PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
Hey Preston, I feel like we’re making this a thing now, you and me hanging out and talking over the, over the podcast. How are you?

Preston Kincaid
I’m doing great man. I always like talking with you. So it’s funny because even before you start recording, we’re already talking about stuff.

Ian R
I know I had to stop myself just a minute ago, I say, oh, we got to stop squeezing the fruit because we need this juice for the podcast. So today, we’re going to talk about group psychosis and how it applies to the home inspection industry. And I brought this up to you, because I found out that you are kind of like, you kind of like psychology like I do. I’m an amateur. What I don’t, not an amateur psychologist, but I just like it. Because in marketing, you have to know parts of it, human nature, how our brains react to things. And I just, I just fell down the rabbit hole years and years ago, and I just love it, and it sounds like you are interested in it too, and group psychosis came up.

Preston Kincaid
You know, I’m the same as you. And so with a marketing and advertising background, it really is kind of the secret sauce to the whole thing is really getting to where you figure out what people’s, what their emotional hot buttons are, like, how to press them how to, you know, and this is what I go over in my in my jumpstart webinar, where I talk a lot about limbic brain versus neocortex. And, you know, really how to get people to do business with you to create relationships with you. And it’s fascinating, actually.

Ian R
Yeah, and I find that a lot of it just comes down to being a good person and connecting with people. But there’s a science behind that. But this one is very specific. It sounds like you know more about this than I do anyways, with the limbic brain comment that you just made. But shared psychosis, it’s a disorder characterized by sharing a delusion among two or more people, and we might know it by its colloquial term, folie à deux, which is basically if you get two people to believe the same thing, it all of a sudden becomes a truth. And then it spreads. So then everybody believes it. I thought of a good example. So I’m a nerd. And you know, the quote, “Luke, I am your father.”

Preston Kincaid
He never actually said that. He didn’t say that in the movie.

Ian R
He did not say that. Somebody quoted it wrong. And somebody said, that sounds right. And it spread. And matter of fact, there’s a, there’s another one, if you look it up a movie that was done by Shaq in the 90s, wasn’t actually done by Shaq. And they bring this up, psychologists bring this up that they, they show it as folie à deux, shared psychosis. People have a delusion, and they spread that delusion, because if the delusion is, is especially easy to accept, they’re gonna accept that over the truth any day of the week. Is that about how you, you take it for a group psychosis or shared psychosis, all that stuff?

Preston Kincaid
Yeah, you know, so here’s the funny thing, Ian, is, when you, when you learn about the shared psychosis, and like kind of where that whole dynamic starts from, like the root cause of it, it really gets into that limbic brain I was just talking about, which is a survival mechanism that was kind of baked into our lizard brain that’s prehistoric, like that goes right down to the history of, of humankind, right. Because if you think about it way back when we were tribal thinkers, and if you got cast out of the tribe, you died. And it’s really interesting when you dive into that, and you understand how it works with humans, because it gets right down to pretty much everything that we do every day, from religion, to sports teams, to politics to business. There’s really this tribal brain going on in almost everything that we do.

Ian R
That’s the number one response I get as well. Yeah, there’s wherever it comes from. It has a deep effect on us. And societally, as you just mentioned. And how this came up in the inspection aspect of things, is, we believe funny things, as home inspector sometimes. And I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty, like, you know, I’ll go on a million inspections, and there’ll be things that people will tell me. Well, my home inspector told me this, and then I have to go and prove it by references that that’s not actually how things work. And I have to show them, because we just hear it enough, and we believe it. But after our last podcast, man, I got my inbox blew up with, I know that works in your area, but not in mine. Yeah, and I would get multiple people working the same angle, and then they build on top of each other, and, and find every reason to believe what they already believe, instead of, you use the term in our last podcast, social dissonance, you know, they’re separating, you can hold the truth right in front of them, and they’ll say it doesn’t work. And I’m not trying to bash anybody.

Preston Kincaid
Sure.

Ian R
But I thought it was interesting that some would even say, well, I talked to so and so and those are his prices. He said you can’t raise your prices. You can’t raise your prices. I’m like, this is folie à deux. In other words, you have two people believing the same thing and fighting real evidence.

Preston Kincaid
So, I agree 100% I hear that a lot. And my response is usually, that’s excuse making, really, that’s your fear bias telling you, I gotta find a reason to not raise my prices. Because I’m afraid of losing work if I do. And everybody around me is charging 300 bucks, that means I can only charge 300 bucks. But here’s the thing, Ian, like, I’m literally proving that wrong every day, because it’s exactly the same where I live. I live in Chenango County, New York, feel free to google it, it is an economically depressed area. There are a ton of guys, there are six to 10 guys in my area doing inspections between three and 400 dollars. And I just, like, I’m trying to get that to change. But I’m not going to accept that I have to do that because they do. And if I have to raise the bar, and then work really hard to meet that bar, that’s what I’m going to do instead of settling for status quo.

