MIKE ORTIZ TALKS ABOUT HIS SUCCESS FROM USING OUR PODCAST AND GOING FROM ZERO TO 500 INSPECTIONS IN HIS FIRST YEAR – SEE HOW HE DID IT!
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Ian R: Welcome back, everybody to inspector toolbelt talk. Today we have an interesting podcast for you. We have a success story. We have Mike Ortiz with us today. He’s going to tell us about some things that have worked for him, helped him to grow maybe some things that he kind of chucked to the side that didn’t work so well. Mike, how are you?
Mike Ortiz: Good. How are you doing?
Ian R: Hey, not bad. So Mike, before we get into it, tell us about yourself a little bit. Where are you located? What’s the name of your inspection company? We’ll post a link to your inspection company and the transcript for you. In case anybody wants to look it up.
Mike Ortiz: Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah. So I’m in Southern California, I cover from San Diego to La pretty much I have to because I got to stay busy. The name of the company is Homefront Inspection Services. I tried to get home for inspections but there are about 500 of those across the country. So getting the website for Homefront, but I’ve always just wanted I liked Homefront. it’s a great organization. So I like it helps veterans and I’m a veteran myself. You know, I started the company just after learning everything I needed to learn about the inspections inside and out from a larger and smaller company. I thought it was time to make my own money. You know, with great support, I did that but we’re based out of a city called Temecula, a very small wine-country city. We cover a lot of areas. You know, it all came from just needing to go out on our own and do that. With great support from friends and family and my wife, it’s been pretty great. Obviously with taking a lot of tips from your podcasts and just listening in and trying things out and not. Yeah, before I was a home inspector, I did woodwork, and before that and I was in the Army infantry in Iraq and Afghanistan. After that odd jobs, but then I really got into woodworking, you know, dovetailing making tables, furniture, all that, and then when the pandemic hit in 2020, I, you know, through a family member, I was able to get into the home inspection. I didn’t I didn’t come from a construction background, there was a lot for me to learn. The driving force behind any success I have is my insatiable need to just constantly be right. It does not ever falter. It’s just you know, even now I’m looking at my ICC IRC IBC books that I have, because I’ve been doing a lot of reinforced concrete training, and I just wanted to keep learning more and more as much as I can, especially with Commercial Inspections. It’s always a lot to learn. You know, the success because of the job, honestly, it’s not it used to be where I thought you’d have to know a lot about a home in order to be good, you know, inspection company, a successful one, I’m sorry, it it does help, obviously, to be a good inspector to know a lot. However, most of the job, what I’m finding and the reason why your podcast was so helpful was that most of our job is marketing. Actually, the inspection parts, are the easiest part of all of it. The hard part is the marketing and keeping and having a pool of agents and all that.
Ian R: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, you mentioned that, and that’s kind of a hard pill for a lot of us to swallow. A lot of guys are great inspectors and people never know about it. Yeah. So they don’t make it as an inspector. So you have a guy on the other end of the spectrum, that may not be as great an inspector as this other guy, but he’s a fantastic marketer, so his services get out there. So if you’re a good inspector and a good marketer, like you are obviously a little bit of both there, that makes for a great inspection company, being really good at your job and being great at marketing it. You’re a man after my own heart. I love woodworking too. Another podcast is half the furniture in my home is made by me. So I love that stuff, and wine country. So I think I just ordered some grapes from out your way, not right in Temecula but I make wine. So I oftentimes get California grapes to make it because New York grapes are good, but sometimes some California grapes, I get some grapes, some chili, and make some wine.
Mike Ortiz: Yeah, I mean, it’s really just when we first moved out here, it we went to every winery and then, you know, you just okay, well, that’s it. You know It’s not like we go every day or anything. So people ask how are the wine. You know, I haven’t been in years. You know, it’s really just once you do it? You’re like, Okay, I did it. Cool, but now we live out here. Yeah, but woodworking. I mean, please don’t ask me to look at any of my first-ever projects, because those things are disasters but you know, it’s just like this, you know, you practice you get better.
Ian R: First pancakes, are always a little lumpy. That’s an old expression but the reason we had John, if you don’t mind, you sent me an email. Do you mind if I read part of it?
