PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Beon DeNood
This is Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

Ian Robertson
Mike Marlow, welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. It’s been too long since we’ve had you on.

Mike Marlow
I know, it’s been a bit, but we still talk often.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, just the other day, which will lead us into our podcast here. But just to let everybody know who Mike is again, if you didn’t listen to his last podcast, Mike Marlow, Veteran Home Inspections. Mike has been around a long time. He’s down in Texas. You even consult with TREC, don’t you, Mike?

Mike Marlow
I’m on the Inspector Advisory Committee up at TREC.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, so Mike’s been around. He’s actually, interestingly, our lives crossed paths in the same area of upstate New York at some point, not personally, but at least our lives did. So, Mike, today we’re talking about a subject that I thought was really cool. This was your idea. We were having a conversation, and I was talking about a lesson that I learned. An engineer one time, I was doing work for him in my early 20s, and he was going to help with the work. And he was a talented guy. I didn’t mind. He knew his way around stuff. He’s like, you know what? I’m paying you $40 an hour or whatever it was to do this job. He goes, I make $60 an hour at my job. He goes, “Why would I do your job twice as slow for less pay? And he’s like, “I’ll just pay you the extra, and you do this alone. I’m like, “That makes total logistical sense.”

Mike Marlow
Yeah, it does, but it is such a hard concept to…it’s easy to understand, it’s hard to put into practice.

Ian Robertson
Well, and that’s what led you to saying the expression of a book. And we’re not going to do this as a book review, but everybody should read it. Mike told me, Ian, you just gave the principle of Who Not How. Go read the book. And that’s exactly what I did. I went and read the book, and it made total sense. And you said you used it to change how you do business. And you’re a successful inspector. You have a multi-inspector firm. You work all over the place. So, Mike, tell us a little bit about who, not how, and how that changed your business. And after reading it, I have some definite opinions on it, but I’d love to hear yours first.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, thanks. It is definitely still a work in progress of implementing that into business life, all of that. But you know, it’s basically the concept of figuring out where your time is best spent, and looking at, you know, is it best if I do that, or is there someone else that should be doing that for me? The best example I give when talking to someone about this is I ask them, do you mow your lawn? And you know, almost always everyone’s like, yeah, I mow it, you know, once a week, once every other week, you know, depending on what it needs. And I ask them, how long does it take you to mow your lawn? Now, for me, it takes me about four to five hours to mow the lawn. Weed whack, all that. And yeah, I bill at about $100 an hour, depending on what type of inspections I’m doing. But yeah, that’s four or five hours. So call it $500 is what it cost me to mow my lawn. I have now a lawn guy that comes in whenever I say, “Hey, lawn needs mowed.” He’s like, “Okay, yep, I’ll get over there.” And it costs me 185 bucks. And he and his girlfriend come out, and they’re done in two hours, so I’m saving, you know, 300 bucks, 315, whatever you want to call it, and you know, billing at $100 an hour, and you know, they’re making 185 bucks between the two of them, so 50 bucks an hour, call it. But you know, it works out for everybody. So you just have to look at it. How are you going to? Where is your time, where are you spending your time that it’s not the best use of that time? Years ago, when I was in grad school, I had to write a paper, and it was a human resources class, which I really did not enjoy, but had to write a paper. And you know, my concept was, when you have a new task, you have three options on how to complete that task. You can build the capability, you can buy the capability, or you can rent the capability. So building it is, okay, going out and figuring out how am I going to do this. It’s the slowest. It’s probably the most expensive, long-term way to do it. Buying it is going out and finding someone that already knows how to do it and hiring them, or if it’s a short-term need, you go out and you rent it, you hire a consultant, hire a subcontractor, whatever. So it’s just the most efficient use of time and money.

Ian Robertson
I think that’s a fantastic summary. I really like your illustration of the lawnmower. It reminds me of an actual experience in the book where this guy, let’s say he makes $2,000 an hour because he was a multimillionaire, you know, sold a big business and all that stuff, and he was hanging his own Christmas lights.