Ian R
Yeah, and this has a lot of applications in the inspection industry, and not just pricing, although we’re going to talk a lot about pricing, I think but there’s a couple other aspects that are extremely important. But just to give an example, there was at least three people that told me, well, Ian, you live in the capital of New York, I’m like, yeah, and I actually sent a screenshot to one guy, I’m like, look, here’s one of my competitors, advertising $299 inspections. Right, right on the title of his website, that was his big thing. I’m like, I can find you a dozen more. Whereas my average inspection fee is going to be between 700 to $1,200. Your area, one of our listeners, actually one of our one of our guests on the show, Jay Wynn, he actually knows your area, his family comes from your area. And he goes, the fact that you’re charging that is, is incredible. Nobody would ever charge that, to think to charge that in one of the most depressed areas in New York State.

Preston Kincaid
I got a text message from one of my realtors, one of my referring Realtors last night, Ian, I was driving home, and she said, oh my god, you’re the best. Thank you, thank you. And I go, what did I do? And she goes, well, you went to this inspection tonight, these clients were going to bet, they were going to cancel their inspection with you, they called me and said, this is an astronomical price. This is an enormous price for an inspection. And they were going to cancel with you. And I just kept reiterating that if I bought a house, you’re the person I would choose. And so when I got to the house, I realized that I just inspected it two weeks ago. So I gave them a discount, you know, I told them will all update all the photos, you know, we’ll go through and give them a new report, but it’s going to be a lot less work. So I did discount that inspection last night because of that. And then she was, she thought I was the hero. But when I got that text message, it really like, I kind of forget sometimes that everybody thinks I’m super expensive. And yet, I just had my most successful, financially successful month in the history of my business in May. And as a solo inspector, I’m going to eclipse $30,000 for the first time that I’ve been in business. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t my busiest month, like I didn’t, it wasn’t, I didn’t do the most inspections. So to me, I look at that and go, I want every inspector in this country to do that.

Ian R
Now, I want to just repeat what you said so that everybody listening understands, in one of the most depressed areas of New York State, and if you’ve never been to New York State, it’s not New York City, it’s most of it is rural. And there’s a lot of depressed parts. You had a month where you did 30 grand as a solo inspector, but you didn’t do the most number of inspections. That’s called killing it. That’s awesome.

Preston Kincaid
Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll be able to replicate this again, I’m hoping this is a trend. But you know, at the end of the day, when I look at the schedule, and I go, okay, you know, 32 inspections, that’s not crazy busy, that’s a busy month, you know, right around 30 inspections is my target. That’s right where I want to be, and any more than 30 starts to get a little chaotic for me. And keep in mind that I’m in an area where almost all of the homes are 3000 square foot 200 year old farmhouses. So when I say 30 inspections, those are, those are hefty inspections. But the truth is, I look at that, I feel good about it for a number of reasons. It isn’t just the money. It’s number one, I could be a multi inspector firm, and I could be gobbling up inspections, and I could be cutthroat in my price. But then all these guys around me are going to be starving for work. And I don’t want that to happen to other inspectors. I want there to be ample work for everybody to be successful. And I would really rather kind of rise with the tide and get everybody else to kind of follow this trend to say, look, if I can do it, you can do it. And I don’t want to take inspections off the table. I would rather just do one a day and let there be enough out there for everyone.

Ian R
You know, you’ve said that a few times, and there’s not, I still think there’s people that don’t believe that there are humans beings out there like that, that all business has to be cut through. I just brought Jay Wynn up a minute ago, but I’m gonna bring him up again. Because recently he was asked by somebody to do a ride along. And he goes, sure. And he does ride alongs and lets people go with him all the time, he checks them out first he goes, you’re not going to be smoking a cigarette in the driveway with your pants falling down and smelling like beer, you’re going to show up at your best. But he always says the same thing. He goes, why? Well, there’s room for all of us. And he goes, if I teach this guy to do a good inspection, and at a good price, now I have great competition that elevates the industry. And everybody’s like, well, I don’t want to elevate the industry, I want to get by on my own. That doesn’t help anybody. I mean, if you look at where my market is, right now, compared to where it was 20 years ago, 20 years ago, home inspectors didn’t talk, they didn’t intermingle. And the industry was in a downward trend. Now guys like Jay, you know, they, they’ve elevated our markets, so that there’s guys out there charging even more than we do, and making it, doing fantastic inspections, less complaints about the inspection industry. And then you can do that in short periods of time, you know, five, six years, all of a sudden, the whole market’s elevated. I mean, look, you’ve been, you’ve been a home inspector 5, 6, 7, 8 years, and you’ve already elevated the industry overall. That’s, those are good things.

Preston Kincaid
This is why, so it’s interesting you say that because, Ian, I did a, I did a video a while back talking about that, actually, I did a webinar and then I recorded it. But the downward race to the bottom trend works exactly the same the other direction.

Ian R
Yeah.

