PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. As I start this episode, it actually just kind of came to mind that we’re approaching the end of season two of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. So, look out for season three, it’s coming. We’re working on it right now. But season two has been a lot of fun. We’ve had some awesome guests and some great things going on. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed the theme that we’ve had for about the past maybe six months. We’ve had things like Mike Crow on talking about how to market through a bad home inspection market, Dave Klima on how to present pre-listing home inspections, and we’ve had others on all talking about basically the same thing. The market is difficult.

Now, I’ve talked to some home inspectors that have basically said to me, “yeah, Ian, I really don’t get what you’re saying, things have been pretty great.” But those have been the minority. Most of the time, and when I’m talking with a home inspector, either online or over the phone, which I do a lot, it’s always the same kind of conversation 99% of the time, “what am I doing wrong? I know, you keep saying things are bad, but things are bad. I went from 30 inspections a month down to two, or I didn’t even have an inspection last month.” If you’re listening to this, and you’re in that boat, I wanted to have one more podcast to say the same thing, but in a different way. That thing is, do not give up. I say that, because what ends up happening a lot, and if you follow any of the Facebook groups, you’ll see guys retiring, guys leaving the business, and all sorts of things happening. They give up.

Now, that may be easy for us to say here, I’m sitting here saying oh, yeah, don’t give up.  But we may be sitting there thinking, hey, I have bills to pay, I have kids to feed, I have a business to run, and I can’t run on empty, I need work to be able to support the business. I totally get that, I have been in those shoes before. Our businesses, my home inspection companies, are not unaffected by the market. And I’ve gone through the great recession as a home inspector. And I tell you what, I felt that. But here are some things to remember about the market. Go back, and listen to the podcast, “This is the time to grab market share”. Things will turn around. But how do we last through this downturn? How do we get through it and not give up? Because oftentimes what I see, to get back to my point is guys giving up not because they have to, but because it got more difficult than they expected. They could actually weather the storm, so to speak, some of us, but because it became more difficult, and some emotions got involved, we gave up. And that makes me sad because a lot of these guys are great inspectors. But they gave up the gun before they ran out of bullets completely.

So if we have to go and do something else, take care of our family, this podcast is not for you. Take care of your family. That is what is most important.  Now, if we can logistically hang on, this podcast is for you. It’s, I hate motivational speeches, I hate TED Talks and things like that, but this is something that I feel strongly needs to be said. First of all, lots of guys are quitting and retiring. As soon as one person does something, it makes it easier for the rest of us to do it. For instance, the first person to jump in the cold water during a polar plunge, it makes it easier for everybody else to jump in after him. Don’t let that be our model. Don’t let that be our out. Because there is a measure of, ego’s the wrong word, pride, we take pride in our work, we take pride in our business, we take pride in who we are. And when things don’t go well, it hurts that. And we want a way out, we don’t want to work in what we think is a family business. But we need to overcome our own ego, our own pride, our own disappointment. Because if we can hang on, we’ll be one of the few left and it’ll be really great business for us.

So how can we do that in practical ways?  First of all, see if we can continue at a loss or net zero. Now, this might be the minority, probably the minority of us, to continue in our business at a loss or net zero. Keep everything operational. Do we have a spouse that can carry things over? Do we have some savings that can carry us over? Whatever it happens to be, can we continue at a loss or net zero? What if we can’t, what if we say that’s just impossible, we’re living paycheck to paycheck. Understood. Can we find other work to carry us along? So in other words, instead of going out and getting the 50 hours a week, you know, big job that takes care of all of our bills, can we go at low income with our home inspections and find a job to supplement that instead? So leave the option of our home inspection business open. And also leave maybe a couple hours a week, without sacrificing family time to go out and hit some real estate offices or do some other marketing? Is that an option?

