goes through smoothly, everything works, no holdups, no surprises. But at the same time, if they want something fixed or need something fixed, the contractor’s all backed up, their supply chains are backed up. So, you may have to be delayed by months if you want something taken care of. Does it make sense for home inspectors to poke at prelisting inspections? Is that something they should hit up, or no?

Ian: I love prelisting inspections. I have always pushed for them. I love them. Again, there’s no time constraint. Typically, they’re sellers that are saying, “Hey, we’re going to list here in 6 months. Can you get your inspection in some time at that point?” It’s a little bit more, I don’t want to say casual, but less stress, less high intensity. You point stuff out and they say, “Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know what? We had that fixed. It looks like he didn’t do a good job. Okay, we’ll just have him back.” It’s not, “Oh, my goodness, my life savings are going to go down the hole. This is scary.”

Typically, most sellers that get a prelisting inspection have taken good care of their home too, and they take pride in it. I have one guy send me pictures of all the repairs. And it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m like, “You really didn’t need to fix that.” I mean, it was like $100 and maybe an hour or 2 for a handyman, and he would send me pictures, he goes, “I just want it to be perfect.” So, they’re great.

The sad part is, when it is a seller’s market, pre-listing inspections go down. Because people who aren’t taking care of their home are thinking, “Why would I have a pre-listing inspection? I wouldn’t negotiate on this anyways. I have 5 offers, and 4 of them are waiving the inspection anyways.” So, it does go down.

I would focus more on 11^th month inspections, because there is more new home inventory, and there’s going to be more. I would focus on homes that are being built and that have just been built, and try to get in on that level personally. But again, pre-listing inspections, always a fantastic marking.

But that actually kind of leads me, I’m going to change your thought they’re a little bit, Beon, because I want to talk about my opinion.

Beon: Let’s do it.

Ian: Let’s do it. The professional way to say it is, “Anecdotally, in other words, in my opinion, from my experience.”

Beon: And if we had a video, you’d have the disclaimers running across the bottom of the screen right now.

Ian: Me and Beon have known each other for 20 years. He’s used to my overbearing opinion on things.

Beon: It’s all good.

Ian: But I do have an opinion on it. Because let’s say you’ve been a home inspector for 10 years, that’s a good long time. I would consider you an experienced home inspector at that point, by all means. But you came into the market in 2011. 2011 was a great year. I mean, it was one of my first amazing years where I was like, “Holy cow, this is out of control.” And then 2012 was a great year. I’m looking back through my records, 2013, ‘14, ‘15, they were all great years. You have not experienced home inspections in a market like we’re experiencing right now.

So, I remember, back in 2005, 2006, everything’s like, “Yay, wee, so much work, we don’t know what to do with it.” That was 2020 all over again. But then things kind of went the other way. Just before the market crashed, there were multiple buyers for a house, people waiving inspections. And it was kind of similar, in my mind, to 2021. I remember, as it happened, I’m like, “Man, this reminds me of 2006. What in the world is going on here?”

But a beautiful thing happened for me anyways. So, as soon as the market got harder, half my competition left. So, I actually tried to go back and look at the numbers, because I actually recorded them. In my State, you can see how many inspectors are in an area. So, my area covers about 5 counties, but I only counted 4 of them at the time because that was my service area at the time. There were a little over 400 inspectors in my 4-county area. So, I didn’t consider that a lot to begin with. By the end of 2008, there were only a little over 200.

Beon: Wow.

Ian: So, things got a little lean. It wasn’t bad, to be honest with you. But it got lean. I had to market harder. I increased my marketing at that time. But by the time the dust settled, it was like 48% of my competition was gone. And now, when the market started to normalize, there were all these inspections and not enough inspectors. So, I felt bad for the 200 guys that were out of business, or didn’t have their license, but man, that worked out well for me. So, then we started to have banner year after banner year after banner year.

So, anecdotally, I have noticed… and I was just talking to some guys out on the West Coast, some home inspectors, and are like, “Nah, life is great here.” Parts of Florida, they’re like, “Man, life is amazing. Business is great.” But then I talk to guys out in the Midwest, on the East Coast up to New Jersey, and kind of kind of out on the Northwest section of things, there are home inspectors that are giving up their licenses. There have been several companies that I’ve known of that have just completely gone out of business.

There were 3 multi-inspector firms that I know of that I knew the owner, they went out of business. There was a fourth one, he ended up pulling his business out of the fire, and he just kind of attacked it. He pared down, and he got things really lean, and he’s still operating. But he felt it.

So, you may be a guy right now that’s thinking, “I don’t see any of this.” Good for you. It’s very much local to specific areas. If it’s running great for you, awesome. Guys on the West Coast over in California, good for you if it’s still going strong.