Preston Kincaid
Right. We can follow the trend by cut throating down to nothing, and we can all be scraping and eating Top Ramen. Or we can go the other way and step our way towards price elevation. And I was really trying to get that to stick and get people to distill that in their head and go, you know what, he’s right. If I raise my prices, and everybody else around me raises their prices, Preston is going to then raise his prices again. Right. So if the 425 guys that are in my area would raise their prices to 550, I would go up to 750 or 800. Now their price doesn’t seem so expensive, right? Because everybody’s using a comparison when they’re price shopping. And I mean every word of that. I’m committed to pushing the price up as high as I can because I believe that our industry by and large, right across the board is undervalued, we’re underpaid. We’re working too hard. We’re staying up too late. We’re learning too much. I mean, you think about how much we’re doing for what we’re getting paid.

Ian R
So I’m gonna bring out the next aspect of group psychosis in our industry that I noticed, I’d love to hear your thoughts on any other aspects that you want to bring up. But another group psychosis is that we’re service people. So we get told that by marketers outside of our industry, we get told that by Google, that we’re a service based industry, we are the exact opposite. But if you ask almost any home inspector, we’ll say of our own industry, we’re a service based industry. But that’s a group psychosis. What are we actually?

Preston Kincaid
We’re professional consultants.

Ian R
Exactly. And that’s, we don’t say that an engineer, a doctor, or any other kind of consultant is a service based business

Preston Kincaid
Man, I’ll tell you this is probably where, this is probably where I take my most lumps, because I’m challenging the status quo making people think differently about home inspection than even most home inspectors do. Because why? There’s a myth out there that you have to be a contractor or a former contractor in order to be a home inspector or to be a good one. The problem is, is that and I don’t have any issue with tradesmen, right? These tradesmen are needed. They’re necessary. They are, I know tradesmen that make more money than I do. Oh, yeah. But when you stop, and you think about the difference between what they do and we do is they work with their hands. Yes, they have to have knowledge. Yes, they have to have tools, but they’re banging hammers, they’re twisting wrenches, they’re service providers. And there is absolutely nothing in the world wrong with that. When you get into home inspection, you’re really kind of leaving that stuff behind. And you’re now saying, I’m going to take a step into a consultant type of role where I want to use my knowledge and my brain to make money. I’m no longer, yes, I have to use a flashlight and a camera and that sort of thing. But I’m no, I’m no longer a service provider. And this is where, when I was coming out very vocal about the fact for the first three years, I didn’t do sewer scopes. And a lot of people’s, you know, they really gave me a lot of a lot of grief over that because they felt like I was saying I’m too good to do it. And that isn’t what I was saying. What I was saying is that I didn’t want that to be part of my brand image that I was going to be on my hands and knees, doing sewer scopes and running cameras through pipes because suddenly I’m now a service provider. So I’m stepping into the plumber realm, I’m stepping into, I’m removing, you know, plumbing components and then doing a service, right. And so that’s why I was kind of rallying against doing sewer scopes, I do them now, I actually still hate doing them, I don’t, I try to get out of doing them whenever I can, I’d rather refer it out. And it isn’t because I feel like I’m arrogant or too good to do it. It’s just the fact that I got into home inspection to be a professional consultant. And if the only thing you do as a home inspector is inspect the house, you’re only doing half your job. Because as a matter of fact, I think it’s less than half because communicating your findings to your client, advocating, recommending, being a resource for them. That’s more important and more valuable than anything else you do. Your findings at the inspection are worthless unless you can communicate them in an intelligible way. And that’s where that, and I’ll tell you, Ian, that’s probably where, that’s probably where I’m, I’m doing well in my business is because that’s the part I’m focused on, is not just looking at the stuff and being able to explain it, articulate it, recommend how to remediate it, give people options on how that’s done. That’s professional consultancy.

Ian R
You know, and I guess, with the group psychosis that comes with that, is the mentality of a service person. So I’m going to give the tale of two providers, one is a service person that, I got a new AC system put in, they put it in wrong, long story, I actually ended up fixing it. Apparently, I’m an HVAC expert now, because I just read everything I could. I think I know that manual better than any HVAC guy, and I fix my own AC unit. And the reason that ended up that I had to do that is because service people work like service people. So I was telling you, even before the podcast guy showed up, looked at my AC unit, yeah, I can fix it, didn’t show up for the next scheduled appointment, he had to schedule a different appointment, then he goes up, and he kind of takes things apart, didn’t put it back together all the way because he didn’t think I would go look at it and, you know, service people, but that’s what I expected of a service person. It’s like, alright, you know, service kind of stinks nowadays. I go, I went to my doctor for the first time in like nine years, I just don’t go to the doctor. And I go and I talk with him. He sits down with me, examines things, talks with me, comes back with some recommendations. He examined some other things, gives me a call later on, asked me how things are going, make sure my blood work came back. The difference between those two things is a mentality, service provider, obviously, degree and all that stuff, but just in the service. I mean, I think there’s a difference between an HVAC and a doctor. But you know what I’m talking about.

Preston Kincaid
15 years in college.