Mike Marlow
Right?

Ian Robertson
Because he didn’t want to spend $1,000 to have somebody do it. He’s like, he grew up a contractor. He’s like, I’m just going to do this myself. He ended up falling and hurting himself, and he was going to be medically incapacitated for months at a time, and he almost lost his life, almost got permanent brain damage and everything, but even at the basics of the math, okay, you pay $1,000 to somebody to do this, but let’s say hypothetically you make $1,000 an hour, you would have spent all day on it, and then, you know, you could have just gone to work, made $10,000 in a 10-hour day, come back and paid that guy $1,000. He would have been happy. Would have been done in an hour or two. You would have been happy because you had an extra $9,000, and everything would have been hunky dory, and you wouldn’t been injured. We as home inspectors make this mistake in our business so much, and in so many ways. And as I was going through the book, I’m like, man, this is really…I had to look at a few things because I’m a do-it-yourselfer. And I think we all kind of are. We were talking before the show, and we were talking about even things like taxes. Like every January I watch home inspectors online. Hey, do you guys know? Can I deduct this? Can I deduct that? And I’m like, do you know what a pass-through entity is? Oh no, no, I don’t. ChatGPT is just helping me do my taxes.

Mike Marlow
Oh, that’s scary.

Ian Robertson
I’m like, instead of asking how to do this, ask who? Okay, so you pay $500 or $1,000 to your accountant to do your taxes, but now he shows you a way to do a pass-through entity, and that saves you $1,500, just in that one thing. Maybe he finds a few more deductions that you missed. You’ve made money by spending money by asking the question who, not how.

Mike Marlow
Or he tells you why aren’t you an S corp, and saves you 1000s every year.

Ian Robertson
Yep. By the way, that S corp is the pass-through entity thing. If for anybody listening, if you’re an LLC, start filing as an S corp, or more importantly, talk to your accountant first because that’s the who you should talk to.

Mike Marlow
Yep, there is a process to become an S corp from an LLC, and yeah, but find your who and get them to do their thing.

Ian Robertson
Exactly, it’s kind of like, you would tell that to somebody getting a home inspector. You could learn how to do your own inspection and save $500, but the old joke is you save $500 and you lose 30,000 because you miss something.

Mike Marlow
Yep, you know it’s like, you know, Ian, you are my who for websites. Could I maybe figure it out? Maybe. But you know, I figured out really quick that websites are not the thing that I should be spending my time on, and since probably six months into business, I’ve had someone else doing my website, and it’s just something I don’t have to worry about.

Ian Robertson
Yep, and it’s funny, and I appreciate the call out there, but at the same time too, in the book they actually even mention a website guy, like a guy was working on his own website, spending days researching, trying to learn how to do SEO, blah blah blah, and then he finally found someone. He’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s easy. I’ll do that. I do that every day. I’ll do that for you for $1,200.” I think he quoted him in the book. The website was done. All his optimizations that he wanted were done, and it was less than a day. And he’s like, oh my goodness.

Mike Marlow
Yeah. After he had spent how many hours doing that?

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, and you’ll kick yourself at times. Like, why did I even try to do that? And yeah, that’s just the way people in general are. We have to learn the hard way sometimes. But once you start trying to think this way, as a business owner in particular, it really is a a life changing moment, and you start finding that you have a little bit more time to do, you know, either the important stuff that you really do need to do as a business owner, or even better, just to spend time with family, and how much is that time worth?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I mean that’s what we’re all working for. That’s invaluable. You know, it’s funny. I was trying to think back. I’m like, there was times that I completely botched this principle, and one of those ways that I botched it was for years at the beginning of my inspection career. I hate radon tests. I wished I’d never do a radon test. I used to pick up all my own radon tests. I’d go do the inspection, get paid, and then later that week, if I did seven inspections, I’d have to pick up seven radon tests. Now I’m blowing a whole day, sometimes two days, a bunch of evenings, trying to schedule and get into all these houses again. Deal with the sellers who have now seen my report and are upset.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, that’s always fun.