Mike Ortiz: Oh, yeah. Go for it.
Ian R: It says, hey, guys love the show great content. I’ve been able to be successful because of the advice I’ve taken from you guys. I went from a nobody to 500 inspections a year, and I’m very grateful for the help. Thanks again. Well, as soon as we saw that, I’m like, I gotta call this guy. I gotta talk with him. You also in the email said you have some stuff to share because you see a lot of what I see in the market here, I’ll just read it says, a lot of inspectors in my area have trouble starting on their own surviving marketing and a busy market and tons of competition. Where you wanted to chat about that a little bit? So I kind of wanted to talk, because you’re a bit of a success story because you started out as you put it as a nobody, which I don’t think I would put it that way. 500 inspections a year, that’s a lot for a single inspector, that’s a busy schedule, in my opinion.
Mike Ortiz: Yeah, it took a lot to get to that point. I have to hand it to the larger firm I worked for out here, Elite group, they took me in and showed me everything that I needed to do in order to get to that point, it really is, when you have an opportunity, you take that opportunity to learn it. Really it was just, I learned that face-to-face interactions with agents were the only way that I was going to make any of it work. I quickly learned while I was freaking out the whole time while I was in training, freaking out the whole time about just knowing everything about home, I slowly came to realize that a lot of inspectors that you know, will sometimes they’ll run into something they’re like, I really don’t know what that is, I need to call somebody, or it’s just in you know, they’ll text you, what’s this? You know, and it’s just like the Watts 210 valve when the first time I saw it, I was like, hey, this doesn’t look right. You know you look at it. Oh, okay. Now I understand when I was training is like now I can tell people what it is. It’s just really, it was great to learn from such a big company. I got a lot from that. Then after moving to a smaller company, I learned the ins and ins and outs of the struggle of having a smaller company and having to constantly do all the work that you didn’t see going on behind the scenes at the larger one. So for me, it was really just when I say nobody, it’s not, you know, I’m not putting myself down. It’s really just I was very green, I go back to my roots in the military where you’re just a private you there, there was a rank before E-1, which is eat nothing. It means that you just know nothing and it’s okay to know nothing, because then it opens you up, because the only way up to go, you know the only way to go up. Really it is just when you accept the fact that you just don’t know everything, which is really hard for me to accept, then it just there’s nowhere you can’t apply what you want to learn. Marketing was something that came very easily to me because before when I was woodworking, I had to sell furniture, it’s a hard sell when you have IKEA and Walmart and everybody coming out with you know, furniture, my selling point was that I made custom furniture. So you know, if you go to IKEA and you want a table, but it’s not the color the size you want, I got you it’s gonna cost you a couple of grand, but my main market was in, you know, high-end Los Angeles, Orange County area, which is a higher end community, where they have the money to afford that million $2 million homes. When the pandemic hit, nobody wanted to see anybody, nobody want anybody walking into their house, and they didn’t want to touch anything you touched, it just tanked. I love failing, it is like such a learning lesson all the time. I failed constantly. I learned every single time, there’s no time where I’m just like, I failed, I’m ready to give up. You have to make it work I got three beautiful children, and my wife depends on me to be able to just make it work, I have to always just figure it out, you know, that five minutes sitting in the driveway when you know, you got to figure stuff out. That’s like my peak. That’s where I’m at my prime.