Ian R
Yeah, they’re basically the same thing. You know, the service I got was the difference between a service person and a professional, right. And when we have the service person mentality that hurts our industry. And I see home inspectors work like that. Like they’re like at my next appointment, go into my next appointment, that client has questions. But you know what, that’s for their agent, I watched this one guy, he goes, that’s what the agent does is they explain the report afterwards, I’m like, you are not a professional at that point. You’re a service person. And that’s where the group psychosis comes in. We’re treating it like we’re doing HVAC appointments. It’s not a service call, we’re hired to be a home inspector. That’s what we do.

Preston Kincaid
Ian, like that’s so important. Like, this is probably the most important thing we’ve talked about. Because here’s the thing, when I was when I was doing, I did business consulting, for years marketing consulting and that sort of thing. And I literally used to ask my clients to get out of their chair, get out of their office, we’re gonna go for a walk to the front of your business, we’re going to stand on the sidewalk and look at your business. And you’d be amazed at how, how rarely, business owners do that. Home inspectors are no different. We have our routine, we wake up, we do our thing, grab our tools, we charge our thermal image cameras, whenever, we’re looking at our business from the inside out. And we forget sometimes what it’s like to be on the other side and do business with us. Right? So I would walk business owners out, go look at your business, what do you think, and they would go oh, man, like my sign looks like crap, and my parking lot’s falling apart. And they hadn’t seen it in 15 years, because they come in the back door and sit in their office. So what I tried to do with my business is look at it from my clients perspective, right? What would it feel like to do business with me? And how would I want that experience to go because this is going to be my 260th inspection or whatever this year. I don’t know what number it’s at. But for them, this is the only inspection they’re going to attend for 15 years. This is a big deal to them. This is their biggest life investment. Right. So if I show up and I’m rushing through it. I tell him not to be part of the inspection, show up at the end. I’ll cram it down your throat, all the stuff I found. I’m jumping in the car and going to my next inspection. Have a good life. I’ll hit the button while I’m driving, you’ll get the report. Let me know if you have any questions. What I just said right now is literally how most home inspectors in this country operate. Leave me alone, I gotta concentrate, I’ll hit a button, you’ll get your report. I hope I never hear from you again.

Ian R
Yeah.

Preston Kincaid
And if we’re being, if we’re being honest, that’s probably what most inspectors want. They want to be left alone, get their inspection done, press the publish button, and move on.

Ian R
Well, that’s what we also charge for.

Preston Kincaid
Right. So we’re tailoring our price towards that kind of service. Now, I’ll be honest, that’s what I want too, if I had to be honest, I would much rather be left alone, I’d much rather hit the publish button and never hear from the client again, the problem is, is that I know that’s not a successful business recipe. That’s not a good methodology. I’m not going to be successful in business if I do that. So what I do is I tell every client, you should be at the inspection, you should be a meaningful part of it. You should shadow me if you want to, you should ask me 1000 questions, we should talk about the stuff that we find. I should know what your concerns are and what you’re planning to do with the home. Are you starting a family? Are you gonna have little kids running around? Is baluster spacing, you know, super important to you? You know, it’s good if you, if you have that knowledge of the people you’re working with, because it might be a short relationship, but it is a relationship. And so yeah, it’s painful, it makes my inspections longer. But if you look in my region, Ian, I’m not I swear, I’m not bragging, I’m not being arrogant. The only inspectors in my region that have more Google reviews than me, are multi inspector firms. So that’s how you get the good reviews is going above and beyond and elevating what you do, you raise the bar and you strive to meet it.

Ian R
You said something very key that I kind of half interrupted I’m sorry about that, that I did. But it was a very important point. That we’re charging for service person prices, the publish button, and run. I personally as a self proclaimed introvert, I would love it if I just never heard from that client ever again. But the client you don’t hear from ever again is not the client that refers you, is not the client that leaves you a great review, is not the client that brags to the agent about you, those are just push publish and done. And all you’ll ever get for that is $300 a month, or $300 an inspection. So we limit ourselves by having that group psychosis that we’re service people, when in reality, it’s really not that bad. Like, at the end of an inspection. I know how many kids they have. I know the name of their dog. I know when they got married, where they went to school. And you know, I have ADD, so I can multitask. And it’s okay, not all of us can. But I made a personal connection. But you know what, 99% of people, it’s not like they were calling me for hours of my time. Once in a while people were like, oh, Ian, I only trust you, it’s like, okay, it’s Friday at seven, I just want to eat dinner and hang out. But okay, it was just once in a while. Going that extra mile really just made people like you. And I’ve always said people will, people will defend a person that they like, but they won’t defend a service person. So here’s the thing, if you, Preston, were just amazing, and they loved you. But let’s say there was a heating issue that you couldn’t see on the backside of the heating unit. They moved in. And they discovered the heating issue. If you were the $300 a month, $300 a month. I don’t know I keep saying that, $300 an inspection guy, that just push publish and go. You’re an easy target to say what an idiot. But now you’re Preston. Oh my goodness, Preston went into places in the house that we couldn’t think of, you know, our kids went to school together. He knew, he knew my dog’s name. There’s a weird connection that happens. And there’ll be like, there’ll be like, this wasn’t Preston’s fault.