Ian Robertson
Oh my goodness, that’s the worst. I hated it. And then one day, I’m just like, I gotta stop doing this. I am burning through two and a half time slots a week. And for me at the time, that was almost $1,500. I’m like, I’m just gonna pay somebody to do it. So the first hire I made for one of my companies was somebody to pick up radon tests. They were thrilled. They’re like, you’re telling me I can just drive, pick these up, pop them in a FedEx box or whatever, and then I’m done. I’m like, yeah, that’s it. I just don’t want to go do it. My time is more valuable doing other things. And they’re like, cool. They worked for me. It was a couple. They worked for me for maybe five, six years, and then to this day, we still have a dedicated radon guy, and he’s worked with us for eight, nine years already. And you pay them well. So I botched the principal at first, and then I figured it out. I just didn’t know what it was, and I’ve been kind of looking at other things since you’ve mentioned this to me, and I read the book. I’m like, how many times do I go through my day? I’m like, how do I do this? And I stopped and I thought, okay, who could do this better, and where would my time better be?

Mike Marlow
But one of the big ones that I think even a single person home inspection company, you know, just one guy or gal that’s a home inspector, answering the phones. I know you’ve had several podcasts on either call centers or whatever, and yeah, we’ve all done it. We start off. We’re answering our own phones. Yeah, we can sell ourselves the best, but yeah, especially now with all of the spam robocalls. I don’t want to be answering my phone continuously all day, not knowing whether it’s a real client or just another, you know, “we can lend your company $500,000.” You know, that’s the one I’m getting like five times a day right now.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, Kathy from the funding department, that’s my favorite.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, exactly. So, I went to a call center, I think pretty much when I moved down here, so 2010, or no, 2017, we moved down here. Yeah, boy, time flies. So 2017, we moved down here and moved the business here, and I got a call center at that point, and now I have a dedicated virtual assistant, and she is part of the company, and she does great, answering the phones and setting up appointments. She can answer a lot of the normal questions. There’s still times when someone throws her a curveball, but she’ll just text me and hey, you know, what’s up with this? But she takes care of it. And you know, the real estate agents know Gene. That’s her name. They know her. They’ll call me sometimes directly on my cell phone. Hey, do you have time to do an inspection for me? You know, I’m like, hey, I’m out on an inspection right now. I think I do. Can I give you a call back later? And they’re like, oh no no no, we’ll just call Gene and she’ll take care of it. And it’s like, yes. And after a while, they’ll just go straight to her. It’s training them to go to her, and it’s great. But how much time have I saved there? The phone is always answered, and it’s the same person every day. So I really realized how much she did for me earlier this year when she had a kid. First off, she was like, “Hey, I’m just going to take a few days off, and I’m being induced on this day”. And I’m like, Gene, a few days. Like, how about you, just take at least a week. If you want two weeks, don’t worry. And I even kicked her a nice bonus. It’s like, you know, go. This is not your first kid. You know it’s not going to be easy. So just please go take care of family. But during that time, God, I realized how much she did because all of her calls now forwarded to my cell phone, and it’s like okay, yep. But anyway, yeah. Take a look at your business and just say, what can I get somebody else to do? Um, I know you had some other examples. Taxes is a great one. I’ve had an accountant since day one because yeah, I don’t want to deal with that. Yeah, I don’t want to screw it up, basically.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And the problem is we don’t know what we don’t know, and I have always found that out throughout life. Every time I think I know something, I meet somebody who actually does, and I’m like, I didn’t know that, but I didn’t know that I didn’t know that, so that’s where we sound like a Dr. Seuss book. Who’s your who, in Whoville. But I was just doing some math. So let’s say we do 10 inspections a week. So hypothetically, we have to answer at least 10 phone calls. So I did the math of how long that would take, plus the phone calls that we didn’t get, plus the phone calls that we would get about other stuff. It equals out to about all the phone calls that you take if you’re a 10-inspection-a-week inspector, just about four hours out of your week, and that’s if everything’s running smoothly without a lot of spam calls, without a lot of complaints or talkative agents, or something like that. It’s four hours a week. I mean, that’s a full inspection time slot. I mean, pay somebody to do that because now, if you’re answering your phone that much, that four hours isn’t coming out of one glob of time. It’s spread out. You’re distracted from your inspection. You’re going to be returning fees because you missed something because you’re on the phone. You’re going to be missing inspections. You didn’t answer your phone quick enough, and you called them back, and they found somebody already. The who, not how, always, always adds up. And there’s other things that we can do, like lots of things that we don’t consider, things like seasonal work. For instance, I’ve talked about this before, but one of my competitors started doing this, and I’m so jealous that he thought of it and I didn’t. But when during the busy season, hiring a college student or something on their break, paying them $20 an hour, and all they do is drive you around. So now, I know, right? You don’t have to drive. You don’t have to worry about traffic. You can make all your phone calls, check on your family, eat your lunch, finish up a report, and then you just get to the next inspection. You’re talking to the client. He already knows. All right, I’m going to pull out your ladder, hand it to you. After you get done with the attic, I vacuum things up. He doesn’t need to do anything inspection-wise. He’s just going to clean up and bring you things. You know, 20 minutes into the inspection, bring me a bottle of water. Make sure everybody has a business card, for $20. If somebody, if I was a college student, $20 an hour, I’d be like, heck yeah! Now you can do a better job. Maybe another inspection during the day in the busy season, whatever you want to do, your who becomes, is my time better spent driving? Am I my own Uber driver? It doesn’t make sense for us to waste time driving when we have a volume during the busy season. To this day, man, I wish I could claim that idea, but I have to give him credit.