Ian R: That well, that gives you drive. You know, just as a side point, you talk about home inspectors having to call somebody and not knowing everything. I think that an important thing to realize about ourselves as home inspectors are there’s no shame in looking at something and how it’s wired and saying let me look up a diagram of this real quick and verify that this was right or wrong. Let me call my other buddy, who was an electrician and he knows a little bit more about this or whatever it happens to be there’s no shame in it. In fact, I respect inspectors to do that because if we think we know everything, we very likely have just stopped learning. Yeah, I want to hear about the marketing side though. I want to hear a little bit if you don’t mind about what worked for you. Like what pieces of our podcast did you take and say This worked and because you want to cherry-pick you don’t want to take all of it because not all of it’s going to work in everybody’s particular market. What did you check out? What didn’t work for you? What did you check to the side and say yeah, this wasn’t helpful at all. So
Mike Ortiz: Of course so I think one of the podcasts you were talking about was you know, we were finding ourselves giving out a lot of you know, stuff like treats and gift bags and just giving away a lot in the hopes that we could invest that into turning it into a client that would come back to us and be grateful for it and then we come to find out you know, they’re quickly going to forget you they’re going to eat through those cookies they’re gonna eat through those you know everything and they’re going to forget to the big part of it was just branding and, you know, meeting clients face to face. Really all of it comes down to that because I think you’ve talked about that before you get an email from a company. Immediately you mark it as spam. You know, unless it’s like a really specific small business. As for me, it’s like if I get an email from bass and brass, which is a gun store close by, I look for their sales, you know, that’s only what I care about. Everything else is kind of okay. Other coals and other Walmart, you know, mail, I’ll put it in spam. So if I’m, I signed up for these, you know, mass email, even the mass text messages. What happens is, is that, you know, you just, it’s so impersonal, and I didn’t see it until I, you know, I, I saw it happen and what worked for us was going to these places, and you’ve talked about not going to them because you got we walk into one of these large brokerages, like the century 21 or the EXP ones, and they’re big, and you know, you walk in, it’s intimidating. You come in with your little cardholder and a treat. They’re like, yeah, go put it by the other ones, and every other one is giant. Like, oh, you know, wow, you’ve never, I’ve never been so humble. This is an inspection because you see these other ones, they got, like, you know, 3d printed metal card holders with their, you know, professionally made Vistaprint you know, pamphlets. I just have a card with my name on it, you know, and it’s just, it felt impersonal. So going to the thing he talked about, you know, where it’s probably a mom and her son, and then a girl they hired to watch the front desk. They’re working out of a suite attached to a nail salon, you know, you go in there and the attention that you give them is just it, it boosts their own ego, which as Realtors they have a high ego as it is. So you boost it and you just feed it and they’re like, Wow, we’re important enough for you to come and stop by looking professional with again, without having everything set up. I think he’s having everything set up the website, Yelp, the Google page, the pictures, you know, the I wear a Dickies button up shirt, a lot of either long sleeve or short sleeve with the logo embroidered, I give it some depth, I embroider it, I have a car, I have these pens that my wife and I had made that have our logo etched on them. I hand them something, you know, nobody throws away pens that quickly. You know, I’ve seen other inspectors use those tape measures, I just haven’t had the time to do that. I just like to give them you know, I walk in, and it really is like, Hey, I’m here to bribe you, I have some cookies, you know, here’s my stickers eat, the cookies that we buy, we buy them individually wrapped. Then we put the company logo sticker we bought, and we put it on the cookie wrappers and you’re not going to forget me while you’re opening it because it’s difficult to open with a sticker on there. I come in and you know, if you’re just personal with them, you know, I have, I’m here. You know, I’m going to keep coming and bringing cookies until you hire me. Then one day I’m gonna stop. So just in case and see if you remember me like, Hey, where’s that cookie guy, and maybe that that’ll make you think of me but just something to get a little bit to where you get a response that’s either funny or, or they’re interested in you because of your personality. Then that means that they can work with you easily compared to just walking in and saying I know what I’m doing and I can help you. You just got to know what they want. Sometimes, you know, they’re very blunt with what they want. Are you dramatic? Are you available the next day? That’s a good way to weed out the ones you don’t want to work with. Or what are your prices? You know, like, I got a guy, my guy charges 275 I’m like, keep using that guy because there’s no way I’m gonna charge 275. I tell him I was like, Look, this is what I tell them and it’s a non-confrontational way of telling someone and it’s not to put any other inspector down at all. This has actually worked for me to book at least a couple of inspections a month, I’ll get a call. Or I’ll talk to an agent and they’ll say, hey, you know, I need an inspection. Can you do it? It’s, you know, next week on Tuesday, and I’ll say, Yeah, I got some time. They’re like, okay, great. We’ll go can you quote me a price? I’ll say, yeah, it’s, you know, 500 or 475, depending on how small it is. They’re like, wow, you know, that’s a lot. There’s a guy that I call before you, and he’s taking 299 for like 1800 square feet. I said, all right.