Preston Kincaid
This is, this is why I pushed that whole issue of building relationships so much because it’s the single most important factor in my business. Realtors, clients, lawyers, mortgage brokers, you name it. Build relationships, because you’re gonna find out that when there’s a meaningful relationship there, people have forgiveness. People will talk to you. I went to a presentation last week at one of the largest agencies up here, I have good relationships with these people. And one of the agents, I was back in a little break room, he came up to me and he goes, Preston, I want to talk to you. You kind of caused an issue for me. I was like what happened? You know, Jim, what happened? And he goes, well, the oven, the range didn’t work. And in your report, it just said range didn’t work. And he goes, that actually caused a big problem for me. And I said, well explain to me what happened. He goes well, it was unplugged. It was a brand new unit. It still had plastic on it. And he was exactly right. You know what I should have done in my report, is I should have taken a picture of it unplugged, I should have taken a picture of the plastic on it, said it’s a brand new unit, it was not operable at the time of the inspection because it was unplugged. And it was brand new, right? That probably wouldn’t have caused the problem. But you know, I was probably moving a little too fast and just said, you know, didn’t work. But here’s the key part of that whole thing. How many realtors are reaching out to tell home inspectors how they can improve or what problems they caused? Usually what they do is just never refer to you.

Ian R
Yeah, good point.

Preston Kincaid
Jim and I had a relationship. We’ve worked together for four years, he trusts me, and he knows me. And so if I did something and fell short, he came to me and told me, that’s the difference between a relationship and getting work.

Ian R
Yeah, no, very true. And you know, there’s another point about group psychosis in our industry that I want to talk about. Are there any that come to your mind before I bring up my next point, though?

Preston Kincaid
Group psychosis in the, in the inspection industry, so one of them, this is probably less important, but one of the ones that I think I see quite a bit, is how we tend to think as a community that we’re writing novels, that people are going to save and hand down generation to generation.

Ian R
That was exactly my point. Yeah, we’re on the same page.

Preston Kincaid
Like, when in reality we’re writing something that somebody is going to read twice and never look at again, a week later, you know, I hear people talk about, oh, they gave my report to someone else. And that’s copyrighted material and all this stuff. And I’m like, you know, what, we’re writing reports. I mean, we’re not, we’re not saving the world here. So that’s one of those things I see quite often is how people think what we’re writing is some sort of literature, you know, not a masterpiece.

Ian R
Yeah, you know, and that’s exactly where I was gonna go with the whole, that was my exact next point, reports have become ridiculous. We are defect recognizers is what I’ve always said when I teach my classes. I’m a New York State home inspector instructor, we are paid to recognize what a defect is, why it’s a defect, what needs to happen, which is usually get a professional, which kind of professional, and what are the possible consequences of it, but ultimately comes down to this broke, get it fixed, or this could hurt if you touch it, and you know, just using caveman talk. But we, some of these reports that I review, are overly complex. And I wish we could see, like you said, step outside of our business. I wish we could see it from outside of our industry. Because I talk to people who review reports because we have our software and we have people review reports. And almost invariably, about 80% of reports people go, I have no idea what any of this means. And I think a good example is, I’ve mentioned this before, I do some volunteer work, and we had to hire a company to do basically a CMA on a property for this organization. They sent us 30 some odd pages of gobbly gook. And I say gobbly gook because I read the things three times and I read these things all the time. I had to get somebody who’s a professional, he read it. And he goes, this is all gobbledygook, it took the two of us hours, and then we finally figured out on page 24, literally page 24, on about the 15th line down, was the actual information that we asked this broker for, and it just got buried. But the broker was so proud of this report, we are not going to use them because we’re like, this is absolutely ridiculous. And we can’t find what we need.

Preston Kincaid
So this is, Ian, and that’s, all right. So you’re exactly right. So we’re defect identifiers. Right, which, which just kind of across the board makes us into nitpickers, right. It’s kind of our job to nitpick and find problems. But then it’s also, it’s also part of our job to argue about it. Because we’re gonna have sellers and contractors, everybody else saying, yeah, he’s crazy, your inspector’s an idiot. And you have to be able to defend it and cite code and show pictures. And hopefully you saved the video, right? So some parts of our job were professional arguers. You take all the dynamics of our job, and you mix it all together. And it’s, it’s not, you know, they’re not pretty ingredients, right. But also the group psychosis, not just around the reports. But think about this, how many inspectors think that they have to diagnose the root cause of the problems? Right, so I did a webinar a while back on faster report writing, which was, I had probably half the people in one comment or another, tell me, your webinar was awesome because it let me off the hook. You were the first person to tell me I don’t have to know that stuff. You know, so it’s not our job to diagnose. Is it bad to know the root cause of things? No. But here’s what we do when we overstep our boundary and get outside of, we get out of our lane, right, which is prescribing repairs, here’s what should be done. We’re not supposed to do that. We’re supposed to observe, report, recommend, and we’re supposed to include somewhere in there the consequences of not doing that. That’s it. And it’s up to a professional, a specialist, a technician, somebody to come in and go. Here’s the best way to fix that. And think about this. So if we use the analogy of like a primary care physician. You go to a primary care physician, they’re not cancer doctors, they’re not spine specialists, they are not, you know, orthopedic, you know, sports doctors, they’re a primary care physician, their job is to generally know most things and then to refer you to the specialist for the other stuff, a primary care physician would never tell you, oh, you have a herniated disc in your back, you need a spine fusion. But that’s what we do as home inspectors so often with this group psychosis is thinking that we have to know all the root causes and know all the solutions and prescribe all that stuff. And so it’s okay in reports to say, I observed this, I don’t necessarily know what’s causing that, I have an idea of what may be causing it. But I recommend somebody evaluate this and make repairs or remediation as deemed necessary. Because that’s our job is to see the defect and make a recommendation, not to solve the problem for them. Yeah, that’s the specialist’s job.