Mike Marlow
I joke all the time. I need a chauffeur, because we do a lot of driving.

Ian Robertson
Well, yeah, your service area is huge. Like you were saying, it wasn’t too far today to your inspection, and it was an hour and a half. That’s ginormous.

Mike Marlow
Just down into San Antonio, the far side.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. But even at small scale, I mean, just paying somebody to be your driver during busy season is pretty amazing. Is it somebody who has kids who are in high school now that can take care of themselves and they’re looking for a little bit of extra work? You know, is it Uber? You know, if we’re in an area where it’s just like you know what, I’m doing a condo. I’m in New York City. There’s literally no need for a ladder. I’m gonna bring my tool bag, and I mean, that might look a little weird getting dropped off with an Uber, but I’m just brainstorming here, Mike.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, that wouldn’t look too professional.

Ian Robertson
That wouldn’t look too professional.

Mike Marlow
But yeah, my first three years were in Maryland, and I tell you, going down into D.C. or even some areas in Baltimore, yeah, the biggest stress of the inspection was: Am I going to be able to park close enough to the property that I’m not, you know, lugging a ladder five blocks? Yeah, and DC in particular, when you got into some places, and then pulling up to the condo in Georgetown on K Street, in my ratty old pickup, and the bellhop, looking at me like, “What are you doing here?”

Ian Robertson
Here to make sure this place is up to shape.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, the condo fees were 12,000 a month at this place.

Ian Robertson
But I guess that’s where it comes down to looking at even innovative parts of our business. And sometimes it’s funny how we might think of who, not how, in the wrong way. Like even people are like, oh AI. AI is gonna take over the industry, and I’m like, yeah, but now you don’t know what your report says. I’m like, I feel like you’re the best qualified to…like use AI-assisted comments, and everybody’s using ChatGPT. But I mean, I’m not gonna say any names, but I’ve already seen some legal issues come out of AI comments. Like, oh, I didn’t know it was in there, Ian. I just copied and pasted. I’m just moving quickly. What do you recommend? I’m like, I recommend outsourcing something else besides the actual report. Like we have AI comment assist and everything. We’re adding more AI features. I’m not against AI by any means, but AI should not be our who for the primary part of our job.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, I just saw a thing on AI that, like, basically how much or how often they hallucinate, and some of them are upwards of 50% where they just start spewing nonsense and making up sources that don’t exist or misinterpreting sources, and it’s just like okay, well, that’s not very useful. You know, flip a coin and see if it’s right.