Mike Ortiz: I’m gonna tell them without, you know, talking about the guy. It’s more just, you know, what, if it’s budget you’re looking for, you know, congrats on finding that price use them but I’m gonna I offer I always offer them this, I tell them and because they can either call you on it, or you just lose the sale. So what I tell them is like, look, you’re gonna get the inspection done. Okay, and you’re gonna get a report. Do me a favor. If you don’t mind, I charge what I charge because of the experience and the thoroughness of my report. You can send and share the report with me and I’ll go over it with you. If you have any additional questions that can be answered by the inspector. I gladly like to help you you know, and with that, and what they do is they, they look at it as it’s not, you know, it’s not me putting down the other inspector and saying, Hey, look, I’m glad to offer any opinions or advice with my experience because I care more about helping you out. I have seen in the past where I’ve had agents complain about inspectors that have, you know, largely disclaimed inspections. I say, Well, you know, we have disclaimers for a reason. Sometimes, you know, you run into unfortunate scenarios where the fine print is where you know, the small things that need to be repaired or missed. I just tell them, Look, if you really are concerned about anything in the home, and you can’t get the answers you want somewhere else, you just reach out to me, I’m glad to give advice, helpful advice without putting anyone else down about any inspection or a question of your home based on what I know. Just the offer of advice without asking for a fee, or anything, even though I know my time is valuable. I think they understand that I know my time is valuable. So, they respond to it very well. Some of them have even said, you know what, that’s really great of you. Thanks for offering, I think we’re gonna go with you. I was shocked the first time it happened. Then after that, I was like, okay, yeah, I’m always just going to offer that. It’s just the weird thing that’s actually worked for me.
Ian R: So if you don’t mind, Mike, I want to interrupt for just a second because that’s fantastic advice. I’ve never done that personally. So everybody listening, I want you to take note of what Mike just said. So try that and see if that works. When is the next time you have a price shot per call? Hey, there are other guys cheaper Trey Mike’s technique, I think I’m gonna see if we can institute that. That’s fantastic advice. I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. I do want to just roll back just a second year because you referenced about five of our podcasts. I want to just have everybody know where to go to get those. So if you go to inspectortoolbelt.com/podcasts, you can go through and check out all of our old podcasts. You referenced the one early on in our podcast about branding, and why branding is important. You also referenced the marketing ideas, home inspection marketing ideas, and podcasts, you also referenced the one about how to properly visit real estate offices. I loved how you actually took my advice on that and avoided the big offices. They’re useless. I don’t want them. I want offices of 10 people or under at most. Then once they get too big. Okay, cool. Now I have that whole office because I grew up with them. So that’s fantastic advice. Yeah, I can’t remember where the other one came from. A lot of us home inspectors love to send out emails and mass text messages. I just told this to a buddy of mine who’s starting out his career. He’s like, I don’t know what, what else to do. I’m sending out all these emails and text messages. I’m like, stop. It’s just spam. Go and talk to people face to face. Now he has three office presentations. He’s met all these agents and he’s doing great. So it works. So I’m sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt too far but I wanted to make sure everyone listening. If you’re listening, those are the podcasts that you can go back to, to see what Mike’s talking about.