Ian R
Yeah. And there’s where the group psychosis comes in, we sometimes get on these Facebook groups or what other forums we’re in. And we keep, we keep just fomenting this idea that a long, complicated, overly detailed report is, first of all, what our clients want, and they don’t, we bridge a gap, you know, between technical and the person, we need to be able, like Einstein said, If you can’t explain it, simply, you simply don’t understand. We need to be able to take something very complex and distill it into this is what it is, and the guy argued with me really hard on writing simpler reports, he goes, you’re telling me I need to reduce the quality of my inspection. I’m like, no, you do the same inspection, matter of fact, a better inspection, but you need to give the people something that they actually understand. My doctor, I’ll use him as an example. He gave me a report, one page, the human body is way more complex than any home has ever been. And he summed up my entire body on one page, and he says, you know, eat more fiber, and go get this blood test. I’m like, okay, am I suing him? Am I freaking out? Do I think he’s a bad doctor? No, he did an amazing job. Matter of fact, I’ve recommended him to friends. But his report was one page. I’m not saying give one page reports. But what I’m saying is, all of this extra gobbly gook is just gobbledygook, it hides the actual information that we want people to understand. And here’s the problem. Have you ever heard the old proverb? In many words there is transgression. Yeah, the more we, information we add, the more opportunities we open for problems. Here’s an example.

Preston Kincaid
That’s a great point, Ian, great point. Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do right there.

Ian R
Here’s a real life example. So there’s two examples. I’m going to use one. One there was a lawsuit, and the other one there wasn’t. Both of them had to do with the foundation. The one where there was a lawsuit, the inspector before me found a bowed foundation wall. And he talked about, he tried to measure the differential movement, displacement. He used the laser level, he told them how to fix it. He talked about 18 different scenarios. And the lawyers picked that apart, because he did about 20 different things that he wasn’t supposed to. I went in and inspected it. And you know what I said, I don’t remember the exact words. But I still use this in my classes. Bowed foundation wall noted at such and such an area of the house, it seemed to be structurally significant at time of inspection, and could have multiple root causes. Evaluation by a qualified foundation contractor is recommended. I mean, the people were thankful, the attorneys praised me. And even the foundation guy I found out later on, they’re like, boy, you had a good inspector. I’m like, I just wrote down what I saw. The other guy, the other guy got sued, though, which he was actually a very good inspector. But his reports were so long, so much information, and just, the people didn’t even understand what he was saying. And that was part of the problem that the attorneys brought up. He didn’t, he said all this without saying anything.

Preston Kincaid
I remember, I remember about three or four years ago, there was a guy in our Facebook group, who was very loud and very, very bold about proclaiming that he, he doesn’t even make recommendations. He said in my reports, I don’t make recommendations. I list what I observe. And I leave it at that. And I remember thinking to myself, how crazy that sounded. But it’s weird how I’ve been distilling things down and trying to simplify it and trying to just like you said, not get, not step out of my lane, like not get into diagnosis or remediation. Right, focus on my job and be good at my job. And now suddenly, that doesn’t seem as crazy to me anymore that like, well, yeah, if I tell you your foundation has a problem. Of course you’re gonna call a foundation contractor. Why do I have to say, I recommend, you know, now I still make those recommendations. But the weird thing is my position has changed on that. I don’t think he’s such a crackpot anymore. I don’t think it’s best practice. I’m not going to follow that. But I look at that and go you know what? He’s distilling it down. He’s staying in his lane. Right. All he would say in his report is, I recommend a qualified professional to evaluate it. He didn’t try to say foundation contractor, roofer, siding contractor, grading, like he just didn’t do that, he just said qualified professional.

Ian R
Yeah, I don’t know if I would go that far as him either, because we still need to, it’s identify, relate severity, and there’s always those three components – identify, relate severity, and recommendation. The recommendation is always go see a specialist, like you use the doctor illustration. So using your doctor illustration, the doctor doesn’t do anything. He says, hey, you know, verbally, he’ll say, hey, you know, you could have high cholesterol or this or that, here, go get the blood test, and we’ll have that looked at. But on their actual report it says, could have high blood cholesterol, go see, go get your blood taken. And me as the average consumer, I go, okay. Now, if he handed me a 30 page report, I would have just gone home and dropped it on the table and not looked at it. So it’s the same thing with the home inspection report, we had this group psychosis that the more complicated and big our reports are, we wear it as a badge of honor. And that’s so backwards to me.