Ian Robertson
But there are things you can do to outsource some of the some of the busy work as a home inspector. A lot of us like to say, okay, I don’t want an assistant. They’re going to slow me down. You can train an assistant to do things like check all the outlets. Have them log into whatever app you’re using. If you’re using Inspector Toolbelt, team inspections is great. Test every outlet and take a picture, put it in the report. Nobody’s ever going to look at every picture of that, but it makes them actually check every outlet. And okay, now you’re done. Now they just have 47 pictures in the outlet section that nobody’s going to read. But they might find something. If you find something, let me know. You know, can you have them check every door? Make sure it opens and closes properly. Take all the busy work out of stuff because, as you know, Mike, better than I do, the interesting stuff happens typically in the structure, the roof, the foundation, you know. But we spend so much time turning on sinks.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, and sitting there waiting for a bathtub to fill up. Yeah, I’ve trained a couple inspectors, and I tell you, the three, four weeks into their training, when they’re starting to get to that point where you can really, you know, give them tasks like that, it gets really nice for a little while. It’s like, you realize okay, they’re really helpful, they’re saving me time, starting to become useful and then it gets towards the end of training where you’re watching them do an inspection and you get that slow down again, and it’s ohhh…and then you release them on their own, and now your assistant’s gone. And it’s like, oh well, that was nice while it lasted, but I am definitely a proponent of the apprentice style of training people. You know that.

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Mike Marlow
But yeah, if only we could make the apprenticeship last longer, but you also need to get them on their own to make money. So it’s tough.

Ian Robertson
But even at the same time, taking on a new inspector and taking on an assistant are sometimes two different things. The couple of use cases that I’m thinking of is if you’re in a high end market, or if you do a lot of ancillaries. Like for us, we do a lot of ancillaries. So a hole needs to be dug for the septic. You know, ladders need to be put up for other things. Well flow needs to get started. All these things. An assistant kind of makes sense. Then also too, if you’re doing high-end homes, listen, if you’re charging $1,500 for a home inspection and you don’t have an assistant, get one. And they don’t need to be with the goal of making them the inspector is I guess what I’m saying? You can just hire an assistant to be an assistant, because that assistant can be the guy that drove you there, and then took care of things. But I am a huge proponent of family businesses. There’s a buddy of mine. He’s bringing his son on inspections, and I hope soon when his son graduates that he’ll be driving him to the inspection, that he’ll be digging the hole, and his dad will be finishing up the report, and they’ll be a happy team for a long time. It gives your kids a really great career opportunity.

Mike Marlow
Thinking, I’ve got about four years before mine starts driving.

Ian Robertson
Oh really? Well, and then it depends on how well they drive. You know, my daughter, right now, maybe I wouldn’t feel so less stressed if she was driving. I’m joking. She does a great job. But eventually, yours, when he’s when he’s old enough, that would be fantastic

Mike Marlow
If he wants to go that way. Yeah, we’ll see what he wants to do.

Ian Robertson
But there are a lot of ways that who not how applies. And going back to the website thing, I was thinking about you actually just yesterday, Mike. A guy called me, and for years he’s tried to do his website on his own to the point that Google has just about, they don’t quote unquote penalize you, they just basically shun you, and it’s just like dude, we’re not happy with this. And he came to me and he’s just like, “Ian, AI, Google nobody is liking my website.” I’m like, “I can see why.” He’s like, ‘”You know. I just thought I could do it myself.” Ended up, he tried to do it himself. Then he spent 1000s of dollars with other people. Then he tried to fix it. Then he spent $1,000 with other people. Tried to fix it again. And I’m like, you didn’t find a who. He just kept trying to piece it together. And so you end up burning four years, a lot of money, and lost leads that you’ll never know that you lost.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, exactly.