Mike Ortiz: Yeah. You know, it’s been very helpful. When we’re talking just to follow up when I was working for the larger company, that was kind of what helped me stand out and get my own agents, I guess, as you were, what I did was the office presentations themselves, they felt intimidating at first because especially if you’re just now starting out, you don’t know enough, you feel like you have to know everything in order to talk to these agents because you’re afraid they’re going to ask the one question about you know, you don’t know, like, what size rebar should you have in your driveway? Or how thick should the concrete V be and stuff like that? You’re afraid they’re going to ask those questions. If you take control immediately and do not be too technical about it, I think it helped me greatly. So the way my office presentations went, I would walk in obviously there for the free food, I would get either sandwiches or you know, desserts or stuff like that drinks, chips, and then some pamphlets to hand out that I know will be thrown away immediately after. So I tried to make sure not to spend too much time on them. It’s more just for professionalism. I think the main selling point was keeping it at like 20 minutes max. I think addressing the concerns that most realtors have is more important than trying to sell what you offer. So you have to fill a need. What the realtors need is a non. So sometimes, as inspectors, we have to face the reality that a realtor wants a nondramatic inspector with a same-day report that will be available to their client for any questions. Really the most important part of the inspection to them is the last 15 minutes, which is the summary. They don’t care about the entire two, or three hours you’re there. They only care about the last 15 minutes of the summary where it’s you, the client, and the agent standing there and you’re explaining all your findings pretty much. That’s the only part that matters that I’ve seen because they’re you know the other part of the inspection unless you have one of those buyers following you around, or the buyer’s dad or something, everything else kind of, you know, falls on just that last 15 minutes. So what I do is I take that and I say, Look, I understand what you guys want from us but you don’t want drama you want you to want your clients to be informed. We’re not here to offer an opinion. We’re here to state facts. So I tell what I do is I, I tell them, you’re already stressed out constantly, because your job is sales, and you have to sell to make money. So the last thing you need is more stress from an overcomplicated inspection. What I mean by overcomplicated is that if I’m walking into a summary, and I’m explaining my findings, and I’m just saying, so your water heater needs to be replaced, I put that in Section 3.1, you should get a plumber to come out and replace it. If I say things like that, what it does is leaves too many questions for the buyers. So I consider it a successful summary if they have no questions at the end, which makes me feel good. So what I’ll say is because the vent is metal, and it’s a tankless water heater, you have discharged from the TPR valve because of these reasons, and this is what causes that. This is the fix that a plumber could offer. This is why I’m recommending that you need to replace that water heater, you know, for these reasons, or at least have it serviced or repaired, they have no questions at the end. The agents love that because it takes all the pressure off of them. Then I tell them to look if their client has questions about the inspections, I give them my information directly so they can contact me, you don’t have to be the middleman. It comes to a point where I understand that you want someone who’s not dramatic, who’s going to kill the deal. I know some inspectors pride themselves in killing the deal because we’re probably part of the same Facebook groups where they all brag about, you know, hey, I killed another deal today. You know, I understand the pride in being a good inspector and being thorough and helping your buyers out but let’s be honest, our referrals come from the agents. So we have to really just make sure that we understand everybody in the transaction that we’re taking care of our buyer, and showing the agents that not only are we professionally responsible, but we are not excessive in the way that we report because I can see a let’s say a Federal Pacific Rosen’s go panel, and explain to their look, it’s been this company has been bought over a bunch of times, they don’t make these breakers anymore, they have issues at the bus bar, you know, they’re usually replaced or upgraded. This is what the typical cost is in this area, you can budget out for it, I give them options and pathways to understand what they’re getting into, rather than try to keep things from them and avoid those conversations. When you’re more detailed. You just find that if you just continuously talk, eventually, they have nothing to ask about. That leaves them feeling fulfilled in the inspection experience. That’s what agents like, that I’ve seen in my personal experience going into these offices. When they see that, and then you just cater to their ego, you know, like, hey, you know, we understand that you guys are stressed, you’re doing a great job out there. We just want to be part of your transaction to help you help your clients, which is what you’re trying to do to get them the best deal. We’re trying to help them get the best possible scenario before they move into the house. Then you know, they enjoy that and they like that.
Ian R: Those are some great points. I’ve kind of found the same thing, too. I’m kind of a talker, and I’m a talker and home inspector. By the time I was done, agents did appreciate that I almost over-explained all the issues and scenarios around and you know, agents are really cool. Now I don’t have to do all that and send them all these Google research on things. So that’s good advice. I do like the fact that you do keep your office presentations under 20 minutes. Yeah. I like to try to keep them around 10 Even Yeah, just because I want to leave them wanting more. Or like Who was that guy? You know, instead of the guy that’s there for 40-50 minutes an hour and they’re like, Okay, stop talking about. You also mentioned something when we talked on the phone about TikTok and in our marketing ideas podcast, I talked about TikTok, and personally, I’m not a huge fan. I don’t like to see videos of squirrels eating candy bars. I have a busy day. Yeah. Fun on a passing whim but not a regular thing but it’s an important marketing tool. You’ve done really well with TikTok, haven’t you?