What about multi-inspector firms? We talk a lot about single-inspector firms going out of business, we can find other work, we can do part-time stuff, whatever it happens to be. Sometimes it’s a little bit harder for us multi-inspector firms. I know one multi-inspector firm that had over 10 guys, I want to say a dozen, but I don’t know the exact number, it was over 10. And it’s down to him and his assistant now, just over this past year. If that’s the position we’re in, if we’re a multi-inspector firm, and we have to let guys go, do a couple of things. First of all, let them go kindly. Leave the door open. You had a great inspector, explain the situation. Listen, this is, this is really hard for me to do. And I don’t want to let you go. But we have to, you always have the door open to come back. And then keep track of them. So are they out in the field, maybe starting another home inspection company? Did they go to work for another home inspection company? Are they maybe working in a completely different field? Text them, make it a note to text them every month or two. Just say “hey, Joe, what’s going on? How are things? How’s the work situation? As soon as things pick up, I’d love to get in touch with you again.” Go out to lunch with them. Something to make sure that you keep that relationship tight. Because I still predict, in my estimation anyways, this spring is probably going to be pretty decent. So now what if all of a sudden we can take them back? Or what if it is 2024? Whatever it is, can we take them back, but we didn’t keep that door open? We didn’t keep that relationship alive.

Can we also think about where else we can save money? I love it when people tell me, find waste in your company. What does that even mean? What it does mean, though, is when we sit down to think about it, are we wasting money in ways that we may not even realize? So for instance, if bookings are down, and we have a full-time person sitting at the desk answering phones, could we better utilize their time? So for instance, if they’re not answering phones, and there’s nobody calling in to hire us for an inspection, could we have them do some light marketing? They don’t necessarily have to go to an office, but if they can, great. But can they call all of your agents, just go down the list every couple of weeks? “Hey, this is Sandra, this is Bill, or this is Tom, just checking in. How are you?” Not those calls like “Hey, do you have any inspections to give us?” “Hey, how are you? How are things? Is there anything that we can do for you?” Can we better utilize their time?  For us, if we have a gas-guzzler vehicle, can we switch to a smaller vehicle, something that saves on some gas.

If you are a regular listener to our podcast, go back about a week, and listen to the interview with Tom Kubiak on end-of-year tax advice. Listen in on some of those things about vehicles, what tax bracket you may or may not want to be in, how to take your taxes now and offset it to the next year. Or vice versa. Take the hit now when work volume is low, and save more when the work volume increases.  And then there’s the matter of starting a related business. Now, I know a lot of inspectors are kinda like, aww, man, I really..starting a business is a lot of work. It is, but maybe not as much as we might think if we start a related business. So for instance, if we’re a single inspector, we have all of these ladders, we have all of this equipment… Nick Gromicko mentioned quite a bit and matter of fact, he mentioned on our podcast, window washing, we have all the equipment for it, we might just need a couple of squeegees and rags, which you know what? Not that expensive. Could that get us through? So then we can maybe keep our schedule flexible while taking on a couple of small accounts and covering the expenses. If we are a multi-inspector firm, if our inspectors aren’t out there, inspecting, are they stopping in real estate offices? Are there other things that they could do? And I gulp as I say this, field inspections. I’ll tell you, field inspections are not great. They don’t pay well. But they got me through part of the great recession. There are some that pay really well, big commercial firms will oftentimes ask you to go out and take a bunch of pictures. It’s not rocket science, but they want somebody qualified. Can we take on more of those?  And that goes back to overcoming our own pride and disappointment. We may think, I got out of window washing to become a home inspector, I got out of field inspections to become a home inspector. Going into those fields just feels, to be frank, some of us may think, it’s below us. But what is worse, going into those fields to kind of supplement our income, or just stopping business altogether and letting it die? So this was my, I don’t know if you call this a TED Talk. This is my TED Talk, soapbox speech, motivational speech. But don’t give up. I see too many guys giving up when we don’t have to. Hang on. Take as much market share as you can while you can. Get some side jobs, whatever we have to do, and don’t give up.

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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