Ian Robertson
But there’s ways to kind of change our mentality. How did you find that you changed your mentality the best?

Mike Marlow
Yeah, every time we start something new or something changes, I try to think, okay, is this something I need to do or is this something that I need to get somebody to do? And yeah, like I said, it’s a work in progress fully implementing this, you know, will we ever fully work ourselves out of everything? No. At least I probably won’t. But figuring out where’s my best time—that’s the best thing that I try to do. Is this task worth my time, or can I get someone else to do it for less? Yeah, cleaning the pool. Yeah, I learned that one real quick. If I try and take care of the pool, it gets green. So, okay. Pay someone to take care of that. And just looking around, I was just listening to your latest podcast on the pest control.

Ian Robertson
Oh yeah.

Mike Marlow
That you just released today. If I wanted to start a pest control side, I definitely wouldn’t be doing it myself. I’d be calling, what was his name?

Ian Robertson
Seth Garber.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, Seth. I’d be checking his website out, you know, maybe pay him to consult on it. How do I do this? Thankfully, I already have the licenses. I could do it, no problem. I’m like, I guess you have a few to get up there.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I have a little ways to go. Just rub it in, Mike.

Mike Marlow
We needed it for the termite inspections, so I had to get them. But yeah, and then am I going to go do treatments? Oh no, no, that’s work digging the holes and trenches and all of that. No, I’m not going to go do treatments. I’ll hire. I’ll buy the expertise there.

Ian Robertson
And that’s the thing is deciding when it’s a who situation and when it’s a how situation. And for me, even after reading the book and talking with you, I actively stopped and forced myself every time I was doing something for a day to say, is this a who situation or is this a how? And surprisingly to me, most things actually became a who situation, and it became smoother. An example was, there was this tax form that came through. Tax form comes through. My mentality is okay. Tax form, fill it out, get it done, mail it back out, look for confirmation. And then I’m like, but if I do that, it’s going to take me 20-30, minutes to look things up. I might fill it out wrong, which has happened before. Then I have to do it twice. I was doing the calculations. I’m like, by the time I was done with it, I’m like, this is going to be a $200 form. So my accountant, he did it for 75 bucks.

Mike Marlow
And it was to pay a $50 tax, right?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, to pay a tax. Yeah, it was just to pay a tax. So I sent it to him. He’s like, yeah, sure, 75 bucks, cool, click done.

Mike Marlow
Yep.

Ian Robertson
It became a who, not how, and now I could spend the next two hours doing something productive and not have to worry about it being wrong. And then if it was wrong, my accountant was going to take care of it, but he did it right because he’s done 1000 of them. But there’s been a lot of things where I’m like, why am I doing that? So my team always listens to the podcast when they’re editing and cleaning it up and removing any spots where I’m like going into a coughing fit or something. So they’re going to laugh when they hear me say this. Customer service is not always my best suit. I try really hard, but for some reason I just come off the wrong way a lot of the times. So I try to let them handle that, and I still find myself going, okay, how do I figure this out for this client, for this user of the app or website client or whatever? And it really often comes down to who, like okay, David or Kristine or Kim or somebody else is going to be better suited. They know this person. They’ve worked with them before. They probably know the situation even better than me. Let one of them handle it.

Mike Marlow
They’ve dealt with the situation already several times and know the solution.

Ian Robertson
Instead of me doing the typical business owner thing, working on five things at once but doing none of them well, you know.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, and that really sums it up. Yeah, as a business owner, we try to take care of everything because we’re the one writing the check at the end of the day, if it goes wrong. And letting go of stuff is hard.

Ian Robertson
It is, especially because the do-everything mentality is what drove a lot of us to be a business owner.

Mike Marlow
Right, that’s what got us here in the first place, and is holding us back.

Ian Robertson
Yep, exactly.

Mike Marlow
So, I mean, what else is a good example of things that we in our industry should be letting go, or finding someone else to do.