Mike Ortiz: Yeah, I have. So it came as just a way of showing insane. People don’t understand the things that we see. It’s not because someone did something wrong. It’s more of just some of the system setup and some of the defects that I found. There’s no other way to explain it than showing it because the only other people that would care would be other inspectors. I thought like, you know, I saw I think last night two days ago. A furnace in the attic space was using a dryer exhaust to vent out of the room. I thought to myself, you know, who? Who would do that? You know, and I have videotaped it. You know, right now, as it stands on our TikTok well, I think we have like 155,000 followers, and, you know, millions of views, I think 4.7 million views, likes, and things like that. Really, when it comes down to it, if you’re going to use here’s the thing, if you’re going to use social media to further your business, which for me, Instagram and Tiktok have been invaluable. The only way it works is if you’re actually entertaining your target audience. So, in the past, I’ve seen posts, it’s just a picture of a defect pointing at something wrong and that’s it. People just scroll right past that you’re like, Okay, I’ve seen that a million just like when a realtor posts close escrow, you know, how many closed escrows Do you see every day, I still respond, congrats, you know, hoping that they see that, you know, consistency, but I’m not there for that content. Um, they’re, they’re part of my target audience, I’m trying to get their business but as far as me being a homebuyer, that’s not really what I care about. So my target audience will be realtors and realtors are not, they’re going to hire someone that they can personally get along with and the approach. You know, because they’ll avoid anyone that looks like they’re too professional nor knows more than them, or someone that can joke around or you know, and so the videos that I started putting up, their sole purpose is to entertain. Some of them seem informational, mostly but at the end of the day, the only reason I’m posting them is that it’s going to entertain someone, people want to be either scared, they want to laugh, or they want to be sad, basically. That’s all forms of entertainment. So when I’m doing an Instagram post, or I’m doing a Tik Tok video, it’s always going to be, for the most part, I post a video. Then I show and I make sure not to show the address of the home or tag the agent that I worked with, because if I find a huge defect, the last thing I want is them getting upset that Hey, what the hell, you’re tagging me in a post about a horrible situation you found in the home that I sold. So it’s really just hey, you know, I’m in an attic, and I see this in that bag anybody but and you know, the important thing with TikTok, however, is that it reaches a wide you know, audience and it makes you look, even, even if you’re 100% professional, it just gives you that extra comfort to your clients, buyers. I’ve done a lot of business with TikTok, I think I get maybe three inspections or two inspections a week from Tiktok Instagram is how Instagram has helped me get inspections very often because whenever I do an inspection for an agent, I’ll just post I can’t always post all of them. I tagged the agent, I post the house that I did the inspection a nice picture of the house and they’re happy about it because it just shows their success. So again, feeds their ego. I think the biggest thing I’ve ever learned is that you have to see the agent’s ego constantly. That’s really what it’s about. So social media is a big part of that.
Ian R: Man, I wish you were on the east coast because we need to get a beer to just talk marketing. Yeah.
Mike Ortiz: I wouldn’t be here to not curse I’m sorry.
Ian R: Well, exactly. We have a no-cursing policy here. Hey, well, if you’re ever in New York, well, I’ll give you some wine. We’ll drink that instead but that’s fantastic advice. I like how you brought it out, you have to make it entertaining. The mistake that I see too many inspectors make is, here’s an educational post. Here’s what hydrostatic pressure is. Here’s what polybutylene is. Here’s a water heater that is improperly set up because this isn’t, you know, correct on the left side of the who cares? If I wanted to learn about water heaters I go and research water heaters if I was an average consumer, I want to see the mummified squirrel. I do want to see the squirrel eating the candy bar but I want to see it on. I want to see the home inspector. Put it on there. So yeah, keep it entertaining. That’s awesome. If you’re not using Tiktok, I just said this to the home inspector yesterday or the day before. If you’re not using TikTok use TikTok. It’s where the average young buyer is right now. I mean, the average Tiktok user like what 25 years old, so that’s going to be a young buyer. So let me ask you from our podcast and be brutal. You said there’s no one big thing that you guys said. Yeah. It’s a lot of little things. That’s kind of what it is. It’s a lot of little things put together that you’re talking about. Yeah. What did not work for you? What did you take, try and fail or did you just feel like yeah, that’s a dumb idea? you threw it out? What didn’t work for you?