But if you’re one of those guys that are looking at Facebook groups and thinking, “Why am I the only one without work?” you’re not. Nobody’s going to go on Facebook and say, “Hey, guys, I went out of business because I didn’t have enough work.” You’re only going to see the guys out there saying, “Oh, my goodness, everything is amazing. It was my first year and I did 9000 inspections, and now I wear a gold crown and a cape. I went from single inspector to having 17 inspectors and 6 months.” Okay, just, I’ll be honest with you, half of that is some of those guys I know, it’s not always exactly how they’re portraying it. And then, if that’s them, if that’s actually what’s happening, great. But there’s a lot more factors to, quote/unquote, ‘business success’ than that.

Think about Bill Gates for a minute. Bill Gates is a genius. He’s super smart. But he also grew up in a time period where computers were new. Most people couldn’t afford them, but his parents could. They gave him a computer. They gave him a high-level education. They funded his stuff. He had the situation for that kind of success. So, it’s very situational.

So, don’t feel bad if you’re one of those guys going out of business, because that probably has a lot to do with your area. But if you can hang on for just a little bit, if you can lean up and continue on, in my opinion, in the next couple of years, there are going to be less inspectors, but we’ll have a normalized market. And that’s the opportunity for guys to really crank up their business. So, if you can hang on. And that’s really what it comes down to.

And it may be end of 2022. I don’t think so. I think it’s more like mid-2023. So, I mean, guys will call me, “Hey, Ian, do you have any marketing advice? Things are slow.” And my marketing advice is, “Market harder. Hang on. Because then once the market normalizes again, and you have 2 buyers per house, or 1 buyer per house, that’s awesome.”

Beon: Yeah.

Ian: It’s a great time to be a home inspector.

Beon: That’s interesting. Yeah. So, a bit of a shake-up, kind of a squeeze in the market there. But yeah, that absolutely makes sense. So, now I’m just thinking, if you are a home inspector, like you said, if you’re doing great, that’s great. Good for you. But if you’ve got some slow time and you’re trying to figure out what to do, is now the time to do things like get more training, get more certifications so that you can do more stuff, develop your…? What is your USP? Kind of develop that side of your business so that you come out stronger on the other end. That probably would be a good idea, I’m thinking.

Ian: Yeah. And a lot of times we’re like, “Well, I’m already qualified.” Okay, great. Go get some more certifications. Get as many as you can. Have you been thinking about getting your license to use drones? Get it. Have you been thinking about getting certified to do septic inspections, pool inspections, wood destroying Insect inspections? Do it now. That way, you have an entire arsenal when things start to pick up a little bit for you.

And my predictions could be completely wrong. But I’ll tell you, it’s also a different buyer set after this kind of market. Because what happens is, let’s say for example, my brother buys a house, skips his home inspection, now he’s 30 grand in debt because there was a foundation issue, a leaky toilet into his kitchen from the second-floor bathroom, roofing issue. Am I going to skip an inspection? No. In fact, I’m going to spend a lot of extra time finding the best possible inspector in the universe with the most qualifications.

I love a buyer’s market. I love inspecting in that. I tend to be overly picky. And I write reports that are very granular, a lot of home inspectors consider, of what I pick on and what I comment on. That’s what people are going to look for. They’re going to look for the guy with 100 qualifications, a great USP, as Beon mentioned. They’re going to look for you if you are that guy.

So, don’t waste time now, get ready for a buyer’s market when that eventually happens. Because it will eventually happen. We don’t know when or how. And to be honest with you, Omicron, whether we think Omicron is going to be the end of the world or not, or we think it’s fake, whatever it is, it’s going to affect society. It’s going to affect our businesses. It’s going to affect everything. So, we don’t know where the future is going to lead us. So, be prepared for it now by preparing for that buyer’s market.

Beon: Yeah. Oh, thanks a lot, Ian. That’s good advice. I guess the gist of it is, we don’t know, can’t stay for certainly exactly, but don’t expect things just to fall off and go back to normal in the next few months. That’s not realistic. And that’s your business plan, well, you’ll be part of the shakeout there that Ian was talking about. You’re not going to make it.

So, guys, stay glued to the ground. Try and get as much information as possible so that you can make informed decisions for your business. Plan for the future, because the market is going to improve for you. And just make sure that you are ready when it does. So, the things that you, in a busy season, wouldn’t have time to do, take care of that stuff now.

Ian: And if you haven’t tried avocado ice cream, please still do not do that. It sounds super gross.

Beon: You will look 30 years younger though. You will look pre…

Ian: But is it worth it?

Beon: Is it worth it? Well, you know what? Next time I see avocado ice cream, I won’t be able to help myself. I’ll just have to try it, and we’ll see.

Ian: We can’t be friends anymore.

Beon: Well, I want to look like Tom Brady. Come on. Well, guys, thank you very much. Thanks, Ian. It was great being back. We’ll see you next time.

Ian: Great show. Thanks a lot, Beon.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].

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