Ian Robertson
For me, I think I covered most of the bases that I could think of, but definitely your accounting. If you’re not using accounting software, software can be a who. You know, I do know some inspectors that also write their reports still in Word documents. I know, I’m like, I don’t know how long that takes you to do, but get some software. You know, $79 to $100 a month, and it’ll save you more time than you’ll ever realize and have a better product. But like Intuit for your accounting. If you’re holding onto every receipt, looking through envelopes for them, you’re doing it wrong. Put everything on a business credit card. That credit card and your accounting software become your who. They’re gonna do stuff for you, and then at the end of the year, you look at it, compiles it, and you’re done. But website. Too many of us start off like, I need a website, and then two, three years in, we realize, oh.

Mike Marlow
I need a real website.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I need a real website, and they brought that example out in the book. And I know that seems like a self-serving comment, but it’s in the book, and it’s a true thing. Anything that we can outsource, anything that we can outsource, where somebody’s going to do it better. And if we think people can’t do it better than us, then we are the problem, because I know geniuses, like literal geniuses, that own these multi-million-dollar companies, and they will almost invariably outsource as much as possible because they’re like, I’m not the best at everything. When you hand me the thing that I’m the best at, I’ll do that, and it sticks with you when they say stuff like that. What do you think is something that we could probably find a who for that we don’t?

Mike Marlow
One is just hiring inspectors. I know when I started, I did not want employees, and it just eventually got to the point where I was running myself ragged, and we just sat down and you know, okay, I think it’s time to start looking to bringing someone else on, and it’s just changed the business.

Ian Robertson
There’s something to be said like when you’re sick or you want to go on vacation, and there’s people there to take care of things. I mean, it makes some of the extra work and stress of hiring a little better. Did you find it stressful to hire people at first?

Mike Marlow
Oh, definitely. Yeah, it was very stressful. Because I look at it as I’m taking on the responsibility to be able to pay this person, and plus, you’re also taking on the responsibility for if they screw something up and miss something. Yeah, it’s rough, but yeah, you’re not going to grow without it.

Ian Robertson
And some of us want to stay solo operators, and I get that. Like I’ve always said on the podcast, the most fun I had in this industry is when I was solo. You know, it was just riding around in my vehicle, doing cool stuff, eating at cool places, meeting people, and it was fun. But I also kind of romanticize it a little bit. Like for all you solo inspectors out there, I mean, there’s some hard times too where you’re like, I have the flu. What do I do with this? Or somebody calls you, hey, you did an inspection yesterday in a vacant house. Today the tub is overflowed. We think you did it. It’s Saturday, and you were going to bring your family to Six Flags or something. Now you’re going to go take care of that tub, and whatever damage happened. That’s not a real experience, by the way.

Mike Marlow
While I was single, I got really sick, and you know, of course, it was while I had a full schedule, and I mean, to the point where I was in the hospital for a little bit. But you know, thankfully, you know, I had a couple other inspectors in the area that I was like, hey, can you…yeah, I just basically sitting there texting like, hey, I’m in the hospital, can’t do the inspection. Call this. You know, it’s hard being solo, and it’s hard being a multi-inspector. What flavor of hard do you want?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, you have to choose your poison. I get that.

Mike Marlow
Yeah. But you can do so much more when you have more resources.

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Mike Marlow
And it does give you the flexibility. Yeah, you can schedule a vacation and take off for a week, and it’s nice knowing that the business is still running, no problem. It’s an eye-opener the first time you take a week-long vacation and you come back and everything just running along like you were never, you didn’t matter anymore. Yeah, it’s like oh, cool.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, one of the best skills any business person will get is making himself not matter.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, I’m getting there.

Mike Marlow
But not there yet.

Ian Robertson
Hey, I haven’t mattered for a long time, Mike.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, depends on who you ask.