Preston Kincaid
No, I agree. So. And you see that in the group psychosis, where you see the guys talking about how many pages their reports are. Funny thing is, alright, so at one point, and this happened in the old group, you know, my own group that I got thrown out of. I remember what I did was I was going well, my reports are averaging around like 60, 70 pages. But what I did was I went and I stripped out all the photos. And then it suddenly became like a 14 page report. Right. So I like I wasn’t so alarmed at that point, because I realized I put a lot of photos in my reports. And that’s why there’s so many pages. But at the end of the day, it’s really not that much information. I tried to keep my reports concise. But I do think the best analogy that we can use for our job is the primary care physician.

Ian R
It is.

Preston Kincaid
Right, you go to a primary care physician, because he’s broadly going to check you out and go, I see a problem over here, you should go see that specialist. And that’s the model I kind of follow as an inspector, I’m the alternative to having every other contractor in, you know, in the world show up to the house, you’re not going to call a roofer, an electrician, a plumber, a foundation, a grading, you’re not gonna get all those guys out on inspection. That’s stupid.

Ian R
Exactly.

Preston Kincaid
I’m the guy that figures out. I just looked at 1000 things or four areas that need, that need attention. And that’s, that’s a valuable service to offer because we’re simplifying life for these people.

Ian R
You know, it’s funny, when I, when I first started my first inspection company, it’s when New York State first came out with licensing. So back then you had to carry your license with you and anybody who asked for it, you had to present your license, and people actually did it back then. Like there’s one older agent, she came up and she’s like, oh, you need to present your license. And I handed it to her. And I’m like, does that make you feel better? She goes, I don’t know. I just felt like I needed to do it. She was funny.

Preston Kincaid
I want people to do that again. I’ll tell you, Ian, one of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that those bastards make me go get that stupid part 107 for the drone, and nobody’s ever asked me to see the license.

Ian R
Yeah, well, yeah, I still carry it if I have to. But um, the point I was trying to make was back then it was, it was just a different time period. And people didn’t understand the whole home inspection process. And I remember one of my first clients, he goes, you know, I have a roofer coming, and I have a foundation guy coming, and I’m gonna have you do everything in between. I’m like, you know, I’m going to do the roof and the foundation. He goes, but what if there’s something broken with it? I’m like, well, if there’s something broken with the foundation, I’ll tell you to get the foundation guy. But what if there’s nothing wrong with the foundation. He goes, oh, I could have saved the money on the foundation guy. I’m like, yeah, why have 30 people here when you had your general practitioner, and I used that illustration with him, I’m like, you don’t go to the proctologist, and then you go to the foot doctor, and then you go to leg doctor and work your way up the body. You get one guy, and he goes, everything looks good, you know? But you know, your, your kidneys look like they need something. And he goes, oh, man, and I remember explaining it for the first time out loud. I’m like, boy, our job makes sense. This is what we do. Yep. And it’s really a good illustration.

Preston Kincaid
Yup, well the whole group psychosis thing to me is, it’s really fascinating. It gets a little depressing sometimes when you realize how much it affects our lives, right? And I use this example in my, in my jumpstart webinar, where I say, look at how we do it with sports, right? No, I’m a, I’m a raider fan. Or I’m a you know, I have a friend who’s a Denver Broncos fan. For God’s sake. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know if they’ve ever won a game in the history of their team. He’s been a diehard Denver Broncos fan since he was 12 years old, right? But when you analyze why it gets into that same limbic brain thing, we’re tribal, like our whole DNA is built to be tribal. And we surround ourselves with like minded people because that’s a tribe to feel safe to us, right. This is why we join you know, car clubs and motorcycle clubs or whatever, right, because that that limbic brain in our head wants to be aligned with things that are like us. And it’s our tribe. So we do it in other ways, though, that same survival instinct in our brain tells us that this is the right way. And this is, you know, this is what I was taught. And this is what they told me was right. And so we just run with it as if it’s gospel truth. And you can hold up evidence right in their face and go, here’s Preston Kincaid over there in Shenango County, the meth capital of New York, charging 650 base rate for inspections, while you guys are claiming you can’t get more than 400 bucks.

Ian R
Yeah, I think there’s a lot that we can pull out of this. It’s a fantastic, I could go on all day talking about this with you. My big takeaway is, no matter who we are, folie à deux, group psychosis, whatever we want to call it. It affects all of us whether we realize it or not. It takes us stepping outside of ourselves sometimes and say, am I just believing what I want to believe because there’s a group around me saying this, is it? Or can I step back and say, you know, I’m going to do things differently. Because people that do things differently, are successful. If you think about most of the successful people throughout history, what people would consider successful, almost nobody will say, yeah, I basically did what everybody else did. And it worked out great, it’s when people stepped out and said, you know, what, let me get out of the group psychosis. And that’s when we find the sweet spot. So I would recommend everybody think about this, whether it has to do with pricing, our reports, how we write them, how we view ourselves as a service professional, or, or a consultant, or however, what else we think group psychosis might be affecting us, step out of ourselves a little bit, and say, you know, is this really fact? Or is this just what I’ve chosen to believe?