Mike Ortiz: Well, it’s not that. So anything. So here’s the thing, I looked out, I looked out, and everything that I took from it. I implemented it and it worked only because I think it largely has to do with my personality. credit to the personnel because I’m able to Talk to anybody at any moment. The thing for me is, is that the small things that I took some of the other things in the podcast, it’s not really that I didn’t use them. I think I’ve used most of the marketing ideas, some things, as far as you know, website development and things like that. So when you do something, and you’re proud of it, or not proud of it, but at least you’ve accomplished it. Like I built my website myself, I hope I’ve convinced myself that it’s okay because it’s not, it’s not that it’s horrible or anything. It’s a basic Wix website. It’s just that if I put any more into it at the time, I couldn’t afford to take on any more work. So I limited access to it. It sounds weird to do, but I was booked out for seven days. I was doing two to three, depending on the size of inspection of the house inspections a day, wearing myself out, and the burnout thing is real. It is real. You just, you can’t possibly and if people call you, you remember you did my house two months ago on Ivy Street, I’m like, Yeah, okay, I’m gonna remember that. Well, how can I help you? It’s really just, you know, I think it was the whole, you know, website thing and the branding, I took a lot from it. There are some areas where I don’t think I found anything that I would say I tried and didn’t work because that anything that I got from the podcast, have very selective hearing. So usually I’m listening to I’m driving, I’m listening to driving because you know, we drive a lot. I’ll listen to it, and I’m eating me you know, 7/11 roller, which those things, they’re the most horribly, beautifully made things on the planet, and unhealthy, completely unhealthy. We have gas station food all day, I hate waiting and driving but I’m usually listening to the podcast while I’m driving and I have like ADD, which keeps me distracted sometimes. So I’ll get one thing, and then I’ll just put the volume up and say, Okay, let me try, you know, I want to try this. I’ll screenshot the time on the podcast, so I can re-listen to it later. So I’ll just grab my phone, screenshot, what minute it’s at so that I can read, go back, listen to it, take some notes, and then do it again. I don’t think there’s anything that I tried, it didn’t work. I think a lot of things that you guys talk about, with your guests. They’re not in a cocky way, but they seem like common sense to me. So it’s really just that not to say that any new inspectors shouldn’t go and listen to each podcast because common sense is not common for everybody. Other people, you know, there are other people that have different types of common sense compared to myself. My wife has a ton of it compared to just keeping our kids alive compared to me. It’s really just that the stuff that I was able to that resonated with me, I actually use and implemented in my own way, and it worked out really great. Anything that I didn’t use is because I didn’t listen to that part. I didn’t process it the same way.
Ian R: You know, then not to interrupt you again too but you’re talking about, Hey, I didn’t implement some of the website stuff because I was too busy. That might sound weird. That doesn’t sound weird at all. It’s like there are other marketing avenues that I’d like to try but I’m like, Okay, do we really have the bid? Do we have any bandwidth left for it? Like, if that brings us another 500 inspections a year? You know, do I have that bandwidth? So I get that. There’s a lot of guys out there that, you know, they kind of reached their peak number for the year. They’re like, I don’t want to do anymore. Yeah, there was a guy recently, who’s just like, I just need to shut down all but the homepage of my website with just a scheduler on it because I really just don’t want any more clients and close to retirement and that’s it.