Ian Robertson
But listen, Mike, it has been fantastic having you on again. I love just talking with you. We’ve had some great conversations. I’m glad we can record this one because you know, listen, if anybody wants to have a good book, it’s not a long read. It’s actually a pretty short read. Ironically, I think you could have probably condensed the whole book into a mini book. They kind of stretched it out a little bit, but overall, read the whole thing. It’s a quick read.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, what I do is Audible.

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Mike Marlow
And all my, lots of driving. I just pop it on. I think the whole Audible was under six hours.

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Mike Marlow
So you know, that’s two days of driving for me.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, or some days just a day, you know.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, I have had those days too.

Ian Robertson
Yeah.

Mike Marlow
And if I have to go down to the border, something like that, that’s easy six hours in the car.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, man. I’m glad I don’t have a territory as large as yours.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, that’s really specialty inspection stuff. I don’t go down there for home inspections. So, yeah, normally it’s like lead paint or something like that that I’m going down there for.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. But Mike, this has been a great conversation. Thank you as always for taking your time to be on. You’re a busy guy.

Mike Marlow
Always.

Ian Robertson
You have a multi-inspector firm, and you’re very busy, so you sharing your information here, hugely valuable. Thank you.

Mike Marlow
Yeah, thank you, and thanks for having me on and being a great who.

Ian Robertson
Thank you for being our who today. You are the main who.

Mike Marlow
Who. Yeah. All right. Thank you.

Ian Robertson
Thanks, Mike.

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].

If you’re enjoying the conversation, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Our podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. For more information on our services and our brand-new inspection app, please visit our website at Inspectortoolbelt.com.

*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

PODCAST SUMMARY/BLOG

The fastest way to grow a home inspection business is not learning one more trick, it is deciding where your time is actually worth spending. Mike Marlow from Veteran Home Inspections joins us to unpack the “Who Not How” idea: when a task shows up, stop asking how you can do it and ask who already does it better. For inspectors, that shift is huge because our days are packed with driving, calls, reports, radon logistics, and admin. Time management for home inspectors is not about grinding harder, it is about protecting focus for the highest value work: judgment, client trust, and consistent field performance.

We get practical with the math. Mike uses lawn care as the simplest example of outsourcing: if you bill around $100 an hour and you spend four to five hours mowing and trimming, you just “paid” $400 to $500 of your own time. Hiring someone for a fixed price can instantly buy back margin and evenings. That same lens applies to business systems too, using the build, buy, or rent framework. Building capability means you learn it yourself, usually slow and costly. Buying capability means hiring someone who already has it. Renting capability means using a consultant or subcontractor when you only need it short term.

The episode also calls out a common trap in the inspection industry: trying to DIY taxes, entity setup, and bookkeeping. We talk about how paying an accountant can create real savings through smarter structure, deductions, and guidance on LLC versus S-corp election, while also reducing risk. The point is not that every inspector must become a multi-inspector firm, it is that a professional “who” often returns more value than their fee. The same goes for a real website and local SEO. A website is not a hobby project when leads depend on it, and piecing it together over years can quietly cost thousands in lost searches you never see.

From there we move into day to day delegation that directly affects revenue. Radon tests are a perfect example: pickups can steal entire time blocks and force awkward re-entry coordination, so paying a dedicated radon runner turns a bottleneck into a system. Phone coverage is another: even a solo inspector doing ten inspections a week can lose hours to scheduling, spam calls, and distractions that increase mistakes. A call center or virtual assistant like Mike’s VA, Jean, keeps the phone answered and appointments moving, while letting the inspector stay present on site.

We also draw boundaries around outsourcing. AI tools and comment assistants can help with busy work, but they can also hallucinate, create liability, and tempt inspectors to paste text they do not fully own. A better approach is to outsource the low judgment tasks and protect the high judgment tasks. That can look like inspection software for reporting, accounting software tied to a business credit card, or an in-field assistant who handles repetitive checks like outlets and doors while you focus on structure, roof, foundation, and diagnostics. Ultimately, “Who Not How” is about building a business that can survive sickness, vacations, and growth without the owner doing everything.