Preston Kincaid
Ian, I have one, you know, I know we’re running a little long. But I have one example right now that I’ll tell you. Last year in November, I released this idea that I had to the group’s, I said, I got this idea for Waive Worthy inspections, they’re pre listings, but they’re different. And here’s how they’re different. There’s a lot packed into it. And I’ll tell you, that didn’t go over very well at all. I got hate mail. I mean, it was bad. I got people telling me I was the biggest idiot in the world. All right, I did a second webinar this year, I think it was in February, after I got it all packaged up, right, I got the brochures done, you know this stuff. And I said, look guys, I’ll give you all my files. I’m not charging a dime for this, just take this concept and try it and run with it. And the number one response I’m getting from these guys is that nobody wants it, they’re not able to sell it. They’re not being successful with it. I just did my 16th Waive Worthy inspection today. As a matter of fact, it was my 10 o’clock inspection. That’s $16,000 I’ve added to the top line growth this year, by offering this thing that didn’t exist before. It’s a very different animal. And I’m still hearing from guys, because I was texting some guys that you know, some other guys. They’re going, I tried to sell it, I couldn’t. And so why is it that I’m able to sell this and they’re not. It’s in their brain it’s a bad product, I can’t sell it. And over here, I’ve got Realtors beating down my door trying to get them because it helps them sell the homes. It makes the process faster. So that’s also group psychosis, which is it boils into, you know, failure, right? It’s like I tried, it didn’t work. It’s a bad thing. Well, I’ll tell you, it didn’t work for me either at first, it took me trying to sell it six or seven times before I figured out the emotional hot buttons. Right? Right now the group psychosis is this is a bad product, this isn’t gonna work. Here I am over here adding, you know, I’ll probably put 20 grand on the books this year or more by selling these things. So I wish I could get past that cognitive dissonance of these people going, no, I just have to go back to the regular way of doing things. This is too different. I can’t, I can’t sell it. So I’m going to, I’m going to be scheduling another webinar soon to actually try again to show guys this is exactly how I sell this, go try again. So, group psychosis can also be around the fear or the fear of failure.

Ian R
You know, I’ll just add to my own because what you’re saying is an important part of our message. So I was the first person in my area to do electronic reports back when you didn’t have smartphones or anything. And people are like, this is stupid. Where’s the paper? You can’t do this. Now look at us. I was, I was the first person in my area to do a lot of different things, full on septic inspections. We had septic guys yelling at us, we had agents calling their engineer friends and putting them on speakerphone. And now all our competitors are doing full septic inspections. We were the first people to do a lot of things. Because I’m not saying that I don’t give into group psychosis, I do. But at the same time, sometimes I step out and say, why not? Why can’t I do this? Give me a good reason. If the idea stinks, and it can’t stand on its own legs. Cool. But ultimately, it’s easier to believe this doesn’t work. And to move on. It’s the easier route to take. Did I have to fight for years for everything that I did? Heck, yeah. Oh, yeah. But it, it works. And I think the proof is in the pudding with that, with what you just said, and where I’ve come from and where I am now.

Preston Kincaid
So doesn’t this also, psychologically, doesn’t this just boil down to that same thing? You know, we said it on the last interview. It’s something I talked about a lot, which is basically at the root of all of this is fear.

Ian R
Yep.

Preston Kincaid
Right. Tribal thinking is fear of not surviving. Group psychosis is fear of failing, not raising your prices is fear of losing work. So if we, if we distill this all down to its simplest problem, it really is, is really just trying to get over people’s fears. And the one thing that I can tell you right now is, I’ve never heard a success story in my life that started off with, I took the safe route. The easy way, I did it like everybody else. I’ve never heard an amazing success story that started that way. The most amazing success stories always started with, I spent my last 400 bucks and gave it a shot. I tried it, it failed six times, ended up living in my car, but then I figured it out. You know, you hear the stories of people. And the bottom line of those stories is they didn’t succumb to fear. They overcame them. They were bold, they were confident, they weren’t afraid of failing. And this is why I don’t mind telling people I have started more than 100 businesses in my life. I think I’ve had like six that were successful. So what I would like other people to know at the end of this interview right now, Ian, is there is such a thing as failing successfully.

Ian R
I think that’s a great point to end the podcast on. Preston, I know you’re a busy guy. You’ve had your best month ever, and congratulations on that. And I really thank you for being on today.

Preston Kincaid
Dude, I love talking with you, man. I appreciate it. And I’ll jump on an interview anytime you want to do it.

Ian R
Awesome. We’ll have you on again for sure. Thanks, Preston. Have a good one.

Preston Kincaid
Yep, take care.

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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