Mike Ortiz: On that. So this is an oath. I don’t know if anybody’s ever done this or does this, it seems completely counterproductive. I strongly believe because my wife that you do good, good comes back to you. I strongly believe that. So when I had overflowed, obviously, you’re going to know some of the inspectors in your own area of coverage. So I have two inspectors West Ivey inspections, which are Curtis and Chris Tulsaga, he’s from Property inspectors, and I know them very well. I got to know them over social media. We’ve always chatted and shared pictures and defects and stuff like that, I got to a point where I was so overflowing with work, that I reached out to them, I said, Hey, I have some jobs. I don’t really, you know, have anybody else that I trust. I’m going to give them your information. They’re going to give you a call, don’t worry about you know, referral fees or anything like that. They did the same for me. Then I went up them and I left them each, you know, five-star reviews on their Yelp and their Google page and I said these guys are awesome. That and they did the same for me. In that situation, opportunities kept presenting themselves because then other inspectors in the area, introduced themselves to me and said, Hey, Mike, you know, Curtis and Chris say great things about you. I have a job in this area. I don’t cover this area, because I’m too far north, you know, hey, you know, you want it, I’ll shoot them your info, you know? I said, Yeah, of course. If I ever get anybody asking, you know, I think that level of support, I took a big risk, because I’ve only heard of animosity from other inspection firms in some areas. I thought that’s how it was everywhere. It was so competitive that, you know, it was there was animosity towards each other but when I just introduced myself and offered that friendship to other inspectors, my peers, really, it really opened up a lot of opportunities for me, which I’m extremely grateful for. I know, it seemed counterproductive at the time, you know, afraid of losing your agents, what if they went over my agent? What if they, you know, take some of my business at the time, what am I going to do? Am I going to just throw that inspection away, or offer them something that is comparable to my own services, because I trust someone, and it really ended up working out well, and I wasn’t too worried about losing the agents? It was great not to say you should do that with every inspection area, don’t send them to the 299 Inspector, but it’s really just, if you find yourself in a position where you just can’t cover and you know, you know, in your employee can’t cover and all that stuff. It was just it was my taking that risk that surprised me in the way it paid off.
Ian R: You know, it’s funny, you obviously did that on your own. You didn’t hear that from our podcast, but we have a blog on that. One of the ways that I built all three of my inspection companies is by integrating with other inspectors in the area. So I’ll give a shout-out to the guys that, you know, we’ve had Jay Win on the show. He’ll be back on the show. He’s in my market, we’ll refer to him. John Data, Michael Heath bergamia is if you guys are listening in, we still send them work, and they send us to work. It’s a nice situation because if you need help, yeah, they’re also going to back you up. We’ve had situations where we have a camera down, what are we going to do? One of those guys to help us out. I had a time when in New York had to be in a lab to have a radon monitor and all that stuff. So we didn’t have a radon monitor at the time. Bergamia said we got you covered. Nick covered us. We covered them with a septic inspection. You know, you just watch each other’s backs. Yeah. There doesn’t need to be animosity, the guys that have animosity, let them go and do their thing. Larry McGann, I often quote him. I love that guy, you know? Yeah. So yeah, I totally agree with that. That’s a great way to market with each other. Yes, real estate agents do that. Yeah. Real estate they refer out so why wouldn’t exactly, yeah. So we don’t need a referral fee. So I totally agree. I tell you what, Mike, we could talk to you all day about any of these subjects, we’re gonna have to have you back on the show again because I want to talk about some other things like how you as a smaller company, compete with the larger companies out there because all the guys are in that kind of situation. You know, how you can grow your business to a point where you now have to make a decision at some point. Do you stay boutique, or do you grow multi-inspector? Yeah, you know, I’d love to continue the conversation on another podcast. Yeah. Hopefully, we can have you back on again.
Mike Ortiz: That’d be awesome. Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I know that we’re usually even my attention span is limited unless I’m listening to like a serial killer podcast. Into it, but you know, it’s like with work stuff. It’s really just like, it’s really my life is dominated by the, you know, the Facebook groups and podcasts and the YouTube videos. You know, I grew up watching this whole house. So things like that just interest me and keep me definitely entertained.
Ian R: Nice. Well, we’ll look forward to having you back on the show. Again, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us here today. I know everybody listening is going to really benefit if they put into practice some of the things that you mentioned. I know I learned something from you. So
Mike Ortiz: Thank you again. All right. I appreciate it, man.
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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